Invasion

seemed impossible. She gave up. 'I can't imagine how these things could sting anything. They are so uniform.'

'But they most certainly can,' Cassy assured her. 'We saw it happen.'

'A slit opens up at the edge,' Jesse said, taking the fork and pointing. 'Then a chromelike needle shoots out.'

'But I don't see where a slit could be,' Nancy said. Jesse shrugged. 'It's got us buffaloed as well.'

'The illness is unique,' Sheila said, refocusing the discussion. 'It basically resembles the flu symptomatically, but its incubation period is only a few hours after injection. Its course is also short and self-limited, again only a few hours except for people with chronic disease like diabetes. Unfortunately, for those people it is rapidly lethal.'

'And people with blood disease,' Jesse added in memory of Alfred Kinsella. 'True,' Sheila agreed.

'And so far no influenza virus has been isolated from any of the victims,' Pitt said.

'Also true,' Sheila said. 'And the most unique and one of the more disturbing aspect of this illness is that, after recovery the victim's personality changes. They even profess to feel better generally than they had before the illness. And they start talking about environmental problems. Isn't that right, Cassy?'

Cassy nodded: 'I discovered my fiance' out in the middle of the night having a conversation with strangers. When I asked him what he'd been talking about, he said the environment. At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn't.'

'Joy Taylor told me she and her husband were having environmental meetings every night,' Nancy said. 'Then with me she brought up the issue about the destruction of the rain forests.'

'Just a minute!' Eugene said. 'As a scientist all I'm hearing is hearsay and anecdotes. You people are getting way ahead of yourselves.'

'That's not true,' Cassy said. 'We saw the disc open, and we saw the needle. We've even seen people get stung.'

'That's not the point,' Eugene said. 'You don't have any scientific proof that the stinging caused the illness.'

'We don't have a lot of proof but the guinea pigs did get sick,' Sheila said. 'That was for sure.'

'You have to establish causality in a controlled circumstance,' Eugene said. 'That's the scientific method. Otherwise you can't talk about anything except in vague generalities. You need reproducible evidence.'

'We got these black discs,' Pitt said. 'They are not figments of one's imagination.'

Eugene pushed off the mantel and bent over to look at the two discs. 'Let me understand you: you're trying to say that this solid little thing formed a slit where there is no seam or even microscopic evidence of a door or a flap.'

'I know it sounds crazy,' Jesse said. 'I wouldn't have believed it either if we all hadn't seen it together. It was like it unzipped and then welded itself shut.'

'I just thought of something else,' Sheila said. 'We had a strange episode in the hospital. A man from housekeeping died with an unexplained circular hole in his hand. The room where he'd been found was all strangely twisted out of shape. You remember, Jesse. You were there.'

'Of course I remember,' Jesse said. 'There was some speculation about radiation, but we never found any.'

'That was the room which my fiance was in,' Cassy said.

'If that episode is associated with this flu and these black discs, we've got a bigger problem than we think,' Sheila said.

Everyone except Eugene, who'd gone back to leaning against the mantel, stared at the two black discs feeling skeptical about what their minds were telling them. Finally Cassy spoke. 'I'm sensing that we are all thinking the same thing but are afraid to say it. So I'm going to say it. Maybe these little black discs aren't from around here. Maybe these things are not from this planet.'

After an initial impatient sigh from Eugene, Cassy's comments were greeted with total silence. The sounds of respiration and the ticking of a wall clock were the only interior noise. Outside a car horn honked in the distance.

'Come to think about it,' Pitt said finally, 'The night before Beau found one of these discs, my TV blew up. In fact a lot of us students lost TVs, radios, computers, all sorts of electronic equipment if the equipment happened to be on at the time.'

'What time was that?' Sheila asked.

'Ten-fifteen,' Pitt said.

'That's when my VCR exploded,' Sheila said.

'It's also when my radio blew up,' Jonathan said.

'What radio?' Nancy asked. It was the first time she'd heard of it.

'I mean Tim's car radio,' Jonathan corrected himself.

'Do you think all those episodes could be related to these black discs?' Pitt asked.

'It's a thought,' Nancy said. 'Eugene, has that surge of powerful radio waves ever been explained?''

'No, it hasn't,' Eugene admitted. 'But I wouldn't use that fact to support some half-baked theory.'

'I don't know,' Nancy said. 'I'd say that it makes it at least suspicious.'

'Wow,' Jonathan commented, 'that would mean we're talking about an extraterrestrial virus. Cool!'

'Cool, nothing!' Nancy said. 'It would be terrifying.'

'Whoa, everybody,' Sheila warned. 'Let's not let our imaginations run away with themselves. If we start jumping to conclusions and talking about some Andromeda strain it's going to be a lot harder trying to elicit any help.'

'This is just what I was trying to warn you about,' Eugene said. 'You are all beginning to sound like a group of paranormal nuts.'

'Whether this illness comes from Earth or outer space, it's here,' Jesse said. 'I don't think we should be arguing about it, I think we better start finding out what it is and what we can do about it. I don't think we should be wasting a lot of time, because if it is spreading as fast as we think it is, we could be too late.'

'You are absolutely right,' Sheila said.

'I'll isolate the virus if it's in the sample,' Nancy said. 'I can use my own lab. No one questions what I do. Once we have the virus we can present our case all the way to Washington and the Surgeon General.'

'That's if the Surgeon General isn't already infected by the time we get the information,' Cassy said.

'That's a sobering thought,' Nancy said.

'Well, we have no choice,' Sheila said. 'Eugene is right in the sense that if we start calling around now without something more than hearsay and conjecture, no one is going to believe us.'

'I'll start the isolation in the morning,' Nancy said.

'Is there any chance I could help?' Pitt asked. 'I'm a chem major, but I've taken microbiology and worked in the hospital lab.'

'Sure,' Nancy said. 'I've noticed people acting strange at Serotec. I won't know whom to trust.'

'I'd like to offer to help figure what these black discs are,' Jesse said. 'But I wouldn't know where to start.'

'I'll take them into my lab,' Eugene offered. 'Even if it's just to prove to you alarmists that they are not from Andromeda, it will be worth my time.'

'Don't touch the edge,' Jesse warned.

'No need to worry,' Eugene said. 'We have the capability of manipulating them from a distance as if they were radioactive.'

'It's too bad we just can't talk to one of these infected people directly,' Jonathan said. 'Heck, we could just ask them what's happening. Maybe they know.'

'That would be dangerous,' Sheila said. 'There's reason to believe they are actively recruiting. They want the rest of us infected. They may even come to view us as an enemy.'

'They're recruiting all right,' Jesse said. 'I think the police chief is actively searching out people on the squad who've yet to get the illness.'

'It might be dangerous, but it might also be revealing,' Cassy said. She stared off for the moment with unseeing eyes while her mind churned.

'Cassy!' Pitt said. 'What are you thinking? I don't like that look on your face.'