The Jupiter Plague

“Well, it’s like instant medicine, changing all of the rules. When the UN takes this up and opens a big processing lab, it is going to be more like architecture than medicine. You want something built you go to an architect and tell him what it is. A house, a barn, whatever. He designs it to order. That’s what we are going to with medicine in the future. One by one the ills that plague mankind will be wiped out. Schistosomiasis, sleeping sickness…”

“Out of my league. Don’t see much of them in the Apple.”

“No, but they do in the tropics. Spread by vectors such as snails, mosquitoes. And impossible to control. But no more. A J-molecule will be designed to destroy each disease specifically. And the disease will be destroyed. Completely. Every case cured, every reservoir of infection cleaned up. And not only the tropical diseases, but the simpler ones as well. Like the common cold.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, Doc. What would New York be like with no colds in the winter?”

“A healthier place. We are going to have to rethink all of our medical priorities. Instead of curing diseases after they happen we are going out into the world and eliminate the disease completely.”

“Sounds great. Put me out of a job.”

Sam smiled. “Probably not. There will still be accidents…”

“And muggers and wife-beaters. You ain’t going to change human nature.”

“Perhaps we are. We are only touching the barest possibilities of the J-molecule. The psychosomatic attributes haven’t even been explored…”

“Could I? Would you listen to what I said?”

“I would listen to what you said, of course.”

“But you wouldn’t necessarily have to do it, would you?”

“If you said no — it would be no. But I don’t think it is ever going to come to that. We are not going to make the same mistakes the first expedition made. Silicon Valley has jumped into this thing with both feet and the designs are already beginning to pour out?”

“For what?”

“For robot landers, of course. No one is going to go near the Jovians in the flesh until they have been convinced that dissecting people is wrong. The first ship down will have the most sophisticated communications equipment and circuitry in the universe — but not a person will be aboard. We’ll be in the mother ship above Jupiter in orbit, running everything from there.”

“And who exactly is we?”

“Me for one, you — if you want to come along.”

She laughed at the thought. “Some honeymoon!”

“It won’t happen that quickly. The design must be right and we won’t be taking any chances at all. Once was enough — more than enough. And the we includes Stan Yasumura. You would have to club him to keep him off the project. He’ll be working on the project as soon as he is off crutches. And even Cleaver Burke is climbing aboard. I don’t know how he wangled it, but he has managed to get himself assigned to the Space Commission— and he’s even going to space-fitness school to be absolutely sure that he will be with the second expedition. I guess he figures that he has licked everyone he wants to on Earth, so now he’s taking on the planets. Though I understand that he’s not so happy at the space-fitness school.”

“I should hope not! The poor man — and at his age too. All those free-fall exercises and multiple-G stress chambers. I feel sorry for him.”

“I don’t,” Sam said. Taking her by the arm he picked up his suitcase with his free hand and started for the door. “I feel sorrier for the Jovians.”