Invasion

"Damned if I know," Harlan said.

The mouse then swayed and toppled over.

"Is it dead?" Pitt asked.

"No," Sheila said. "It's still plainly breathing, but it doesn't look so good. Look at that foamlike stuff coming out of its eyes."

"And mouth," Harlan said. "And there's another mouse starting to have symptoms. I think it is working!"

"They are all having symptoms," Pitt said. "Look at that one with the most dots. It looks like it is having a seizure."

Hearing the commotion Jonathan returned and managed to squeeze his head between the others. He caught a quick glance at the ailing mice. "Ugh," he said. "The foam has a greenish tinge."

Harlan put his hands back into the gloves and picked up the first mouse. In contrast to its earlier belligerent behavior, it did not resist. It lay calmly in the palm of his hand breathing shallowly. Harlan put the animal down and reached for the one that had had the seizure.

"This one is dead," Harlan said. "Since it had been infected for the longest time, I guess that's telling us something."

"It's probably telling us how the dinosaurs died," Sheila said. "It was certainly rapid."

Harlan put the dead animal down and withdrew his hands. He rubbed them together enthusiastically. "Well, the first part of this experiment has gone very nicely, I'd say. Now that the animal trials are over, I think it's time for the human trials to begin."

"You mean release the virus?" Sheila said. "Like open the door and throw it out."

"No, we're not yet ready for clinical fieldwork," Harlan said with a twinkle in his eye. "I was thinking about the next stage being more close to home. I was thinking about me being the experimental subject."

"Now wait ... " Sheila protested.

Harlan held up his hand. "There's a long history of famous medical people using themselves as the proverbial guinea pigs," he said. "This is a perfect opportunity to follow suit. I've been infected, and even though it has been a number of days, I've kept the infestation to a minimum by the monoclonal antibody. It's now time for me to rid myself of the virus altogether. So rather than thinking of myself as a sacrificial lamb, I think of myself as a beneficiary of our collective wit."

"How do you propose to do this?" Sheila asked. It was one thing to experiment with mice, quite another with a fellow human being.

"Come on," Harlan said. He grabbed one of the tissue cultures inoculated with the artificial rhinovirus and headed for the sick bay. "We'll do this the same way we did it with the mice. The difference is that you'll lock me into one of the containment rooms."

"Maybe we should use another animal first," Sheila said.

"Nonsense," Harlan said. "It's not as if we have the luxury of a lot of time. Remember that Gateway situation."

Everyone trooped after Harlan, who was obviously intent on using himself as an experimental subject. Sheila tried to talk him out of it all the way to the containment room. Harlan was not to be deterred.

"Just promise me you'll lock the door," Harlan said. "If something really weird were to happen, I don't want to jeopardize all of you."

"What if you need medical attention?" Sheila said. "Like, God forbid, CPR."

"That's a chance I have to take," Harlan said fatalistically. "Now get, so I can catch my cold in peace."

Sheila hesitated for a moment while trying to think of some other way to talk Harlan out of what she thought was a premature folly. Finally she stepped back through the air lock hatch and dogged it closed. She looked through the glass as Harlan gave her a thumbs-up sign.

Admiring Harlan's courage Sheila returned the gesture.

"What's he doing?" Pitt asked from the hallway. The air lock was only big enough for one person.

"He's taking the stopper out of the tissue culture flask," Sheila said.

"I'm going back to the computer," Jonathan said. The tension was making him feel uncomfortable.

Pitt stepped into the neighboring air lock and looked through the porthole at Cassy. She was still sleeping peacefully.

Pitt returned to the air lock occupied by Sheila. "Anything happening?"

"Not yet," Sheila said. "He's just lying down making faces at me. He's acting like he's twelve years old."

Pitt wondered how he'd behave if the situation were reversed, and he was the one in the room. He thought he'd be terrified and unable to joke around like Harlan.

"Wait a second!" Vince said excitedly. "Turn around so I can see where we just passed over."

The pilot banked the copter to the left in a wide circle.

Vince snapped the binoculars to his eyes. The terrain below looked as featureless as it had looked for the previous hour. It had turned out to be extraordinarily difficult to follow the tire tracks from the air, and they'd taken many wrong turns.

"There's something down there," Vince said.

"What is it?" Beau growled. His mood had darkened. What he'd thought was going to be a simple matter of plucking Cassy out of the desert, was turning into a fiasco.

"I can't tell," Vince said. "But it is worth taking a look at. I'd recommend we go down."