Ogtate's identity as a true Asp would last at least eight years. During the final eight months, the semivirus, for a reason not yet determined, would literally `kick off.' Perhaps the body becomes tired of feeding the parasite and starves them of electromagnetic power by building a powerline around them. No one knew. The asps were created in laboratory animals and would never have been applied to human beings, had not a man with a desire to control and revenge perverted it to this end.
"Any conclusions, Doc?" croaked Bill.
"Not yet. You'd better reach over for a drink. Water, I mean."
The problem was whether or not the pyretigen, also a semivirus, acted in conjunction with the asps to produce the temperature again. As far as she knew, the combination had never been put in a living body.
Another question. What prevented the complete oxidization of the fever-maker? Pyretigen would naturally combine with oxygen after a change in chemical structure.
"How long did you say the fever lasts?" she asked.
"About an hour. It goes away fast, but three hours later it returns fast."
There was something about that rhythm that should have strummed a resonant chord in her mind. She tried vainly to strike it.
"You'd better lie down," she said, rising to help hint to the divan.
He shook his head. "Nothing doing. I do not need a nurse."
Accepting his stubbornness. knowing what was behind it, she silently took his temperature and pulse again. Then she drew out another sample of blood. A minute's work showed her that the amount of pyretigen had not diminished: it had increased!
He said, "All this talk, and you still haven't answered me. Will you marry me?"
Barbara kept her back to him. "I think I could. But I'm not in love with you."
"Could you be in the future?"
"What is love?"
"If you can endure eight years of living with me, without wanting to kill me or to be indifferent to me, you'll be in love. After all, we don't have to stay here. We can travel anywhere, be assured of privacy, entirely at Government expense. Eight years would fly."
"How could we travel without creating a fuss? Anyway, that does not matter. I've a question. If I promise to marry you, will you give Earth the Belos?"
"Are you trading yourself for the Belos?"
"You're sick. Otherwise, I'd knock you down for that."
"Try it. You're not as tough as you think you are, Barbara."
"Look at the man. Already he's quarreling."
"That was childish. I shouldn't have said it. The point is, I want you, Barbara. But I must feel you're not just a woman provided by the Government."
"My point is this. Will you give Earth the Belos? Madly in love with you or not, I still have my duty, to induce you to give up the secret."
"Induce? Seduce!"
"Anyway you call it. The Belos or me."
He stood, shakily, and turned his head back and forth. "I don't know. Maybe the fever's getting me. I wouldn't do this in my right mind." Gripping the table's edge, he said, "Barbara, promise me that, soldier's duty or not, you won't reveal what I'm going to show you."
Puzzled, she said, "I promise, provided it's not dangerous to Earth's welfare."
This isn't."
He went into the library, closed the door, and in a few minutes returned to slump into the chair. The moment he did so, she, forgetting his behavior, jumped from her chair, saying loudly, "I've got it! I've got it!"
"I'll have the place sprayed." be croaked, smiling feebly.
She came over and kissed his fever-parched mouth. "If you can joke while feeling like this, you might make a good husband."
She picked up her bag and went into the lab. Not all the bottles were smashed. Her clue was the fact that pyretigen raised a fever by conserving excess heat in the body resulting from increased cell metabolism. Its action was doublefold. It oxidized sugar, breaking it down into carbon dioxide and water. Though the burning of glucose was a normal function in the body, pyretigen accelerated it. At the same tune, it excited that part of the sympathetic nervous system which controlled the capillaries of the skin, thereby contracting them and lessening time blood-flow through them. The result was that excess heat was not radiated at the body's surface.
The fever-inducer, normally burned up in the blood, maintained itself in Ogtate's blood. Killison, recalling the asps' maintenance of their numbers, reasoned that they were the underlying cause for the steady level of pyretigen. Somehow, they "locked" onto the fever-stimulants and, as fast as the substance burned, produced more.
The rhythm of reproduction of the asps was followed by the pyretigen. Killison wanted to know if the ,pyretigen had a similar enough molecular structure, positively charged, to fasten itself onto the negative tag-ends of the asp.
Books were scattered on the floor. She searched among them and was thrilled to find the one she sought. Some pages were torn out, but among the ones left she found her information. The semivirus pyretigen did have an asp-like molecular structure.
A calculated dose of a recently developed anti-virus in his bloodstream might close down the little double factories. The serum, though it started in the vascular system, could diffuse through other tissues. It was itself as dangerous as the foes it was designed to fight. But a sample of blood would show exactly the proportions needed. The numbered hosts would tramp up and down the highways and alleys of the body, and wherever they met the enemy, they would attack. They couldn't refuse to fight, for their negative charge drew them irresistibly to their brother virus. Civil war would rage. Antivirus would meet the pyretigen, would close with it, would explode. Touching one would discharge the field of both. Literally burned, they would then disintegrate.
Ogtate's body would be a funeral pyre. It would become warm, but the ultimate effect would be cool.
As a matter of course, the discharged pyretigens would become unlocked from the asps. There would be no more fabrications by fabrications. And Barbara Killison would see to it that Bill ate no more tampered-with food.
She searched in the huge lab and found what she wanted. Her hopes were high, for there was almost every kind of substance needed. Ogtate had by no means destroyed all of the containers. Having located a tube, she returned to the big room at the end of the hall.
"Bill!" she called. "We'll fix you ..." Rigid, she stopped short and gasped.
9
Ogtate said, "I'm sorry, Barbara. Smitty just walked in. I was telling him to wait in the library until I prepared you. I'm really sorry."
Smitty removed his cigar with the prehensile end of his trunk and said, "Believe me, Madame, if I hadn't known you were here, and I'd walked around the corner into you, I'd have been just as startled and horrified."
She recovered a little and said, "Thank you."
"Bill," Barbara said, "I'm going to pour a bunch of little thunderstorms in you. This stuff wasn't designed for the particular kind of work it's being called to do, but it should handle your trouble."