Badge of Infamy

ag

the room and sighed wearily. Maybe he'd been better off when he had no friends and couldn't

t-cellar. The theory was the old one that the best place to avoid discovery was where you had already been discovered. If their spies h

ulture incubator. "Stop tearing yourself to bits, Doc. We know the

into a whole man," Doc told him. "B

o get things done; wise men wait too lon

icroscope. Then he gave up as his tired eyes r

Earth cut off shipments and starved them. Next time the villages had the answer to that but the cities had to fight for Earth or

's hop

ting off Medical service until they cut themselves out of a

whether this bug may not have been what killed off the old Martians. Something had to do it, th

ed himself on an elbow, s

ean? The archeologist who dug up w

led it, though it was more like the two old farmers who ran themselves to death last month. I saw him when they buried him. His face looked funny, and I think he had those little specks, tho

farmers? Did the

. He lived in their vil

een nervous and fidgety for weeks. They were twins, living by themselves, and nobody paid much attention. Then one mornin

st spread from person to person during an early contagious stage, leaving widening circles behind Durwood and those first infected. When matured, any other sickn

root and plucking off individual colonies. About twenty specimens had been treated with every chemical he could find. So far he'd f

oking for anything in common that went back ten to twenty years before death. There were no

e people interviewed about the victims might be vague about most thin

? Most people seem to have it some time or o

e is going to rip your skull off, right here. Can't eat because chewing drives you cra

fourteen years, until

me virus, but not considered dangerous. Selznik's migraine, according to medical

ho had been hit by it. The patent-medicine branch of the Lobby had

ortant?" Jake

ch weight do you swing

those medical journals from Northport for you, or like Molly Badger get

things to think of. Most of his foul mood had disappeared with the c

in every village-who had it, when, and how old they were. This place first, but e

edical Lobby could be thrown into the task of finding the cause and cure of the disease. The connection with Selznik's migraine had to be reported. If something could blast the Lobby into action, it wouldn't matter

Jake returned. "Here's the dope for this vi

ears ago. That fits. About the only exceptions are the kids who seem to

e plague but must be near the end of the incubation period. It looke

Jake

ymptom of Ma

be me," he decided. "I'm the guy who must have brought it here,

o the villages and came back with reports. The variation from village to villa

reasonably sure that the disease must travel through the nerves, but he had found no proof beyond the hard lump at the

might be the form of plague that was contagious. They might even be the true form of the bug, with the bigger cell only a transition

n't do in any other way. And even there, he lacked training. He was a doctor, not a

eemed to have the worst plague on their hands in all human hist

ris Ryan brought home one of the electron microscopes and a bunch of

ht have authority for routine experiments. But it was like her to refuse t

ne, or seemed so; about three out of a hundred showed no signs. I

out to comb every village with a fault-finder, starting here. And this hole will show up