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her specialty of pathology. That meant over eleven years of school and practice. She was a lovely creature, but she was no child.

He had half an impulse to phone her for dinner, then became lost in studying his own reaction to the thought. Pulse over a hundred, respiration quickening, irregular. There was a tensing of the abdomen, a faint burning in the pit of his stomach.

He remembered the urge at the office, the dream in the sunroom, the sudden sweat that had required five minutes under the cold needle shower.

After so many years of deliberate, scholarly celibacy, what was happening to him?

He stared at the phone. With six motions of one finger, he could dial Phyllis Sutton's face into view, and suddenly he yearned to do that very ridiculous thing.

After staring at her, off and on, for the six months since she had transferred to High Dawn to complete her residency, now he wanted to see her face outside of working hours for some inexplicable reason.

Call her up, date her, take her dancing, proposition her—get this silly feeling off your chest!

Suppose she was busy or refused to go out with him? Suppose she already had a boy friend?

This last thought deepened the burn in the pit of his stomach, and he finished dressing listlessly. To hell with it! This was poker night. If he did succeed in dating his assistant, they'd inevitably talk shop. That was why he enjoyed a night of cards with his six non-medical brother clubmen, once a week. It was refreshing to break away from the professional point of view.

No, he wouldn't sacrifice that for any woman.

He ate alone, read the paper, joined the poker party at seven o'clock, played six hands of stud, cashed in his chips and returned to his room. In a mood of deep irritation, he found Phyllis Sutton's home phone number and rang it four times with no result.

He thought to try the hospital. She answered from the lab extension on audio only, but her voice and its frankly curious tone sent vertically polarized chills through him.

"I—I wanted to apologize for my rudeness this afternoon," he said with difficulty from a suddenly dry mouth.

There was a brief silence. "Have you been drinking, Dr. Murt?" He noticed that she did not call him Sylvester. Why was he so damned thirsty for some little sign of warmth and friendliness from her?

He cleared his throat. "No, I'm serious. It occurred to me that your interest in the out-clinic problem was commendable, and that I was rather short in my remarks to you."

"Oh! I take it I have your permission to work my project in during the day, then?"

"That's right, so long as it doesn't interfere with the routine." He sounded stuffy to himself, but he was entirely out of practice in speaking to please a female.

"Thanks," she said wryly, and the conversation ended.

Somehow, the brief talk with her restored his perspective. Once again she was his assistant, and the significance of her as a woman faded. She was a dedicated physician like himself. In another few years, she would find a residency of her own. She had no more inclination to knock off and become a woman than he had to squander his time and energy on attaining the status of family man.

It was with mounting admiration that he followed her new project in examining blood samples. As they came up from the clinic, she sorted the specimen tubes at once, putting a tiny snip of yellow Scotch tape under the label of each sample that belonged to a patient with the new undiagnosed disorder.

Then, after the requested hemoglobin, blood sugar and other standard tests had been run, she retrieved the samples from the technicians, grouped them in a special rack and devoted every spare minute to further examination.

She centrifuged, precipitated, filtered and stained over and over, using every qualitative procedure in the book. Murt signed her requisitions for exotic reagents and rare stains. He helped her balance out the large centrifuge to get the maximum r.p.m. from it. He let her use the most costly of the fine-porosity filters.

He had little hope of success, but it was good practice for her. She was required to identify every organism she found, bone up on its known effects, then determine that it could not cause the symptoms reported.

She did all this without impairing her usefulness to Murt. When he needed her, she was at his side, dissecting, taking down notes, preparing delicate sections and checking slides before they came to him.

In several weeks, she exhausted all known tests on the first samples. After lunch one day, she turned her palms up. "Nichts da!" she said, pulling a mashed cigarette from the huge pocket of her white smock.

He glanced at her and swiveled to stare out the window. It was part of his tight campaign to prevent a disastrous recurrence of the emotional tempest he had suffered the day she had begun this research.

"It was a nice brush-up on your bacteriology," he said. "Have you saved the filtrates?"

"Yes, of course. Did I overlook anything?"

"Nothing that we could do here, but there's an electron microscope downtown at Ebert Industrial Labs. How about photomicrography? Could be a filtrable virus."

He knew that she was aware of the possibility, and also that she was reluctant to ask him for additional funds to go into a virus hunt with the expensive piece of equipment.

"Wonderful!" she told him. "I did hate to ask you, but it would be a shame to waste all that immaculate filtrate."

III

A week passed, during which a bulletin from the Government Health Service announced official suspicion that the human race was suffering a mysterious, pandemic affliction which was as yet undiagnosed. Although the symptoms, as reported by hundreds of clinics, were relatively mild, the effect on the nation's economy was growing serious.

Industry and business reported unprecedented absenteeism. Factory supervisors and insurance companies were frantic over the upsurge in accidents. It was estimated that almost fifty per cent of the population exhibited the symptoms of depression, absent-mindedness, insomnia and loss of appetite.

Negligent driving was increasing the highway toll sharply. Educational institutions reported classroom discipline rapidly vanishing. Armed forces headquarters cautiously admitted a new high in desertions and AWOLs.

The consensus among psychiatrists and psychologists was that the condition stemmed from pathogenic causes.

Dr. Murt raised his eyebrows when he read this. Perhaps Phyllis Sutton was right, after all.

The bulletin continued, "All clinical pathologists are requested to be alert to the presence of any unusual organisms discovered in body fluids or tissues examined. Please report your findings to the U. S. Public Health Service."

Murt found Phyllis Sutton at the microtome, finishing a wax section, and showed her the bulletin.

"Score one for woman's intuition," he smiled. "Federal Health Service tends to agree with your theory."

"Now I am eager to see those pictures," she said.

Less than two hours later, a messenger brought the photomicrographs, and the two pathologists bent over them together. Phyllis had submitted eighteen samples, six of which were controls taken from healthy, unafflicted subjects. Per her instructions, smears of the specimens in various degrees of dilution had been photographed through the great electron microscope.

Murt muttered to himself as they compared the controls with the "infected specimens." The "healthy" samples were relatively clear, except for minute protein matter. Conversely, all twelve suspect specimens swarmed with shadowy six-sided dots.

Phyllis' eyes widened. "There is something there! Do you suppose it could be the Love Bug?"

"Love Bug?"

"Certainly. That bulletin didn't go into the psychologists' findings. The diagnosticians downstairs say that the symptoms appear to be no more than complaints of the lovesick."

"Are you back on the pantie-raid theme again?"

"I've never been off it," she replied. "From the first, I've had a notion that some organism was increasing glandular activity. Excess emotionalism often originates in overstimulated glands."

"Of course, but mental attitudes can trigger the glands, and they are interacting. How do you separate the effects? How could you guess that an organism was responsible?"

She shrugged. "It was a possibility within our specialty, so I set out to prove or disprove it. From the appearance of these photographs, I don't think we have disproved it."

It was a properly cautious statement that pleased Murt. They were a long way from proving that their newly discovered virus was the culprit, but the research had definitely produced a question mark.

Murt ordered copies of the photomicrographs from Ebert Industrial Labs and arranged for a complete dossier to be forwarded to the U. S. Health Service.

That night, he was startled by a headline and lead story that quoted the government bulletin. The science editor had a field day, tying in speculation that "Doctors Suspect Love Bug Epidemic."

The next day, three reporters called upon him, each with the same query. "It's rumored that you are doing research on the Love Bug, Dr. Murt. Anything to report?"

He shooed them out angrily, after learning that someone at Ebert Labs had given them the tip. Phyllis smiled at him as he slammed the door after the last reporter.

"You still discount the Love Bug idea, don't you?" she asked.

"I dislike sensationalism in a matter like this," he said. "Even if their assumptions were true, I wouldn't like it."

"You can't blame the papers. They're starved for some explanation. I pity your passion for anonymity if your virus proves to be the causative factor."

"My virus?"

"Certainly. The whole project is under your auspices and direction."

"See here, Phyl, you did the work."

"Don't you dare mention my name," she said. "You're my superior and senior pathologist and it's your duty to protect me against the press. I don't want columnists popping out of my bathroom any more than you do."

Murt gave up. "The argument is entirely anticipatory," he pointed out. "The virus might turn out to be a batch of dormant German measles. Would you consider having dinner with me tonight?"

"Why?" She shot the question back at him like a rebounding tennis ball. "Answer that first!"

Murt opened his mouth. He could not recall ever hearing such a rude rejoinder to an invitation to dinner. Not that there had been a plethora of amenities between them, but this was unthinkable! The question was, why should she have dinner with him? Give her eight good reasons. What was his motive in asking her? In one word, why?

Murt searched her face, but only a quiet interest showed in her expression.

"Why does any man invite any woman to dinner?" he countered.

"You aren't any man, Dr. Murt. Nor am I any woman. I want your specific reason for inviting me to dinner. Is it to discuss professional matters or—what?"

"Good Lord, Dr. Sutton!" He followed her lead in using the formal address. "Man is a social animal! I would enjoy your company at dinner, that's all. At least, I thought I would."

She looked at him unrelentingly. "If the talk will be about baseball, books or billiards, I'm for it. If it's to be moonlight, roses and dimmed lights—no sale."

It was like asking one's grandfather for a date. His regard for her highly professional approach turned to resentment. After all, she was a woman, a woman who persisted in belting her smock too tightly and wearing sheer nylons. Why this absurd revulsion at his casual acknowledgment of her sex?

He almost withdrew the invitation, but changed his mind at the last moment. "You name the place and the subject for conversation."

She nodded. "Very well, I'll pick you up at seven."

He had his date—with an emancipated female, and she didn't let him forget it during the whole meal. The restaurant she picked was expensive, but about as romantic as a bus depot. She ordered beer instead of a cocktail, toyed wordlessly with a $5.00 steak, and argued over the check.

Only as they were preparing to leave did she betray a sign of femininity. A platinum blonde, two tables away, had been eying Murt. Suddenly, she lurched to her feet without a word to her escort, staggered over to the pathologist, slurred, "You're what I've b'n lookin' for all m'life," and planted a wet alcoholic kiss on his mouth before he could defend himself.

Her escort peeled her away with sad-eyed apologies. There was no jealousy or anger in his face, only a deep hurt. "She—she isn't well, I think," he said. "You know, this new—whatever it is that's going around."

Murt wiped off the lipstick and looked at Phyllis, expecting to find at best sardonic amusement, but she seemed pale and annoyed.

"I'm sorry I brought you here," she said.

"Think nothing of it," Murt told her. "You heard the man. This is what's going around. Do you think I'll catch it?"

Phyllis wasn't amused. She did let him ride the taxi to her apartment, but bade him a terse goodby at the door.

Except for the incident of the blonde

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