"I don't know as I ought to leave my post," said Jones.
"You'd rather stay with us and perhaps be exposed to the Fever?"
When his footsteps had died away, David leaned forward.
"We've done our best. Another month or so and we should be completely ready for our retirement act."
David grinned. "Well, if our time runs out, at least we'll go down fighting. You know all your lines, your props are ready, the plot is worked out, and we can slip into our makeup in an instant--provided the audience shows up."
"You're getting to be quite a joker, David," said Karl. "What if the audience comes around to the stage door?"
"Then we'll try to receive him properly. Our Leader is a man of iron, but I doubt that he's immortal."
"I'm sure you'll benefit from your holiday," David went on. "That last checkup showed an antibody titer entirely too high for safety."
"In other words, it's time for us to get going?" asked Karl, smiling.
"That's right. Only the next time the antibody curve rises, it will be for keeps."
Four days later it was reported that Judge Brinton, the well-known champion of Category rights, was ill with Blue Martian fever. Three little-known nuclear physicists living in the same apartment in Oak Ridge developed symptoms on the same day. Sporadic cases of Blue Martian flared up all over the continent. Occasionally a whole family was affected--husband, wife, and all the children. There was a mild epidemic at MIT, a more serious one at the School of Social Structure, and at Harvard Medical School nearly a third of the senior class, and they the most brilliant, were hospitalized at the same time.
Rumors blanketed the country like a fog, and people everywhere became uneasy. There were no deaths from the illness, but the very idea that an infectious disease could flare up unpredictably all over the nation, out of control, was frightening. It was said that the disease had been beamed to Earth by alien enemies from space; that all its victims became sterile; or that their minds were permanently damaged.
It was also said, though people laughed even as they repeated the rumor, that if you once had Blue Martian Fever you'd become immortal. This particular theory had been clearly traced to the ravings of a red-haired madwoman who was confined to Psycho-detention, but still it was too ridiculous not to repeat. For a week, comedians rang a hundred changes on the basic joke:
