Jake followed them.
"We'll test at ten-minute intervals. That will be about two hours for
the last from the group," Doc decided. One of the doctors Harkness had
brought to the villages was busy cutting tiny sections from the lumps on
the men's necks, while Chris ran them through the microscope to make
sure the bugs were still alive. The regular optical mike was strong
enough for that.
Doc handed each man a bracky weed, with instructions to keep smoking, no
matter how sick it made him.
There were no results at the end of ten minutes when the first test was
made. The second, at the end of twenty minutes, was still infected with
live bugs. At the half-hour, Chris frowned.
"I can't be sure--take a look, Dan."
He bent over, moving the slide to examine another spot. "I think so. The
next one should tell."
There was no doubt about the fourth test. The bugs were dead, without a
single exception that they could find.
One by one, the men were tested and went storming out, shouting the
news. For a minute, the gathering crowd was skeptical, remembering the
other failures. Then, abruptly, men were screaming, crying and fighting
for the precious bracky, like the legions of the damned grabbing for
lottery tickets when the prize was a passport to paradise.
Jake swore as he moved toward the door. "We're low on bracky here. Have
to get a supply from Edison, I guess, and cart it to the shuttle.
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