The Jupiter Plague

Sam took the hot container she passed him and filled his cup. “You make it sound hopeful. I had visions of a plague from space sweeping around the world.” Then he frowned in sudden memory. “What about the birds — how do you fit them in?”

“We don’t know if they do fit in yet. They might have the same disease — or something like it. If they do have a related disease it will be a great aid if anyone else does come down with the virus that killed Rand. We’ll be able to manufacture vaccine then, if we can’t come up with a foolproof drug cure first. I wish I could see how the work in the labs is coming.”

“I do too — but we’d better resign ourselves to staying here awhile. You’re the pathologist so you’ll have plenty to keep you busy with those tissue samples. But there is very little work here for an ambulance-riding intern. I think I’ll get on the phone and call a few friends around the hospital, try and find out what is going on in the world outside.”

Nita was busy all the morning in the small but complete laboratory that was an integral part of the isolation ward. She was vaguely aware of Sam’s phone conversations and the hissing chunk of the tube capsules arriving. When she finally took a break near noon she found him bent over a map that he had spread out on the table.

“Come look,” he said, waving her over. “This is all of Long Island — Kennedy Airport is here — and I have had the World Health people sending me over copies of all their reports on dead birds. I’ve entered the location on the map for each report and noted the number of birds found on the site as well. Do you see a pattern?”

Nita ran her finger over the tiny, red-inked numbers. “At first glance almost all of them are along the south shore, with a number of dense patches in Cedarhurst, Lawrence and Long Beach.”

“Yes, they have been found only on the south shore so far; you can see that here in Reynold’s Channel next to Long Beach they recovered over two thousand dead ducks. Now, did you happen to notice which way the air lock on the ‘Pericles’ was facing when it opened?”

“No, I was all turned around, I can’t be sure.”

“I wasn’t certain either, so I checked with the airport. The open port faces almost exactly east southeast — like this.” He took a parallel ruler and laid it across the compass rose, then moved it to intercept the corner of the airport where the grounded spaceship lay. He slashed a red line from the airport across Long Island and into the ocean. When he lifted the ruler Nita gasped.

“It goes right through Long Beach, through the center of most of the numbers. But it just can’t be like that — unless the wind was blowing that way?”

“Almost no wind yesterday you’ll remember, occasional gusts up to two miles an hour at that time, but nondirectional.”

“Are you trying to tell me that the virus that infected these birds came out of that port like a… searchlight beam and just swept across the country infecting everything in the way?”

“I’m not telling you anything, Nita — you seem to be telling me. I’ve just transcribed the figures furnished by the police. Maybe the virus was spread as you said; we might be wrong in thinking that an alien organism would have to conform to our rules of behavior. So far nothing in this whole affair fits the rules.” He paced the floor, unconsciously slamming his fist into the palm of his other hand.

“And while it’s going on I’m trapped in here. If Rand’s disease only attacks birds they could hold us here for the rest of our lives, under observation, never sure but still waiting for us to get sick…” The phone signal cut him off.

It was Chabel from World Health. He had a haunted look and when he spoke his voice was pitched so low that it was barely audible.

“There is a patient on the way up, Dr. Bertolli, please be ready to receive him.”

“You mean—”

“Yes. Rand’s disease. A policeman. He is one of the men who were assigned to collecting the dead birds.”

4

Nita prepared the bed while Sam waited impatiently for the inner door to open. The indicator light blinked off signaling that the outer door was closed, then the hidden motors hummed and air hissed by the seals before him and, as soon as the inner door had opened wide enough, he squeezed through. The policeman on the wheeled stretcher — still in uniform — was sitting up on his elbows. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Doc, I’m not that sick, a touch of fever, a summer cold, you know, this time of year,” he said it calmly, quietly, as though trying to reassure himself. There were red, suffused patches on his face that could be developing boils. Sam took up the record holder. Francis Miles, age thirty-eight, occupation, police officer, all typed in very neatly, but scrawled across the lower half of the page in large letters was RAND’S DISEASE VIRUS: POSITIVE.