The Jupiter Plague

6

“I saw on TV where the beach on Coney Island was covered with dead seagulls, washed up during the night so they closed the whole beach off, not that anyone is breaking their neck to go swimming anyway.”

Killer talked around his half-chewed toothpick while he drove, tooling the big ambulance down the center of the deserted crosstown street. All the cars were parked and locked and there were no pedestrians in sight.

“Slow down,” Sam said. “Remember we’re cruising and not on the way to a ruptured appendix.” He was sitting on the right, looking into all the doorways and areaways that they passed. So far he had seen nothing. It was crowded on the front seat with the three of them there. The third man was a UN soldier named Finn, a tall Dane bulking like a pack mule in his full field equipment and forced to lean forward because of the flamethrower on his back.

“There under — under the car,” the soldier broke in suddenly, pointing at a delivery truck. “I think I saw something there.” They braced themselves as Killer hit the brakes and squealed to a stop.

Sam was first out, shouldering the emergency bag as he went; the contents of this bag was one of the measures that had been outlined at the meeting the previous evening.

Finn had good eyes. The dark shadow huddled against the rear wheel of the truck was a young man who tried to crawl further under when they approached. Sam knelt down and, even in the bad light, he could see the characteristic flushed skin and incipient boils of Rand’s disease. He took a pair of elbow-length isolation gloves from the bag and pulled them on.

“Let me help you out from there,” he told the sick man, but when he reached under the man scrambled further away, eyes wide with fear. Sam grabbed his leg, warded off one feeble kick, then slowly pulled him out into the street. The man struggled briefly, then the whites of his eyes rolled up as he passed out; this would make handling him a good deal easier.

The gas mask was an ordinary can respirator type from the fire department stocks, and had been modified quickly by coating the inside with a biocidal cream. When Sam had seated this firmly on the patient’s face he took a pressurized container of antiseptic from his bag and soaked the man’s clothes and skin, then rolled him onto his side so he could do his back. Only then did he strip off the gloves and begin treatment, sure that any Rand-beta virus on his skin or clothing had been killed. He took off the gas mask and prepared an injection of interferon, still the only treatment that had any effect on the disease. The UN soldier came back and stood frowning down at them and fingering the handpiece of his flamethrower.

“There are no birds near here, none; I searched very carefully. Have you asked him where he could have touched a bird?”

“He’s unconscious, I didn’t have a chance.”

Killer had backed the ambulance up and opened the rear door, then wheeled out the stretcher. He tilted his head to one side and the other, frowning down at the unconscious man’s face.

“Don’t he look sort of Italian to you, Doc?”

“He could be — but what difference would that make?”

“Maybe nothing, but you know there’s plenty of pigeon fanciers in this neighborhood, racers and homing pigeons, and a lot of them are Italian. They keep hutches on the roofs.“

They both looked up automatically as he said it, just in time to see a flick of white on the edge of the parapet high above.

“No — not my birds, didn’t have anything to do with my birds…” The sick man shouted, trying to struggle to his feet.

Sam ripped the end off a riot shot — a disposable, one-shot hypodermic of powerful sedative that was self-powered by a cartridge of compressed gas — and pressed it to the struggling man’s arm. It hissed slightly and the patient fell back, unconscious.

“Roll him onto the stretcher and get him into the ambulance. Finn and I will see what’s on the roof.”

Killer protested. “You could use me there to—”

“I could use you here to watch the patient a lot better. On the job, Killer.”

They went as far as the top floor in the elevator, then headed toward the stairs, the soldier first. Doors slammed shut as they approached and they knew that they were being watched all the way. At the head of the stairs was the roof door, closed and sealed with a large padlock.

“The rights of private property must always be observed,” Finn observed gloomily, rattling the lock. “However, paragraph fourteen of our emergency commission reads…” The rest of his words were drowned out as he raised his steel-shod, size-fifteen boot and kicked hard against the lock. Screws squealed as they tore from the frame and the door swung open.

Ahead of them stood a large and freshly painted dovecote above which two pigeons were circling. Clearly visible on the floor inside were a dozen more lying on their sides, some feebly beating their wings.

“What is this floor made of?” the soldier asked, stamping his foot on the roof. Sam looked down at it.

“This is a new building so it must be one of the asbestos slurryes.”

“They are fireproof?” Finn asked, opening a valve on his tank.

“Yes, of course.”

“Very good.” He raised the flamethrower, waiting for the birds in the air to settle. They were disturbed by the strangers and by the sick birds lying below. The soldier watched steadily, nozzle pointed and his finger on the trigger, until all of the birds were down at the same time. He squeezed the trigger.

A roaring tongue of flame licked over the dovecote changing it from inert wood to a burning framework in an instant. One of the birds was caught in the air, a burning puff of fire that crashed to the roof.

“You’re murderers!” the young woman screeched as she came through the door behind them. She tried to clutch at Finn but Sam took her arms and held her immobile until she burst into tears and sagged against him. He let her slide down to the doorstep and touched her wrist lightly with his telltale. No, she didn’t have Rand’s disease, she was just one of the unfortunate bystanders so far. Perhaps the man in the ambulance was her husband.

There was a bubbling hiss as Finn sprayed the roof and the burning framework with his chemical fire extinguisher. While he kicked the smoking debris aside to make sure the flames were out he talked into his helmet radio, then rejoined Sam.

“I’ve reported in and they will send a decontamination team up here. We can go.” He was young, Sam realized, and was trying very hard not to look at the girl sobbing on the step.

When they came out of the building Killer had the ambulance waiting in front of the entrance with the car door open and the turbine throbbing.

“They got a riot,” he called out, “up by the Queens Midtown Tunnel entrance; it’s outta our district but they need all the help they can get. Dispatcher said to get up there.”

As usual Killer did his best to make the ponderous ambulance perform like a racing car, thundering it north on Park Avenue, then swinging into Twentieth Street. They drove with the windows closed, as ordered, and the odor of burned fuel was strong in the cab. When they passed Gramercy Park a decontamination team in sealed plastic suits was raking up the corpses of dead birds: a shotgun thudded under the trees and a tumbled ball of black feathers dropped to the ground.

“Poison grain, that’s what they been spreading,” Killer said, swinging into Third Avenue and pressing hard on the accelerator. “That gets most of them, and what the poison don’t get the shotguns do. It’s a real mess— Hey, look up ahead!”

A jam of unmoving cars filled the street, most of them empty now: two of them had crashed together and burned. A motorcycle policeman waved them over to the curb and leaned in the rolled-down window.

“They got some casualties down the plaza by the entrance at Thirty-sixth. You know where it is?” Killer flared his nostrils in silent contempt at this doubting question. “It’s quieter now, but keep your eyes open.” He pointed to the soldier’s flame-thrower. “You got a weapon besides that thing?” he asked.

“I am fully armed, Officer.” Finn swiveled in the seat and his recoilless.50 appeared in his hand.

“Yeah, well don’t point it at me, just keep it handy. There’s been trouble down here and there could be more. Take this tank up on the sidewalk, there’s room enough to get through.”

This was the kind of driving Killer enjoyed. He bumped up the curb and rolled down the sidewalk toward the plaza. There was the sound of shouting ahead, and racing motors, followed by a tremendous crash of breaking glass. A man ran around the corner toward them, his arms clutching a load of liquor bottles. When he saw the approaching ambulance he ran out in the street to go around it.

“A looter!” Killer said, curling his lip in disgust.

“He’s not our responsibility—” Sam said, then broke off as the man came closer. “Wait, stop him!”

Killer did this efficiently by throwing his door open just as the man was trying to pass. There was a thud and the crash of breaking bottles, then the ambulance braked to stop. They were so close to the wall that Sam had to vault the hood, jumping down by the fallen man who was on all fours, shaking his head in a welter of broken glass and spilled whiskey. Sam bent to look at his face then stepped back, pulling on isolation gloves.

“Stay in the cab,” he shouted. “He has it, an advanced case.”

Sam was looking into his bag, taking out a riot shot, and when he glanced up the broken bottle was coming down toward his face and Killer was howling a warning from the cab. It was a trained reflex that raised his arm to stop the blow, his forearm striking at the other’s wrist. The man was weak — how could he walk at all riddled with the cysts as he must be? — and could only swing again feebly. Sam kept a tight grip on the man’s wrist while he slapped him in the back of the neck with a riot shot. The stricken man began to sag at once and Sam had to drag him clear of the broken glass before he could let him fall to the ground. As swiftly as possible he administered the interferon shot and the prescribed antiseptic treatment. Killer had the upper bunk swung down and locked and Finn helped him swing the inert body up into it. When they moved forward again the UN soldier walked in front of the ambulance.

They could not reach Second Avenue because the crush of cars had pressed up onto the sidewalk and against the buildings there. Sam unshipped two of the lightweight magnesium stretchers and the emergency kit and, fully loaded, twisted his way behind the alert soldier toward the plaza by the tunnel entrance.

The riot was over and had left behind a score of wounded and dead. An airborne UN medical team had arrived with the soldiers in a big combat copter; it had landed in the roadway just before the tunnel entrance, and they were already tending the wounded. A blood-soaked policeman lay on the ground next to his patrol car and the drip in his arm led to the plasma bottle hung from the car’s rearview mirror. The soldiers had moved in quick-ly and aided the police in rounding up those of the battered rioters who had not escaped. Separated from the jam of the other cars was a still smoking and flame-seared panel truck. A police lieutenant near it saw Sam’s white jacket and waved him over.

“Anything to be done with this one, Doctor?” He pointed to the man crumpled on the front seat of the truck whose hand, spotted with dried blood, hung out of the window. Sam put down his burdens and pressed the telltale against the projecting wrist. Temperature seventy-eight, no pulse.

“He’s dead.” Sam put the instrument back into its case. “What happened here?”

“Just a crowd at first. We’re trying to control all traffic to the Island because most of the cases of plague are still coming from there. Make sure people live there or got business, and stop them from taking any birds out. That’s what set it off. There was a lot of horn-blowing and shouting, but nothing else until someone saw the sign PET SHOP on this truck and hauled the doors open. This poor slob had it full of birds from his shop, God knows what he thought he was doing with them. Someone shot him, they set the truck on fire, then they spotted a couple of guys with plague and after that I lost track until the Army arrived…”

“Doctor — over here!” Finn was waving and Sam saw that he was pointing to two men lying on a cleared patch of ground. They both had Rand’s disease. He began the prophylaxis and treatment at once.

Maximum capacity of the ambulance was eight and they had only four cases of Rand’s diseasae, but all of the conscious burn and wound cases refused to travel in the same machine. There was no point in arguing, so they carried in the unconscious policeman with the plasma drip and left the last three places empty. Killer backed skillfully up the street and; with siren wailing, they rushed back to Bellevue. On the way they received a radioed warning that the emergency wards were full and the operating rooms jammed: they went around to the main entrance, where volunteer stretcher-bearers from the clerical departments were waiting to carry the patients up to the just-evacuated maternity wards. The hospital was rapidly being filled to capacity.

Sam was refilling his depleted emergency kit in the supply room when Tomo Miletich, another intern, found him.

“Sign here and here,” Tomo said, pushing a hospital form over to him. “I’m taking over your meat wagon and you’re supposed to call telephone central for a message. Is Killer your driver?”

“Yes, he’s at the wheel.” Sam scrawled his initials. “But what is it about?”

“No idea, I just follow orders. See you — if I survive Killer’s driving.” He shouldered the refilled kit and left. Sam looked for a phone.

“Just a moment, Dr. Bertolli,” the operator said, and flicked through her message file. “Yes, there is a guest in your room who is waiting for you, and after this will you please see Professor Chabel, he’s with Dr. McKay in 3911.”

“Do you know who is waiting in my room?”

“There is no record of that, Doctor.”

“Yes, well, thank you.” He hung up and rubbed his jaw, wondering. What was this all about? Who could be important enough to take him away from the emergency work? And how were Chabel and World Health involved? He started to call first, then decided it would be better to go right up. The only stop he made was to wash some of the soot from his hands and face before he pushed open the unlocked door to his room.

It was an UN Army officer, a big man whose back was turned as he stood looking out of the window with his hands clasped behind him in the position of parade rest. His garrison hat was on the table and the peak was rich with gold braid; a field officer. Sam’s eyes jumped from the hat to the familiar hand-tooled holster hanging from the officer’s belt, out of which projected the chrome-and-teak butt of a recoilless.75. As the man turned Sam’s shoulders squared automatically and he had to resist the desire to throw a salute.

“It’s been ten years, hasn’t it, Sam?” General Burke asked, swinging about and sticking out a large and gnarled brown hand. Sam took it and remembered just in time to clamp down hard with his fingers so that they wouldn’t get crushed.

“Yes, sir, at least ten years,” Sam answered. He could think of nothing better to say. Burke looked the same, perhaps a few more crowfeet at the corner of those burning, dark eyes, maybe a little more thrust to that big jaw. But what was he doing here?

“Listen, Sam, I won’t call you doctor if you won’t call me sir, or general.” He gave a last powerful contraction before he let go of Sam’s hand. “My friends call me Cleaver.”

“I was there when you got the name,” Sam said, and he had to smile as he did. It was during the evacuation operation on Formosa. There had been a night guerrilla raid while all of the officers had been in the mess tent and, for one of the rare times in his life, General Burke hadn’t been armed. But he had grabbed a meat cleaver from the cook and howling like an Indian — thereby giving new strength to the rumor that he was half Apache— had chopped a hole in the side of the tent and fallen on the guerrillas from the rear. It was a night that was hard to forget — especially for Sam, who had been the rawest second lieutenant in the company.

“By Christ, I had forgotten that, you were a crummy shavetail then, but you learned fast enough.” Sam was expecting the slap on the back so he swung with it so that his shoulder blade wasn’t fractured.

“Cleaver” Burke had a big mouth, big muscles and at times seemed to be a parody of the perfect Texan. He was also one of the shrewdest field officers in the Army and did nothing without a purpose.

“What are you here for, Cleaver? It can’t be just to renew an old acquaintance?”

“Right from the shoulder like always, hey, Sam? Pour me a drink of something and I’ll lay it on the line.”

There was an open bottle of Irish whiskey in the closet and Sam, remembering Cleaver’s tastes, found a water glass and filled it half full. He hesitated until he remembered he would be off duty for a while, then poured one for himself.

“Here’s to the Irish, their bogs and their whisky,” General Burke said, holding up his glass.

“Uisce beathadh.”

Burke drained most of it with a single swallow, then frowned at the empty glass before he put it down. “This plague from space is the biggest trouble you or I have seen in our time, Sam, and it’s going to get worse before it’s better. I need your help.”

“There’s not much that I can do, Cleaver. I’m out of the Army and busy doctoring.”

“I know, and I’ll let you go back to work as soon as we’re finished, but I need some more information. You were there when Rand came out, you talked to him, you watched him write that message. Do you have any idea what he meant by it— or why he sealed the ship after he left?”

“Just what I’ve put into the reports. I did the postmortem and I’ve been thinking about it since then. You can’t put too much meaning into what he wrote, one way or the other.”

“What do you mean—?”

“Without being too clinical, let’s say his brain was affected. He was barely conscious, with a high fever and his blood stream loaded with toxins. What he wrote about sickness in the ship might have been a terribly important message, or just the meandering of a damaged mind.”

General Burke was pacing the room, his anachronistic spurs clinking with each footstep. He wheeled about and glared at Sam.

“But this is just guesswork, you don’t know one way or the other. What about the ‘Pericles’? When you made the phone calls, didn’t you see anything unusual, anyone else, bodies, signs of violence? Anything?”

“Just what I reported, Cleaver. I wouldn’t know a real spaceship from a TV stage setting. What I saw looked in order, and there was no one visible in any of the compartments. But this should be easy enough to check; someone could get into the air lock with a camera and dial the numbers as I did and record the whole thing.”

“Sounds easy enough when you put it that way. But it’s very hard to take pictures through a half inch of steel.”

“What do you mean—?”

“I mean that old maid Chabel at World Health is so afraid of contamination that he has had a steel plate welded over the lock opening and he won’t permit it to be removed to investigate the lock or to take the pictures you just mentioned.”

“You can’t very well blame him, considering what happened when that air lock was opened once before. That and Rand’s warning. Until we learn more about Rand’s disease the wisest thing to do is to leave the ship alone.”

General Burke’s hair almost crackled with electricity when he brushed his hand angrily across it. “Maybe. And maybe again there are records in that ship about how they got the disease and who died of it and maybe how to fight it. There has to be something written there, and anything would be a help.”

“And there might be even worse infections there, which is why Rand sealed the lock behind him. If there were any records of importance he could have put them in his pockets before he landed, after all he was conscious enough to bring that ship home and set her down in one piece. You can argue this either way, Cleaver, and both answers make as much sense. As a last resort I might agree with you, if everything were going wrong. Open it up, we couldn’t be worse off. But we’re getting Rand’s disease under control. It can only be caught from birds as you know, so we’re wiping them out. Once the source of infection is removed we’ll be rid of Rand’s disease.”

“I know all about the damned birds, that’s why I’m here. I have my HQ in Fort Jay, but my division is out with shotguns and birdlime and butterfly nets, stumbling all over Long Island killing birds. They’ll do a good job, I’ll see to that, but it’s no way to fight a war. We need intelligence and what we need to know is in that ship. I’m asking for your help, Sam. After what you’ve done people respect what you say. If you said let’s take a quick peek into the ship there would be enough pressure on old Chabel so that he would have to relent. What do you say, son?”

Sam stared into his glass, spinning the amber liquid around and around. “I’m sorry, Cleaver. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. Not this time. You see I agree with Chabel.”

“That the last word, Sam?” Burke stood and put his hat under his arm.

“That’s it, Cleaver.”

“Well you’re wrong, son, and being bullheaded, but I can’t hold it against a man for sticking to his guns. But you think on it and when you change your mind come right to me.” He crushed Sam’s hand in his and turned to the door.

“I’ll think on it, Cleaver — but until there’s some new evidence I’m not going to change my mind.”

The door slammed and Sam grinned wryly and wriggled his numbed fingers. Ten years hadn’t slowed Cleaver down in the slightest. He finished his drink and pulled a clean suit of hospital whites from the drawer. He had a better idea now why Chabel wanted to see him.

Dr. McKay’s secretary had Sam wait before she let him into the office, and when she finally opened the door for him he walked into silence: McKay sitting behind his wide desk and Professor Chabel puffing his pipe silently in the corner. Sam knew they had been talking about him, and he would find out why quickly enough.

“You sent for me, Dr. McKay?”

“Yes, Sam, I — and Professor Chabel — wanted to talk to you. There, pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.” McKay rattled the papers on his desk and looked unhappy. Sam grinned a bit as he sat down in the chair and McKay’s darting glance caught it, and he was a good enough diagnostician to read the correct meaning into it.

“All right, Sam, no beating around the bush then. We arranged for that buzzard Burke to see you, we thought it would be better that way, get it out in the open. He wanted you to help him, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did.”

There was tension in the room now and, without realizing it, Chabel rocked forward in his chair.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I couldn’t help him, and I told him why. As the situation stands now I feel that our decision, Professor Chabel, in sealing up the spaceship was a correct one. I don’t see how we could gain anything by opening it up, and we could lose a great deal.”

“I’m very pleased to hear that, Dr. Bertolli,” Chabel said, leaning back in his chair as he pushed the dottle in his pipe down with his thumb. He tipped in fresh tobacco. “We have enough trouble battling Rand’s disease, but we would be in twice as much difficulty if we had to fight General Burke at the same time. The general is a tenacious man, which makes him a wonder in the field of battle, but he also wishes to have a hand in policy making. He is far too wise to act without aid, and so far he represents only a small group of extremists who wish to enter the ‘Pericles,’ and up until now the news agencies have cooperated with us in seeing that they don’t get their views into print. However, this would all change if they had some popular figure on their side — such as yourself. If that happened we couldn’t keep this intramural battle under the table, and I don’t feel that at the present time we can enjoy the luxury of a policy debate in public. The situation is too desperate for that.”

“Desperate—?” Sam asked, surprised. “I had the feeling that things were getting under control.”

“Temporarily, and only here in the city. But we are running into immense difficulties in both controlling the movement of the population and in bird extermination. There is no safe agent that will kill only birds nor one that is one hundred percent effective. We have had to push our outer circle back already because of breakthroughs of infection. The human element is difficult; we have had armed resistance from poultry farmers when we have attempted to kill off their entire flocks. They find it hard to see a connection between their healthy birds and a human disease eighty miles away. And then we have the factor of human fear. Enough people have seen cases of Rand’s disease to know that it is striking all around them, and it appears to be common knowledge now that it is one hundred percent fatal. People are trying to leave the contaminated zone by stealth, or violence if there is no other way, and we have been forced to retaliate with violence — we have had no choice. This plague must be confined physically until we have developed some form of treatment.” He looked automatically toward Dr. McKay as he said this, as did Sam.

“Has the research turned up anything?” Sam asked in the embarrassed silence that followed.

McKay shook his head no with his hands clasped on the desk before him: because they were trembling, Sam realized suddenly. McKay had a dreadful responsibility.

“We have a number of teams working around the clock, but we have accomplished next to nothing so far. We can describe the development of the disease better now, we know the first symptoms appear within thirty minutes of exposure, and we have developed supportive techniques that affect the advance of the disease, but they only slow it. We have not reversed one case yet. And there are a growing number of cases all the time.

“So you see, we have more than enough problems as things stand. General Burke represents just one more difficulty that we are not equipped to cope with.”

“I would like to ask your help in another way, Sam,” McKay broke in.

“Anything, of course.”

“I could use you on my team. We’re trying everything possible to break through on Rand’s disease, and we need all the help we can get. You’d be an asset, Sam.”

Sam hesitated a moment, trying to frame his words exactly before he spoke. “I don’t envy you your job, Dr. McKay, even with the help you have. You must have pathologists, virologists, internists, epidemiologists, cytologists — all the best people in every field working with you. I, well, would be out of place with them. By chance I was there when Rand left the ship and later I was the best guinea pig handy to try the Rand-alpha virus on. But that’s all. I’m an intern and I hope to be an experienced surgeon some day — but right now I think I’m most valuable in the back of an ambulance. Thank you for asking me, but I think I would just be a — dead weight with your people.”

Chabel puffed on his pipe, saying nothing, and McKay smiled wryly. “Thanks, Sam, for going so easy with an old man. I really would like you on my team, aside from the obvious political fact that I would prefer you there rather than backing General Burke. But I’m not going to force you. God knows there is enough work out there for all of us and more.” His intercom hummed and he switched it on. “Yes, of course,” he said into it. “Send her in.”

They were standing and saying good-by when Nita Mendel entered with a sheaf of papers. She stopped at the door.

“I can wait if you’re busy, Dr. McKay,” she said.

“No, that’s fine, just leave them here. I want to go over these with Professor Chabel.”

They went out of the office together and Sam said, “Coffee — or better yet, some food. I’ve missed some meals.”

“I bet it won’t be as good as the coffee we had in our private suite up there in quarantine.”

They both smiled at the memory, nothing more; there was nothing more they could do, here in this place, at this time. Sam recognized the feelings he had — then turned his back on them. The world now was too upside down to allow him to consider personal desires. They took the elevator to the staff cafeteria.

“It’s good soup,” Nita said, taking small and precise spoonfuls.

“And cheap, too, very important for starving interns. Was there anything new in those reports, Nita, anything not classified, that is?”

“No, not classified, but not for the public either. The hospitals report eight thousand cases in Manhattan alone, twenty-five thousand more in the other boroughs and the suburban area. The Army has commandeered a lot of hotels for emergency use; there aren’t enough medical staff or supplies to care for them all, though volunteers are pouring in.”

Sam spooned slowly at the soup, then stopped and let the spoon fall from his fingers. He looked at Nita and his expression was so stark and bleak that she almost shuddered.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A feeling, that’s all. Probably brought on by fatigue. Do you remember the old saying, about having the sensation that someone was walking on your grave?” She nodded. “Well the feeling I have is like that — only stronger. Like something very large and very ugly is walking on the grave of all mankind.”

“There are a lot of people in the world…”

“Yes — and all of them could catch Rand’s disease and die. And that would be the end of the human race.”

“We’ve been around a long time,” she said, trying to think of something to say that would take him out of this black depression. “We’re a hard species to kill.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I imagine the dinosaurs felt that they had it made too. Any species could be wiped out. I have this absolutely frightening vision of the world still here — only with all of mankind gone.”

“We’ve survived plagues before.”

‘Yes, but none like this. None so alien, literally from another world. We have no defenses against this one, no antibodies, nothing. It doesn’t follow the rules and we have absolutely no idea of how to effect a cure.

Nita reached out and put her hand on his. “Sam,” she said, absolutely at a loss for words. “Sam…”

Her touch, her presence and sympathy penetrated his black mood where all argument had failed. He smiled and took her hand with his.

“Sorry. I don’t usually do this sort of thing. But what you said, about how bad it really is out there, it just tipped me over. I’ll be all right now. Your magic touch snapped me out of it. You should be a faith healer.”

“I am.” Her smile mirrored his.

He pushed his unfinished soup away and climbed to his feet. “I had better get back on the job…”

He broke off as he picked his name out of the string of half-heard messages being constantly muttered from the loudspeaker on the wall above them.

“… attention Doctor Bertolli. Will you please report to Doctor McKay’s office. This is an urgent message. Doctor Bertolli…”

He went there as fast as he could without running, and pushed the door open to find both McKay and Chabel staring at a thin strip of paper.

“I think this is something you can do, Sam,” McKay said, smiling as he held out the paper. “There’s been a report from Orange County, from a GP up there. He’s been treating a case of Rand’s disease and he says that he has effected a cure.”