The Jupiter Plague

Though there was no cure for Rand’s disease, tests for its presence had been developed that were both simple and rapid.

Five minutes later they knew that the plague from space had one more victim.

10

They could not talk. There was nothing to say. But Sam could see the terror in Nita’s eyes. And there was nothing that he could do about it. A sick doctor is just one more patient, no different from any other patient, and with no special privileges. Sam could not even arrange for a private or semi-private room in the overcrowded hospital, and instead had to take her to a room into which five beds had been jammed. One bed had just been vacated: no need to ask what had happened to the last patient. He gave Nita the injections himself— and included a heavy sedative — so that she was sleeping even before he left. The door closed silently and automatically behind him and he knew that she was doomed. Just as dead as if she had been shot with a bullet. Just as dead as everyone would be soon.

It seemed futile to go out in the ambulance— but sitting and thinking would be far worse. He carried a gun now, there were fewer troops and none could be spared as ambulance guard. Nor were there any assignments. You worked until you dropped, then found whatever ambulance was leaving that needed an intern. Sam took his bag to the emergency exit and climbed aboard a US Army ambulance that had just discharged its cargo of dead and wounded.

“Do you have a doctor?” he asked the driver, a weary looking first sergeant.

“I don’t have one, doctor, but I could sure use one. Welcome aboard, sir.”

“Sam, just Sam. Where’s your unit, sergeant?”

“Set up camp in Central Park, next to the zoo. The name is Al Carter and I sure wish I was back in Goose Creek, Texas.”

He kicked the ambulance into gear and they rumbled out past the armed guards at the gate. “What’s going to happen, Sam?” he asked. “All we get is latrine rumor and that is not as reliable as it used to be.”

Sam was too weary to lie, too filled with defeat. “Do you want the truth, Al, or a press release?”

The sergeant gave him a grim look before turning his attention back to the road. “The world’s not too nice a place these days. Everything’s going to hell when you see the topkick driving a meat wagon. So why not the truth. I’m a big boy now.”

“The truth is that if you get Rand’s you die. And we’re all going to get it.”

“That’s kind of pessimistic, Sam. You a pessimist usually?”

“No. I used to be an optimist once. I even enlisted in the UN Army to make the world a safer place. Did my tours. No, I’m not a pessimist. That’s just the way it is going to have to be.”

“Can’t anything be done about it?” The sergeant hauled on the wheel to take them around a burnt-out semi that almost filled the street.

“No, they’ve tried everything they possibly could, every last possibility…” then Sam stopped, cold. Suddenly angry. “Yes, by God, something can be done. I don’t know if it will work or not, but it is something that hasn’t been tried yet. And when you’re in the position that we are— why then you try anything at all. Would you mind taking me back to Bellevue…”

“My pleasure, Sam.” The tires squealed as they cut in a tight circle. “Be there in two minutes.”

Sam jumped down from the ambulance at the front entrance and waved goodbye to the soldier. The guards there carefully examined his ID before they would admit him. He went directly to the admissions desk and picked up the phone, then dialed locator and told them to trace Professor Chabel, to connect him at once if he hadn’t left the hospital. Then he waited, fighting down his growing impatience. The screen stayed dark, with just the expanding circles of the hold signal in the center, and he looked over the floor nurse’s shoulder at the ward display screens. The patients were sleeping and the wards were dark but clearly revealed to the watching nurse by the infrared illumination and infrared-sensitive TV pick-ups. There was still no answer to his phone call. Reaching over, he dialed the number of Nita’s bed on the close-up screen, and her face appeared over the current readings from the telltales. She was weakening…

“I have Professor Chabel, Doctor.”

He cleared the close-up screen and turned to the phone.

“Professor Chabel, I would like to see you; it’s urgent.”

“I was just leaving the hospital…”

“This can be done very quickly, just a moment if you don’t mind.”

Chabel peered out from the tiny screen, as though trying to define Sam’s thoughts. Then, “If you insist, but you had better come at once. I’m in 3911.”

On the way down in the elevator he remembered that this was McKay’s office, which meant that Eddie Perkins would be there too. It couldn’t be helped, the matter was too urgent. The secretary showed him in at once; Chabel was behind the desk packing papers into his briefcase and Perkins was at the window, drawing heavily on a cigarette.

“What do you want?” Chabel asked, without preamble, and strangely curt.