In Dr. Ryerson's room, he saw a typewriter. He couldn't handle a pencil, but he could, after a fashion, operate one of these machines. The chair creaked alarmingly under his weight as he took a piece of paper between his lips, dangled it over the machine, and turned the platen with both paws until the paper started through. The paper was in crooked, but that could not be helped. Using one claw at a time, he tapped out "PICK UP SIRINGE AND INJECT SOLUTION INTO YOUR ARM." The spelling of "siringe" didn't look quite right, but he couldn't be bothered with that now.
Carrying the paper in his mouth, he shuffled back into the kitchen. He placed the syringe in front of the Professor, squalled to attract his attention, and dangled the paper in front of his eyes. The scientist, completely dazed, paid no attention.
Johnny went out and walked around in the twilight, thinking furiously. It seemed absurd—even his bear's sense of humor told him so—that the spell could be broken by a simple command, that he alone in all the world knew the command, and that he had no way of giving it.
If the whole human race died off, leaving him the only intelligent creature on Earth, could he make his way to the mainland and seek out others of his species? Perhaps he could, but they, resenting his strangeness, might turn away from him or even kill him. That night he slept fitfully, knowing that time ran against him. He woke before dawn, thinking of Dr. Breuker's portable recording apparatus, though he could not imagine why.
He wandered into Breuker's room, found the tape recorder, and spent two hours learning how to operate the switches. He finally adjusted the thing for recording, yelled, "Wa-a-a-a-ah!" into it, threw the playback switch, and the machine yelled, "Wa-a-a-a-ah!" right back at him. Johnny squealed with pleasure.
Of course, a tape recording of his cry would be no better than his cry itself, but maybe among Breuker's tapes there might be some words he could use. He started to read the labels: "Bird cries," "Infant Babble," "Lancaster Dialect." He tried this latter tape and listened to a monologue about a little boy who was swallowed by a lion. From his experience with little boys, Johnny decided this would be a good idea, but there was nothing on the tape that would be of any use.
The next cassette he picked up was labeled "American Speech Series No. 72-B." It started out with a silly story: "Once there was a young rat who couldn't make up his mind. Whenever the other rats asked him if he'd like to come out with them, he'd answer, 'I don't know. ' One day his aunt said to him, 'Now look here! No one will ever care for you if you carry on like this... '
The player ground on, but Johnny's mind was made up. If he could get the machine to say "Now look here!" to Professor Mettin, his problem would be solved. He couldn't play the whole tape, because those three words did not stand out from the rest of the discourse. If he could make a separate recording of just those three words... But how to do this? He needed two machines—one to play the tape and one to record the desired words. He squealed with exasperation. To be licked when he had gotten this far!
Like a flash, the solution came to him. He dragged the recorder over to the social room, where there was a small tape deck used by the scientists for their evening amusement. Johnny put the "American Speech" cassette in this machine, put a blank tape on the recorder, and started it. He kept a claw on the recorder switch to start the tape at just the right moment.
Two hours and several ruined tapes later, he had what he wanted. He nosed the recorder into the kitchen, laid the syringe and the typed paper in front of Mettin, and started the machine. It scraped along for ten seconds and then said sharply, "Now look here! Now look here! Now look here!" As the tape resumed its scraping, the Professor's eyes snapped back into locus. He looked intently at the sheet of paper with the single line of typing across it, and without a flicker of emotion, picked up the syringe and jabbed the needle into his biceps.
Johnny shut off the machine. He would have to wait to see whether the solution took effect. As the minutes passed, he had an awful feeling that maybe this was not the antidote after all.
A half hour later, Professor Mettin passed a hand across his forehead. His first words were barely audible, but they grew louder like a television set warming up."What in heaven's name happened to me, Johnny? I remember everything that's taken place during the past three days, but I didn't seem to have any will of my own."
Johnny beckoned and headed for Ryerson's room and the typewriter. Mettin, who understood his Johnny, inserted a sheet of paper for him. Time passed as Johnny typed.
Finally, Mettin said, "What a sweet setup for a would-be dictator! With the whole world obeying orders implicitly, all he had to do was to select a few subordinates and have them give directions to everyone. Of course the antidote is potassium iodide—that's the standard fungicide. It cleared the mold out of my head in a hurry. Come on, old-timer, we've got a lot of work ahead of us. Hard to believe—a bear has saved the world!"
A week later everyone on St. Croix had been treated, and teams had set off for the mainland to carry on the mind-saving work.
Johnny, finding little to arouse his curiosity around the nearly deserted Biological Research Station, shuffled into the library. He took Volume 5 of the Britannica off the shelf, opened it to "Chemistry," and set to work again. He hoped Mettin would get back in a month or so to explain the hard parts to him. Meanwhile, he would have to wade through the article as; best he could.