And he was surprised beyond all reason that he could approach the situation as calmly as he had. In a little while, he knew, when he had time to think it over, he would get the shakes.

"You're a doctor," said the alien. "You are a healer of your race."

"Yes," said Doc. "I am one of many healers."

"You work very hard to make the unwell well. You mend the broken flesh. You hold off death…"

"We try. Sometimes we don't succeed."

"You have many ailments. You have the cancer and the heart attacks and colds and many other things — I do not find the word."

"Diseases," Doc supplied.

"Disease. That is it. You will pardon my shortcomings in the tongue."

"Let's cut out the niceties," suggested Doc. "Let's get on with it."

"It is not right," the alien said, "to have all these diseases. It is not nice. It is an awful thing."

"We have less than we had at one time. We've licked a lot of them."

"And, of course," the alien said, "you make your living with them."

"What's that you said!" yelped Doc.

"You will be tolerant of me if I misunderstand. An economic system is a hard thing to get into one's head."

"I know what you mean," growled Doc, "but let me tell you, sir…"

But what was the use of it, he thought. This being was thinking the self-same thing that many humans thought.

"I would like to point out to you," he said, starting over once again, "that the medical profession is working hard to conquer those diseases you are talking of. We are doing all we can to destroy our own jobs."

"That is fine," the alien said. "It is what I thought, but it did not square with your planet's business sense. I take it, then, you would not be averse to seeing all disease destroyed."

"Now, look here," said Doc, having had enough of it, "I don't know what you are getting at. But I am hungry and I am tired and if you want to sit here threshing out philosophies…"

"Philosophies," said the alien. "Oh, not philosophies. I am practical. I have come to offer an end of all disease."

They sat in silence for a moment, then Doc stirred half protestingly and said, "Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I thought you said…"

"I have a method, a development, a find — I do not catch the word — that will destroy all diseases."

"A vaccine," said Old Doc.

"That's the word. Except it is different in some ways than the vaccine you are thinking."

"Cancer?" Doc asked.

The alien nodded. "Cancer and the common cold and all the others of them. You name it and it's gone."

"Heart," said Doc. "You can't vaccinate for heart."

"That, too," the alien said. "It does not really vaccinate. It makes the body strong. It makes the body right. Like tuning up a motor and making it like new. The motor will wear out in time, but it will function until it is worn out entirely."

Doc stared hard at the alien. "Sir," he said, "this is not the sort of thing one should joke about."

"I am not joking," said the alien.

"And this vaccine — it will work on humans? It has no side effects?"

"I am sure it will. We have studied your — your — the way your bodies work."

"Metabolism is the word you want."

"Thank you." said the alien.

"And the price?" asked Doc.

"There is no price," the alien said. "We are giving it to you."

"Completely free of charge? Surely there must be…"

"Without any charge," the alien said. "Without any strings."

He got up from the chair. He took a flat box from his pocket and walked over to the desk. He placed it upon the desk and pressed its side and the top sprang open. Inside of it were pads — like surgical pads, but they were not made of cloth.

Doc reached out, then halted his hand just above the box.

"May I?" he asked.

"Yes, certainly. You only touch the tops."

Doc gingerly lifted out one of the pads and laid it on the desk. He kneaded it with a skittish finger and there was liquid in the pad. He could feel the liquid squish as he pressed the pad.

He turned it over carefully and the underside of it was rough and corrugated, as if it were a mouthful of tiny, vicious teeth.

"You apply the rough side to the body of the patient." said the alien. "It seizes on the patient. It becomes a part of him. The body absorbs the vaccine and the pad drops off."

"And that is all there's to it?"

"That is all," the alien said.

Doc lifted the pad between two cautious fingers and dropped it back into the box.

He looked up at the alien. "But why?" he asked. "Why are you giving this to us!"

"You do not know," the alien said. "You really do not know."

"No, I don't," said Doc.

The alien's eyes suddenly were old and weary and he said: "In another million years you will."

"Not me," said Doc.

"In another million years," the alien said, "you'll do the same yourself, but it will be something different. And then someone will ask you, and you won't be able to answer any more than I am now."

If it was a rebuke, it was a very gentle one. Doc tried to decide if it were or not. He let the matter drop.

"Can you tell me what is in it?" he asked, gesturing at the pad.

"I can give you the descriptive formula, but it would be in our terms. It would be gibberish."

"You won't be offended if I try these out?"

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't," said the alien. "I would not expect your faith to extend so far. It would be simple minded."

He shut the box and pushed it closer to Old Doc. He turned and strode toward the door.

Doc rose ponderously to his feet.

"Now, wait a minute there!" he bellowed.

"I'll see you in a week or two," the alien said.

He went out and closed the door behind him.

Doc sat down suddenly in the chair and stared at the box upon the desk.

He reached out and touched it and it was really there. He pressed the side of it, and the lid popped open and the pads were there, inside.

He tried to fight his way back to sanity, to conservative and solid ground, to a proper — and a human — viewpoint.

"It's all hogwash," he said.

But it wasn't hogwash. He knew good and well it wasn't.

He fought it out with himself that night behind the closed door of his study, hearing faintly the soft bustling in the kitchen as Janet cleared away from supper.

And the first fight was on the front of credibility.

He had told the man he believed he was an alien and there was evidence that he could not ignore. Yet it seemed so incredible, all of it, every bit of it, that it was hard to swallow.

And the hardest thing of all was that this alien, whoever he might be, had come, of all the doctors in the world, to Dr. Jason Kelly, a little one horse doctor in a little one horse town.

He debated whether it might be a hoax and decided that it wasn't, for the three digits on the hand and the other thing he'd seen would have been difficult to simulate. And the whole thing, as a hoax, would be so stupid and so cruel that it simply made no sense. Besides, no one hated him enough to go to all the work. And even granting a hatred of appropriate proportion, he doubted there was anyone in Millville imaginative enough to think of this.

So the only solid ground he had, he told himself, was to assume that the man had been really an alien and that the pads were — bona fide-.

And if that was true, there was only one procedure: He must test the pads.

He rose from his chair and paced up and down the floor.

Martha Anderson, he told himself. Martha Anderson had cancer and her life was forfeit — there was nothing in man's world of knowledge that had a chance to save her. Surgery was madness, for she'd probably not survive it. And even if she did, her case was too advanced. The killer that she carried had already broken loose and was swarming through her body and there was no hope for her.