The Jupiter Plague

“Yes, I used the laboratory birds, pigeons, and Detroit-6 human tissue culture, just one and then the other. I made seven transfers in all and ended up with Rand-beta virus from the bird, still just as deadly as ever, Only it had one factor changed, something I had not counted on and only discovered by accident. In there—”

Nita pointed to a sealed isolation cage and Sam pulled the covering cloth away and looked inside. A dog lay on its side on the floor of the cage, panting heavily. Through the thin fur covering its belly could be seen round, reddened swellings. He dropped the cover and looked back to Nita, his face drained of blood.

“You’ve made the tests—?” She nodded. “Then, this dog, it has Rand’s disease.”

“Yes, Rand-gamma I suppose we should call it, something new. None of the other strains of Rand, neither alpha nor beta will infect canines, not even after six transfers from human to bird. But here, on the seventh transfer, something new. Something incredible…”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it!” Sam was pacing the floor, angrily, burning with frustration at this last development. Rand’s disease was an alien plague, inhuman — was there no way to stop it?

“Have you tried to find out susceptibility of other organisms to this Rand-gamma? Does McKay know what you have found out?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve gone just this far and — then I was frightened. I left the message for you; if you weren’t back soon I was going to call Dr. McKay. What shall we do, Sam?”

“See McKay as soon as possible, tell him what you’ve done. He’s not going to like it — do you realize what this will mean?”

“Yes,” she said so faintly he could barely hear her. She dropped into a chair.

“If we stop the spread of the disease in birds we should have it licked — but what if we can’t stop it before it turns into Rand-gamma? Then it will be the dogs, and what after that? These mutations and changes are incredible, they’re like nothing we have ever heard of before — they don’t follow any earthly pattern. But, is it possible there is an alien pattern they conform to? If we can find it, find its rules, then we can stop it.”

“But it’s not an alien disease, Sam — it’s human, or earthly, whatever you want to call it.”

“Now it is, but it came on the ship from Jupiter, it must be a disease from that planet—”

“No, that’s been determined already.” She riffled through a thick stack of duplicated reports until she found one which she handed to Sam. “You can see for yourself; this is still a preliminary report but it is indicative. They simply cannot get the virus to live under anything resembling Jupiter conditions. When the temperature drops and the pressure is raised the virus dies, long before it reaches the range of the Jupiter atmosphere.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Everything about this virus is impossible — but it is here. We can’t escape that fact. What can we do, Sam? I feel defeated at every turn…”

“There’s not very much we can do by ourselves — but that’s what McKay’s team is for. They’ll find out the significance of these changes.” He took her hands to help her to her feet, and was aware of how cold they were, while her face was pale under the makeup and her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. “We’ll turn all the results over to him, then you’ll get some rest. When was the last time you slept?”

“I’ve been dozing on the couch here, it’s enough—” She looked at herself in the mirror and bit her lip, then laughed, searching through her purse for a comb. “You’re right — it’s not enough. I look like a refugee from a horror film. Give me a moment to repair some of the ravages and then we’ll go see McKay.“

“I’ll call and find out if he is in his office.”

There was difficulty in getting Dr. McKay’s number and Sam hung up and tried again. Twice after this he got busy signals before he finally got through. The call signal buzzed a number of times before the secretary answered it.

“I’m sorry, it is impossible to talk to Dr. McKay, he cannot be disturbed—” She disconnected before Sam had a chance to say a word. She was distraught and seemed to be on the point of tears.

“I wonder what the trouble can be…” Sam said, looking at the dark screen. “She seemed very upset about something.”

“We’ll have to go and find out,” Nita said, putting her notes into a folder. “Though I don’t wonder at her cracking a bit. The strain has been simply awful here and it doesn’t show any signs of letting up.”

The elevator boosted them with a silent rush to the thirty-ninth floor, but when the doors opened a murmur of voices pushed in, a chilling novelty in the normally silent hospital. They stepped out just in time to see a stretcher with a white-covered figure being wheeled into the service elevator further down the hall. A small crowd had gathered around the open door of McKay’s office and Sam recognized one of the nurses who had shared the same tour with him in the emergency room: he touched her shoulder.

“What happened, Ann?”