Outside the room, the war went on, drawing toward a close. The supposed
partial cure was good propaganda, if nothing else, and Jake was widening
his territory steadily. There was only token resistance against him. He
had the Southport shuttles now to cover huge areas in a hurry. But
inside the room, the battle was less successful. It wasn't the
accelerator. It wasn't the tablets of anodyne. They even tried sweeping
the floor and using the dust without results.
Then another test in the room, made with four volunteers Jake selected,
yielded complete cures after injections with plain salt water in place
of plasma.
The plague speeded up again. About four people out of a hundred now
seemed to have caught the disease and cured themselves. They accounted
for what faith was left in Doc's plasma and gave some unfounded hope to
the others.
Northport fell a week later, putting the whole planet in rebel hands.
Jake returned, wearier than ever. He'd proved to be one of the natural
immunes, but the weight of the campaign that could only end in a defeat
by the plague left him no room to rejoice in his personal fortune.
This time he looked completely defeated. And a moment later, Doc saw why
as Jake flipped a flimsy sheet onto the table. It bore the seals of
Space and Medical Lobbies.
Jake pointed upwards. "The war rockets are there, all right.
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