'Good. Stain these slides, please.'
For several hours the two worked in silence. Court engrossed with his microscope, the girl busy dyeing the samples. Finally Court exhausted a small tank and conducted experiments in the vacuum he had created.
Time dragged on, till the huge old house was utterly still. The chill of a Wisconsin winter blanketed it, making frost patterns on the window panes. Inside the room it was warm enough, though snow lay thickly on the ground outside.
Presently Marion slipped out of the room and returned bearing a tray of coffee and sandwiches. She set it on a table and glanced at Court. Standing by a window, he was idly smoking a cigarette.
'Mr. Court—'
'What is it?' he asked, without looking around. His face was upturned to the quiet night outside as he spoke again, not waiting for her answer. 'Come here.'
Marion obeyed. She was astonished to see that Court's face was drawn and haggard, actually gray around the lips. But his eyes were feverishly bright.
'Up there,' he said, pointing. 'Do you see anything?'
The cold stars glittered frostily in an abyss of empty black. Some icy breath of the unknown seemed to blow down from the frigid, airless seas between the planets. Marion shuddered.
'I see nothing unusual,' she said.
'Naturally. No one has. There's nothing visible, and yet—' Wearily he rubbed his forehead. 'It's impossible that my experiments have lied.'
'Drink some coffee,' Marion urged.
Court followed her to the table and sat down. As she poured the steaming liquid, his somber eyes dwelt on her face.
'Are you game for an airplane trip into Canada?' he asked abruptly.
'Yes. When?'
'As soon as I can arrange it. There's a man I must see, a— a patient.'
Court gulped down untasted coffee and bunked tiredly.
'You should get at least a little sleep.'
'Not yet. I don't know—' He came to a sudden decision. 'Marion, you don't know anything about this experiment I'm working on. No one knows about it yet, except me. All this data I've been collecting lately has been for a purpose. You haven't any idea what that purpose is, have you?'
'No, I haven't.'
'Well,' Court declared, with curious calm, 'it's simply this —I have reason to believe that the Earth is going to be destroyed. Wait a minute!' he cried hastily. 'Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned this till I was absolutely certain. But I want to talk to someone.'
His unrealized loneliness showed naked for an unguarded second on his face. He caught himself, and was once more impassive.
'The Earth is going to face a plague that will destroy civilization. Of that, at least, I am certain.'
'A plague,' she breathed.
'I call it that, for lack of a better term. Every being on this planet will be affected by it.'
Marion looked at him sharply. Her lovely eyes narrowed.
'Affected? Don't you mean destroyed?'
Court pushed back his chair and rose.
'No,' he whispered. 'I don't.' His grave lips went hard. 'Come here, Marion. Look at this.'
He strode to a safe in the wall, opened it, and withdrew a small oblong box of lead. Set in one face was a round, transparent disc.
'Look through the lens,' he commanded. 'Don't get too close to that thing, though.'
Marion obeyed. Through the tiny pane, she could see within the box a shining lump of matter, no larger than the nail of her thumb.
'It's phosphorescent,' she said. 'What is it—an ore?'
'A specimen of flesh taken from the thigh of a man named Pierre Locicault, a French-Canadian.'
'Flesh?' The girl peered again at the object. 'Was he exposed to radium?'
Court replaced the box in the safe.
'No, nothing like that. Locicault lived in a little settlement in a valley in the wilderness. A month ago he staggered into the nearest town, emaciated and nearly dead. His story was just about unbelievable. He claimed that one day a heavy fog—abnormally heavy—blanketed his valley, and affected the inhabitants peculiarly.
'They became incredibly hungry, ate enormous meals. Their skin became hot to the point of high fever. And they grew so old that most of them died. Locicault went for help, but nobody recognized him when he arrived in town. He looked thirty years older. What does that suggest to you, Marion?'
'Increased metabolism,' she said unhesitatingly.
'Exactly. A rescue party was sent out. They found the corpses of a dozen old men and women in the valley, but no sign of what killed them. There was no sign of a fog, nor anything dangerous. Meanwhile, Locicault was luckily put into an isolation ward in the hospital. He ate tremendously. It was noticed that his skin emitted radiation. In the dark, his body actually shone.'
Court lit a cigarette for a few abstracted puffs before continuing.
'His nurse caught the contagion. She killed herself. Locicault is kept in utter isolation now, for there isn't a doctor or a nurse who dares to get near him. When Doctor Granger wired me, I suggested lead insulation, so he could obtain this specimen for me to study. I want to see Locicault and make further experiments upon him.'
Marion frowned. 'You have other evidence, of course?'
'Naturally. Similar cases have been reported to me. This isn't anything new. Do you remember, about seven years ago, a newspaper story about a valley in France where the inhabitants were killed by a heavy fog? It was attributed to poison gas. Do you remember that West Indian island where life was wiped out overnight, without any explanation at all? People talked about volcanic gas.
'My files are full of apparently meaningless items like that. Freaks and sports bom to animals and humans. So-called ghost stories about apparitions that shone in the dark. There are dozens of other examples.'
The girl shuddered as she thought of the tag of flesh she had seen.
'And do you think this is the beginning of a plague?'
'My graphs and charts show an upward swing. These occurrences happen more frequently as time goes on. Whatever causes them is growing more powerful.'
'But what could cause such a thing?' the girl asked. 'No virus could—'
'Not a virus. Filterable or not, they could not cause cellular radioactivity. This menace—this unknown X—is certainly not a virus. I don't know its nature, nor where it comes from. Till I know those factors, I can do nothing.'
'Could it be a weapon of war?' Marion suggested.
'You mean— Well, scarcely! Once it's started, it's completely uncontrollable. X isn't man-made, for its record goes back too far for chemistry. It's a natural phenomenon, and our only clue is fog.'
'A gas?'
Court nodded, and his eyes grew distant with thought.
'Where does it come from—under the Earth? That's possible, of course, but hardly any of these cases have occurred in volcanic country. I think X comes from the interstellar void.'
Marion's eyes widened in horrified recollection.
'That's why you've been getting those observatory reports! Photographs and spectra.'
Court grunted impatiently. 'They showed nothing, and that's what I can't understand.'
'Maybe the conditions aren't right,' Marion suggested. 'Phosphorescence isn't visible in daylight. Perhaps X isn't visible in space.'
Court didn't move, but his fingers broke his cigarette in two.
'What was that?' he demanded, startled. Before the girl could reply, he whistled sharply and turned to the window.
Of course, a catalyst! Some element in our atmosphere makes X visible, and perhaps dangerous as well. In outer space it can't be seen, but when it comes in contact with some element in the air—I think you've got it,
