The Jupiter Plague

“Yes, we will have the pickups on remote, and we will tape the entire process. And we will want specimens of all the tissues for biopsy.”

Even with the ultrasonic knives dissection of the frozen body was difficult. And depressing. It was obvious from the very beginning that Rand’s life could never have been saved since his body was riddled by the pockets of infection; there were large cysts in every organ. Sam did the gross dissection and Nita prepared slides and cultures for the waiting technicians, sending them out in sealed containers through the evacuated tube system with its automatic sterilization stage.

There was only one interruption, when Professor Chabel reported that the dead birds — an entire flock of starlings and a seagull — had been found near the ship. The bodies were being taken to the World Health laboratories for examination.

It was midnight before they were finished and all of the equipment was sterilized. Nita came out of the decontamination chamber, her still-wet hair up in a towel, to find Sam looking at a photographic print. He held it out to her.

“This just came in from World Health, from their lab. Those dead birds filled with cysts—”

“No!”

“—and this is what the virus looks like. It appears to be identical with the one that killed Rand.”

She took it and wearily dropped into the couch under the window. In the thin cotton gown, it barely came to her knees when she tucked her legs up beside her, and with her face scrubbed clean of makeup she was a very attractive woman with a very little of the doctor left. “Doesn’t it mean…?” she asked fearfully and couldn’t finish the sentence.

“We don’t know what it means yet.” He was very tired and knew she must be feeling even worse. “There are a lot of questions here that are badly in need of answers. Why did the ship stay so long on Jupiter — and why did Commander Rand return alone? How did he contract this disease— and does it have any connection with the birds? There has to be a connection, but I can’t see it. If the disease is so virulent — the birds must have died within minutes of contracting it — how is it that, well, we haven’t been stricken yet.” He was sorry the instant he said this, but the words were out. Nita had her head lowered and her eyes closed and he realized they were filled with silent tears that welled out on her face. Without reasoned thought he took her hand in his, it was human need in the face of oncoming darkness, and she clutched it tightly. She settled back onto the couch and the photograph dropped from her fingers and slid to the floor: he realized suddenly that she was asleep.

There were plenty of blankets and he made no attempt to move her, but he did put a pillow under her head so that she could rest comfortably and covered her with a blanket. He was exhausted, though not sleepy, so he turned off the overhead lights and lay back on one of the beds with another glass of ethyl-orange juice. What was this plague from space? His thoughts chased themselves in circles and he must have dozed off because the next thing he noticed was the sunlight coming in through the window over the empty couch. It was going to be another warm day. He glanced quickly at his telltale — it registered normal.

“Going to sleep forever?” Nita asked from the diet kitchen, where she was making dish-rattling noises. “It’s six-thirty already.” She brought him a cup of coffee and he saw that she had her hair combed and tied back and had applied a touch of lipstick; she looked as bright as the new day.

“I was going to call the World Health lab, but decided to wait until you woke up,” she said, and turned to the phone. He stopped her.

“Not yet. The news can wait until after breakfast — if there is breakfast that is…”

“A delicious, home-cooked, handmade breakfast of farm sausages and new laid eggs — it’s defrosting right now.”

“Show me where it is!”

There was an unspoken agreement that they would hold the world at bay for just a little while longer, enjoying the breakfast in the early sunlight that poured across the room. Until they touched the phone they were cut off and alone in these sealed rooms high above the city, in a private universe of their own. She poured more coffee and they sipped it slowly, looking out at the clear sky and sharp-edged, reaching towers of New York.

“Are you from here, from the city?” Nita asked. He nodded.

“Born, bred and abided here ever since, except for the nine years in the UN Army.”

“Nine years! I thought that you looked, well… a little…” She broke off, a little unsure of herself, and he laughed.

“I look a little old to be an intern? Well, you’re perfectly right.”

“I didn’t mean to…”

“Please, Nita — if I was ever sensitive about the fact that I was ten years older than all my fellow students in medical school I’ve long since developed a thick hide. Neither am I ashamed of the time I put in the Army; I wanted to make it my career and I was a captain before I finally decided to leave.”