Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "One of the first test samples was my own blood," she said. "You saw it. It was one of the twelve positive."

  "But the symptoms--you don't show a sign of--"

  "Thanks," she said. "I started to break down yesterday, but you didn't notice. You see, you are my fixation and when you told me that you had it, too, I--"

  "Your fixation!" The beaker slipped from his fingers and smashed to the tile. "You're in love with me?"

  Her arms hung loosely at her sides and tears rimmed her eyes. "Pathologically or otherwise, I've been a case since before I started the blood tests."

  They moved together and clung to each other. "Phyl, Phyl--why didn't you tell me?"

  * * * * *

  Fiercely, she closed his lips with her own, and her fingers dug deeply into his shoulders. His arms pulled her closer yet, trying to fill the void in him that was greater than the Universe. For a long minute, the knowledge of her love and physical contact with her straining body dispelled the bleak loneliness.

  When their lips parted, they gasped for breath.

  It was no good. It was like tearing at an itching insect bite with your fingernails. The relief was only momentary, and it left the wound bleeding and more irritated than ever. Even if they were married--look at Peter at the club--Peter and his wife, mutually in love and completely miserable. It wasn't normal love. It was the damned virus!

  As well argue with gravity. He tried to tell her, but he couldn't make her understand. Her restraint had been magnificent, but when the dam broke, it was beyond stopping the flood of her emotion. And now he couldn't believe it himself. Nothing this wonderful could be destroyed by mere misunderstanding. He cursed the years of his celibacy. All that time wasted--lost!

  It was six o'clock before they reached her apartment. The License Bureau had been a mob scene. Hours more, upstairs in the City Hall waiting for the judge, while they held hands like a pair of college sophomores, staring into each others' eyes, drinking, drinking the elixir of adoration with a thirst that wouldn't be sated.

  Phyllis weakened first. In the cab, after the ceremony, she released his hand and wiped her damp forehead.

  Then, in the elevator, Murt felt himself relaxing. The alchemy of sustained passion had exhausted them both, he decided.

  As Phyllis slipped the key in the door, she looked up at him in surprise. "Do you know, I'm hungry. I'm starved--for the first time in months."

  Murt discovered his own stomach was stirring with a prosaic pangful demand of its own. "We should have stopped to eat," he said, realizing they had forgotten lunch.

  "Steaks! I have some beauties in my freezer!" Phyllis exclaimed. They peeled off their coats and she led him into the small kitchen. She pointed at the cupboard and silverware drawer. "Set the table. We'll eat in five minutes."

  * * * * *

  Slipping into an apron, she explored the freezer for meat and French fries, dropped them into the HF cooker and set the timer for 90 seconds. When it clicked off, she was emptying a transparent sack of prepared salad into a bowl.

  "Coffee will be ready in 50 seconds, so let's eat," she announced.

  For minutes, they ate silently, ravenously, face to face in the little breakfast nook. Murt had forgotten the pure animal pleasure of satisfying a neglected appetite, and so, apparently, had his wife.

  Wife! The thought jolted him.

  Their eyes met, and he knew that the same thing was in her mind.

  The sulfa-tetradine!

  With the edge barely off his hunger, he stopped eating. She did, too. They sipped the steaming coffee and looked at each other.

  "I--feel better," Phyllis said at last.

  "So do I."

  "I mean--I feel differently."

  He studied her face. It was new. The tenseness was gone and it was a beautiful face, with soft lips and intelligent eyes. But now the eyes were merely friendly.

  And it aroused no more than a casual pleasure in him, the pleasure of viewing a lovely painting or a perfect sunset. A peaceful intellectual rapport settled over them, inducing a physical lethargy. They spoke freely of their sensations, of the hypo-adrenal effects, and wondered that there was no unpleasant reaction. They decided that, initially at least, sulfa-tetradine was a miraculous success. Murt thought he should go back to the hospital and work out a report right away.

  Phyllis agreed and offered to accompany him, but he said she had better get a night's sleep. The next day would be hectic.

  After four hours at his desk, he called a taxi and, without hesitation, gave the address of his club. Not until he fell wearily into bed did he remember it was his wedding night.

  By mutual agreement, the marriage was annulled the next day.

  Feldman and Peterson were gratified at the efficacy of their drug, but both were horrified that Murt had chosen to experiment on himself. As usual, Phyl had insisted on being left out of the report.

  * * * * *

  After a week of close observation, one of the monkeys was chloroformed and tissue-by-tissue examination was made by an army of histologists. Blood samples showed completely clear of the virus, as did a recheck on Murt's own blood. No deleterious effects could be detected, so the results were published through the Government Health Service.

  It was the day before Christmas before Dr. Sylvester Murt first noticed the approaching symptoms of a relapse, or reinfection--he couldn't guess which. The past weeks had been pleasantly busy and, as acclaimed authority on Murt's virus, he had had little time to think subjectively about his experience.

  Sulfa-tetradine was now considered the specific for the affliction and was being produced and shipped by the carload all over the world. The press had over-generously insisted on giving him all the credit for the remedy as well as the isolation of the disease virus. He was an international hero.

  The warning of another attack came to him at 3:30 in the afternoon, when Phyllis Sutton was leaving. She stuck her head back in the door and gave him an uncommonly warm smile and cried, "Merry Christmas, Doctor!"

  He waved at her and, as the door closed, caught his breath. There was the burn in his stomach again. It passed away and he refused to give it further thought.

  His own cab wound its way through the heavy Christmas Eve traffic an hour before store-closing time. Finally, the vehicle stalled in a jam. It was only six blocks to his club, so Murt paid off the driver and walked.

  Part of his strategy of bachelorhood had been to ignore Christmas and the other sentimental seasons, when loneliness costs many a man his independence. But now it was impossible to ignore the snowflakes, the bustling, package-laden crowds and the street-corner Santa Clauses with their tinkling bells.

  * * * * *

  He found himself staring into department store windows at the gay decorations.

  A pair of shimmering, nearly invisible nylons caught his eye. They were the most impalpable of substances, only their bare outline visible against the white background.

  He thought of Phyllis and, on impulse, went into the store and bought a pair. The clerk had to pick a size at random for him. Outside, on the sidewalk, he stared at the prettily gift-wrapped package and finally acknowledged the tremor, the tension and the old ache in the region of his diaphragm.

  Relapse!

  He plodded three slushy blocks up a side-street before he found a cab. He gave Phyllis Sutton's address to the driver and sank back in the taxi as a wave of weakness overcame him. What if she weren't home? It was Christmas Eve. She would probably be visiting friends or relatives.

  But she wasn't. She opened the door under his impatient knock, and her eyes widened cordially.

  "Sylvester!" she exclaimed. "Merry Christmas! Is that for me?" She pointed to the package, clutched forgotten in his hands.

  "Merry, hell!" he said dispiritedly. "I came to warn you to look out for a relapse. Mine's been coming on all day."

  She drew him inside, made him take off his coat and sit down before she acknowledged his remark. The apartment was cozy, with a tin
y Christmas tree decorated in the window. She returned from the hall closet and sat beside him.

  "Look what I did--on impulse," he said and tossed the package on her lap. "That's what really turned it on."

  She opened the nylons and looked up at him sideways.

  He continued unhappily, "I saw them in a window. Made me think of you, and about that time the seizure began. I tried to kid myself that I was just getting you a little token of--of my esteem, but the symptoms are almost as bad as before already."

  * * * * *

  Apparently she refused to accept the seriousness of the situation. Her smile was fatuous, he thought, kissably fatuous.

  "Don't you realize what this means?" he demanded. "Peterson and Feldman turned up a very distressing fact. Sulfa-tetradine deposits out in the endocrines, so a single dose is all a person can take. This relapse of mine means we have it all to do over again."

  "Think, Dr. Murt! Just think a minute," she urged.

  "About what?"

  "If the sulfa deposits out in the very glands it's there to protect, how could you be suffering another attack?"

  His arms ached to reach out and emphasize his argument. "I don't know. All I know is how I feel. In a way, this is even worse, because--"

  "I know," Phyllis said and perversely moved close to him. "My relapse came last Tuesday when I bought you a tie for Christmas. I sent a blood sample over to Ebert Labs right away. And do you know what?"

  "What?" Murt asked in a bewildered fog.

  "It was negative. I don't have Murt's Virus." She slipped an arm around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. "All I've got is Murt himself."

  * * *

  Contents

  TABBY

  By Winston Marks

  Tabby was peculiar, of course, but seemed harmless: just a little green fly that couldn't even protect itself from ordinary spiders. So the spiders fed, and grew, and fed, and grew....

  April 18, 1956

  Dear Ben: It breaks my heart you didn't sign on for this trip. Your replacement, who calls himself an ichthyologist, has only one talent that pertains to fish--he drinks like one. There are nine of us in the expedition, and every one of us is fed up with this joker, Cleveland, already. We've only been on the island a week, and he's gone native, complete with beard, bare feet and bone laziness. He slops around the lagoon like a beachcomber and hasn't brought in a decent specimen yet.

  The island is a bit of paradise, though. Wouldn't be hard to let yourself relax under the palms all day instead of collecting blisters and coral gashes out in the bright sun of the atoll. No complaints, however. We aren't killing ourselves, and our little camp is very comfortable. The portable lab is working out fine, and the screened sleeping tent-houses have solved the one big nuisance we've suffered before: Insects. I think an entomologist would find more to keep him busy here than we will.

  Your ankle should be useable by the time our next supply plane from Hawaii takes off. If you apply again at the Foundation right now I'm sure Sellers and the others will help me get rid of Cleveland, and there'll be an open berth here.

  Got to close now. Our amphib jets off in an hour for the return trip. Hope this note is properly seductive. Come to the isles, boy, and live!--Cordially, Fred

  * * * * *

  May 26, 1956

  Dear Ben: Now, aren't you sorry you didn't take my advice?!!!! I'm assuming you read the papers, and also, that too tight a censorship hasn't clamped down on this thing yet. Maybe I'm assuming too much on the latter. Anyhow, here's a detailed version from an actual eyewitness.

  That's right! I was right there on the beach when the "saucer" landed. Only it looked more like a king-size pokerchip. About six feet across and eight inches thick with a little hemispherical dome dead center on top. It hit offshore about seventy-five yards with a splash that sounded like a whale's tail. Jenner and I dropped our seine, waded to shore and started running along the beach to get opposite it. Cleveland came out of the shade and helped us launch a small boat.

  We got within twenty feet of the thing when it started moving out, slowly, just fast enough to keep ahead of us. I was in the bow looking right at it when the lid popped open with a sound like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. The little dome had split. Sellers quit rowing and we all hit the bottom of the boat. I peeked over the gunwale right away, and it's a good thing. All that came out of the dome was a little cloud of flies, maybe a hundred or so, and the breeze picked them up and blew them over us inshore so fast that Cleveland and Sellers never did see them.

  I yelled at them to look, but by then the flies were in mingling with the local varieties of sudden itch, and they figured I was seeing things. Cleveland, though, listened with the most interest. It develops that his specialty is entomology. He took this job because he was out of work. Don't know how he bluffed his way past the Foundation, but here he is, and it looks like he might be useful after all.

  He was all for going ashore, but Sellers and I rowed after the white disk for awhile until it became apparent we couldn't catch it. It's a good thing we didn't. A half hour later, Olafsen caught up to it in the power launch. We were watching from shore. It was about a half mile out when Ole cut his speed. Luckily he was alone. We had yelled at him to pick us up and take us along, but he was too excited to stop. He passed us up, went out there and boom!

  It wasn't exactly an A-bomb, but the spray hit us a half mile away, and the surface wave swamped us.

  Sellers radioed the whole incident to Honolulu right away, and they are sending out a plane with a diver, but we don't think he'll find anything. Things really blew! So far we haven't even found any identifiable driftwood from the launch, let alone Ole's body or traces of the disk.

  Meanwhile, Cleveland has come to believe my story, and he's out prowling around with an insect net. Most energy he's shown in weeks.

  * * * * *

  May 28--Looks like this letter will be delayed a bit. We are under quarantine. The government plane came this morning. They sent along a diver, two reporters and a navy officer. The diver went down right away, but it's several hundred feet deep out there and slants off fast. This island is the tip of a sunken mountain, and the diver gave up after less than an hour. Personally I think a couple of sharks scared him off, but he claims there's so much vegetable ruck down there he couldn't expect to find anything smaller than the launch's motor.

  Cleveland hasn't found anything unusual in his bug net, but everyone is excited here, and you can guess why.

  When the "saucer" reports stopped cold about a year ago, you'll remember, it made almost as much news for a while as when they were first spotted. Now the people out here are speculating that maybe this disc thing came from the same source as the saucers, after they had a chance to look us over, study our ecology and return to their base. Cleveland is the one who started this trend of thought with his obsession that the flies I reported seeing are an attack on our planet from someone out in space.

  Commander Clawson, the navy officer, doesn't know what to think. He won't believe Cleveland until he produces a specimen of the "fly-from-Mars", but then he turns around and contradicts himself by declaring a temporary quarantine until he gets further orders from Honolulu.

  The reporters are damned nuisances. They're turning out reams of Sunday supplement type stuff and pestering the devil out of Sparks to let them wire it back, but our radio is now under navy control, too.

  Sure is crowded in the bunk-house with the six additional people, but no one will sleep outside the screen.

  * * * * *

  May 29--Cleveland thinks he has his specimen. He went out at dawn this morning and came in before breakfast. He's quit drinking but he hasn't slept in three days now and looks like hell. I thought he was getting his fancy imagination out of the bottle, but the soberer he got the more worried he looked over this "invasion" idea of his.

  Now he claims that his catch is definitely a sample of something new under our particular sun. He hustled it under a glass and st
arted classifying it. It filled the bill for the arthropods, class Insecta. It looked to me, in fact, just like a small, ordinary blowfly, except that it has green wings. And I mean green, not just a little iridescent color.

  Cleve very gently pulled one wing off and we looked at it under low power. There is more similarity to a leaf than to a wing. In the bug's back is a tiny pocket, a sort of reservoir of the green stuff, and Cleve's dissection shows tiny veins running up into the wings. It seems to be a closed system with no connection with the rest of the body except the restraining membrane.

  Cleveland now rests his extraterrestrial origin theory on an idea that the green stuff is chlorophyll. If it is chlorophyll, either Cleve is right or else he's discovered a new class of arthropods. In other respects the critter is an ordinary biting and sucking bug with the potentials of about a deerfly for making life miserable. The high-power lens showed no sign of unusual or malignant microscopic life inside or out of the thing. Cleve can't say how bad a bite would be, because he doesn't have his entomologist kit with him, and he can't analyze the secretion from the poison gland.

  The commander has let him radio for a botanist and some micro-analysis equipment.

  Everyone was so pitched up that Cleve's findings have been rather anti-climactic. I guess we were giving more credence to the space-invader theory than we thought. But even if Cleve has proved it, this fly doesn't look like much to be frightened over. The reporters are clamoring to be let loose, but the quarantine still holds.

  * * * * *

  June 1--By the time the plane with the botanist arrived we were able to gather all the specimens of Tabanidae viridis (Cleveland's designation) that he wanted. Seems like every tenth flying creature you meet is a green "Tabby" now.

  The botanist helped Cleve and me set up the bio kit, and he confirmed Cleve's guess. The green stuff is chlorophyll. Which makes Tabby quite a bug.

  Kyser, the youngest reporter, volunteered to let a Tabby bite him. It did without too much coaxing. Now he has a little, itchy bump on his wrist, and he's happily banging away at his typewriter on a story titled, "I Was Bitten by the Bug from Space!" That was hours ago, and we haven't learned anything sinister about the green fly except that it does have a remarkable breeding ability.