The Jupiter Plague

He smiled. “In this particular case, my dear Doctor, it is women and children last.”

For a long moment she was silent, then she turned away and opened the drawer. “I can’t argue with you,” she said. “Perhaps you are right, I don’t know. In any case I can’t stop you. But I’m the cytologist here and I’m not going to let any ham-handed intern give himself hepatitis or pyemia or anything like that.” She took out a sealed hypodermic. “I take care of preparing it, right?”

“Right,” he said, and turned back to his patient while she prepared the culture. He knew, without reasoning it out, that she would make no attempt to fool him and prepare an injection of sterile water or neutral plasma. This was too important. She might be a woman, very much of a woman and equipped with all the female feelings and emotions — but she was still a physician.

“All ready,” she said.

He swabbed his arm himself, and when he saw her hesitate he took the hypodermic needle from her fingers, held it vertical for a moment and squeezed out a few drops, then plunged it matter of factly through his skin.

5

“The Rand-alpha virus didn’t propagate in human tissue culture,” Nita said, her hands clasped so tightly together that her fingertips were white, “so there is almost no chance that you will catch the disease.” She was trying to reassure herself as much as him and he recognized the fact. It had been an abrupt change for her, to move in a single day from the quiet laboratory to this jarring contact with death.

“Little or no chance at all,” he said. “Hadn’t you better report to McKay what we have done while I take a look at the patient?”

The policeman was still asleep — but was his breathing hoarser? Sam thumbed the transcript button on the medical recorder and it whirred softly as it scanned the minute-to-minute record it had made of the patient’s medical history since he had been placed in the bed. There was a clunk and the sheet of graph paper fell into Sam’s hand. He followed the recorded curves of the different instruments and they all showed a steady deterioration up until the time of the interferon injection. At this point — almost three hours earlier — the decline leveled off, even improved slightly when the antipyretic brought the fever down. But the remission was over, the fever was rising again, blood pressure decreasing and the stricken man was sliding once more toward the threshold of death. Sam at once prepared another injection of interferon and administered it. It appeared to have no effect.

“Dr. McKay was very angry,” Nita said. “Then he said that we must keep accurate account of what happens, he thinks you’re an insane fool— I’m quoting — but he thanks you for doing it. Has there… been anything?” She turned his wrist so she could look at the dials of the telltale there.

“No, no reaction at all, you can see for yourself. There’s no reason that there should be, human tissue culture is sensitive enough. If Rand-alpha were transmittable to human tissue we would know it by now.”

Once more a patient of Dr. Bertolli was dying before his eyes and there was nothing he could do. The interferon had worked at first, delaying the onslaught by a few hours, but it would not work a second time. Higher and higher the fever rose and the antipyretic no longer affected it. The heart-lung machine was attached and then the artificial kidney when renal failure seemed imminent. Sam’s only hope was that he could aid the patient’s body in its fight against the invading virus, support it with transfusions of whole blood and stave off any secondary infections with antibiotics. It was a hopeless cause but he would not admit it. This was a battle he had to win, but he could not. Only when Nita pulled at his arm and he became aware that she was crying did he turn away.

“Sam, he’s dead, please, there’s nothing more you can do.”

The exhaustion hit him then; how long had it been, twelve hours or more? He looked at his watch and noticed the telltale on his arm. It was registering normally, though his pulse was depressed with fatigue. He had forgotten all about it! If he were going to catch the virulent Rand’s disease he would have had it by now; the experiment had paid off, he was safe. It seemed a small victory after the tragedy of the last hours.

“Sit down, please,” she said, “and here’s some black coffee.” He sipped it first, then gulped at it, drinking almost the entire cup at once before he put it down.

“What’s been happening?” he asked. “It’s after two in the morning.”

“We’ve been released from quarantine, that was Dr. McKay’s decision. He said if there were no symptoms by midnight that the quarantine was over…” She put her hand on his arm as he started to rise. “Now, wait, please, finish the coffee and hear the rest.”