But a minor injury could not depress my spirits. After I had it dressed I looked for Mary, as I wanted to crow; I failed to find her and ended up in the messroom, wanting someone with whom to share a toast.

The place was empty; everyone in the labs-except me-was working harder than ever, mounting Schedule Fever and Schedule Mercy. By order of the President all possible preparations were taking place in this one lab in the Smoky Mountains. The apes for vectoring, some two hundred of them, were here, and both the culture and the antitoxin were being "cooked" here; the horses needed for serum were stalled in what had been an underground handball court.

The million-plus men necessary for the Schedule Mercy drop could not be here, but they would know nothing about it until alerted a few hours before the drop, at which time each would be issued a hand gun and two bandoleers of individual dose antitoxin injectors. Those who had never parachuted before would not be given a chance to practice; they would each be pushed, if necessary, by some sergeant with a large foot. Everything possible was being done to keep the secret close; the only way I could see that we could lose (now that we knew that our theories worked) would be for the titans to find out our plans, through a renegade or by whatever means. Too many good plans have failed because some fool told his wife about it in bed.

If we failed to keep this secret, our ape disease vectors would never get into direct conference; they would be shot on sight wherever they appeared in the titan nation. But I relaxed over my first drink, happy and reasonably sure that the secret could not leak. Traffic with the laboratory was "incoming only" until after Drop Day and Colonel Kelly censored or monitored all communication outward-Kelly was no fool.

As for a leak from outside, the chances were slight. The general, Dad, Colonel Gibsy, and myself had gone to the White House the week before, there to see the President and Marshal Rexton. I had already convinced Dad that the way to keep this secret was not to share it with anybody; he put on a histrionic exhibition of belligerence and exasperation that got him what we wanted; in the end even Secretary Martinez was bypassed. If the President and Rexton could keep from talking in their sleep for another week, I did not see how we could miss.

A week would be none too soon; Zone Red was spreading. The counterattack they had launched at Pass Christian had not stopped there. The slugs had pushed on and now held the Gulf coast past Pensacola and there were signs that more was to come. Perhaps the slugs were growing tired of our resistance and might decide to waste human raw material by A-bombing the cities we still held. If so, we would find it hard to stop; a radar screen can alert your defenses, but it won't stop a determined attack.

But I refused to worry about that. One more week-

Colonel Kelly came in, looked around the otherwise empty room, came over and sat down beside me. "How about a drink?" I suggested. "I feel like celebrating."

He examined the hairy paunch bulging out in front of him and said, "I suppose one more beer wouldn't put me in any worse shape."

"Have two beers. Have four-a dozen." I dialed for him, and told him about the success of the experiments with the apes.

He nodded. "Yes, I had heard. Sounds good."

" 'Good', the man says! Colonel, we are on the one yard line and goal to go. A week from now the game will be won."

"So?"

"Oh, come now!" I answered, irritated by his manner. "In a short time you'll be able to put your clothes back on and lead a normal life. Or don't you think our plans will work?"

"Yes, I think they will work."

"Then why the crepe-hanging?"

Instead of answering directly he said, "Mr. Nivens, you don't think that a man with my pot belly enjoys running around without his clothes, do you?"

"I suppose not. As for myself, I'm beginning to find it pleasant. I may hate to have to give it up-saves time and it's comfortable."

"You need not worry about having to give it up. This is a permanent change."

"Huh? I don't get you. You said our plans would work and now you talk as if Schedule Sun Tan would go on forever."

"In a modified way, it will."

I said, "Pardon me? I'm stupid today."

He dialed for another beer. "Mr. Nivens, I never expected to live to see a military reservation turned into a ruddy nudist camp. Having seen it happen, I never expect to see us change back-because we can't. Pandora's box has a one-way lid. All the king's horses and all the king's men-"

"Conceded," I answered. "Things never go back quite to what they were before. Just the same, you are exaggerating. The day after the President rescinds Schedule Sun Tan the suspended blue laws will go into effect and a man without pants will be liable to arrest."

"I hope not."

"Huh? Make up your mind."

"It's made up for me. Mr. Nivens, as long as there exists a possibility that a slug is alive the polite man must be willing to bare his entire body on request-or risk getting shot. Not just this week and next week but twenty years from now, or a hundred. No, no!" he said, seeing that I was about to interrupt, "I am not disparaging your fine plans-but pardon me if I say that you have been too busy with their details to notice that they are strictly local and temporary. For example-have you made any plans for combing the Amazonian jungles, tree by tree?"

He went on apologetically, "Just a rhetorical inquiry. This globe has nearly sixty million square miles of dry land; we can't begin to search it and clean out the slugs. Shucks, man, we haven't made a dent in the rats and we've been at that a long time. Titans are trickier and more prolific than rats."

"Are you trying to tell me it's hopeless?" I demanded.

"Hopeless? Not at all. Have another drink. I'm trying to say that we are going to have to learn to live with this horror, the way we had to learn to live with the atom bomb."

I went away feeling dashed and not at all cocky. I wanted to find Mary. Some days, it occurred to me, the "genius" business wasn't worth the trouble.

Chapter 33

We were gathered in the same conference room in the White House; it put me in mind of the night after the President's message many weeks before. Dad was there; so were Mary and Rexton and Martinez. None of the "fishing cabinet" was present but their places were filled by our own lab general, by Dr. Hazelhurst, and by Colonel Gibsy. Martinez was busy trying to restore his face after having been told that he had been shunted out of the biggest show of his own department.

Nobody paid him any attention. Our eyes were on the big map still mounted across one wall; it had been four and a half days since the vector drop of Schedule Fever but the Mississippi Valley still glowed in ruby lights.

I was getting jittery, although the drop had been an apparent success and we had lost only three craft. According to the equations every slug within reach of direct conference should have been infected three days ago, with an estimated twenty-three percent overlap. The operation had been computed to contact about eighty percent of the slugs in the first twelve hours alone, mostly in the large cities.

Soon, slugs should start dying a dam sight faster than flies ever did-if we were right.

I forced myself to sit still and wondered whether those ruby lights covered a few million very sick slugs-or merely two hundred dead apes. Had somebody skipped a decimal point? Or blabbed? Or had there been an error in our reasoning so colossal that we could not see it?

Suddenly a light blinked green, right in the middle of the board; everybody sat up. Right on top of it a voice began to come out of the stereo gear though no picture built up. "This is Station Dixie, Little Rock," a very tired southern voice said. "We need help very badly. Anyone who is listening, please be good enough to pass on this message: Little Rock, Arkansas, is in the grip of a terrible epidemic. Notify the Red Cross. We have been in the hands of-" The voice trailed off, whether from weakness or transmission failure I could not be sure.