As you know, it's a pus former that's made hospital life more dangerous than it should be because it develops resistance to antibiotics. What Thurston wanted to do was to produce a strain that would stimulate resistance in the patient without causing disease—something that would help patients protect themselves rather than rely upon doubtfully effective antibiotics."

"That wasn't a bad idea."

"There was nothing wrong with it. The only trouble was that he wound up with something else entirely. He was like the man who wanted to make a plastic suitable for children's toys and ended up with a new explosive. You see, what Thurston didn't realize was that his cultures were contaminated. He'd secured them from the University Clinic and had, so he thought, isolated them. But somehow he'd brought a virus along—probably one of the orphan group or possibly a phage."

"Orphan?"

"Yes—one that was not a normal inhabitant of human tissues. At any rate there was a virus—and he mutated it rather than the bacteria. Actually, it was simple enough, relatively speaking, since a virus is infinitely simpler in structure than a bacterium, and hence much easier to modify with ionizing radiation. So he didn't produce an antigen—he produced a disease instead. Naturally, he contracted it, and during the period between his infection and death he managed to infect the entire hospital. Before anyone realized what they were dealing with, the disease jumped from the hospital to the college, and from the college to the city, and from the city to—"

"Yes, I know that part of it. It's all over the world now—killing people by the millions."

"Well," Kramer said, "at least it's solved the population explosion." He blew a cloud of blue smoke in Mary's direction. "And it did make Thurston famous. His name won't be quickly forgotten."

She coughed. "I doubt if it ever will be," she said, "but it won't be remembered the way he intended."

He looked at her suspiciously. "That cough—"

"No, it's not Thurston's Disease. It's that pipe. It's rancid."

"It helps me think," Kramer said.

 Prev. P 5/19 next