CHAPTER 1

"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to cooperate in the experiment?" Ferris asked eagerly.

"How are you going to go about forcing him, Doctor?" Mitchell inquired. "He outweighs you by fifty pounds and you needn't look to me for help against that repatriated fullback."

Ferris fingered the collar of his starched lab smock. "Guess I got carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a quick, dramatic test. We've had it if he turns us down."

"I know," Mitchell said, exhaling deeply. "Somehow the men with the money just can't seem to understand basic research. Who would have financed a study of cyclic periods of the hedgehog? Yet the information gained from that study is vital in cancer research."

"When we prove our results that should be of enough practical value for anyone. But those crummy trustees didn't even leave us enough for a field test." Ferris scrubbed his thin hand over the bony ridge of his forehead. "I've been worrying so much about this I've got the ancestor of all headaches."

Mitchell's blue eyes narrowed and his boyish face took on an expression of demonic intensity. "Ferris, would you consider—?"

"No!" the smaller man yelled. "You can't expect me to violate professional ethics and test my own discovery on myself."

"Our discovery," Mitchell said politely.

"That's what I meant to say. But I'm not sure it would be completely ethical with even a discovery partly mine."

"You're right. Besides who cares if you or I are cured of headaches? Our reputations don't go outside our own fields," Mitchell said. "But now Macklin—"

Elliot Macklin had inherited the reputation of the late Albert Einstein in the popular mind. He was the man people thought of when the word "mathematician" or even "scientist" was mentioned. No one knew whether his Theory of Spatium was correct or not because no one had yet been able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but looked in his late thirties, with the build of a football player. The government took up a lot of his time using him as the symbol of the Ideal Scientist to help recruit Science and Engineering Cadets.

For the past seven years Macklin—who was the Advanced Studies Department of Firestone University—had been involved in devising a faster-than-light drive to help the Army reach Pluto and eventually the nearer stars. Mitchell had overheard two coeds talking and so knew that the project was nearing completion. If so, it was a case of Ad astra per aspirin.

The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health.

Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild stroke ... or at least a vascular spasm of a cerebral artery. It was known that he suffered from the vilest variety of migraine. A cycle of the headaches had caused him to be absent from his classes for several weeks, and there were an unusual number of military uniforms seen around the campus.

Ferris paced off the tidy measurements of the office outside the laboratory in the biology building. Mitchell sat slumped in the chair behind the blond imitation wood desk, watching him disinterestedly.

"Do you suppose the Great Man will actually show up?" Ferris demanded, pausing in mid-stride.

"I imagine he will," Mitchell said. "Macklin's always seemed a decent enough fellow when I've had lunch with him or seen him at the trustees meetings."

"He's always treated me like dirt," Ferris said heatedly. "Everyone on this campus treats biologists like dirt. Sometimes I want to bash in their smug faces."

Sometimes, Mitchell reflected, Ferris displayed a certain lack of scientific detachment.

There came a discreet knock on the door.

"Please come in," Mitchell said.

Elliot Macklin entered in a cloud of pipe smoke and a tweed jacket. He looked more than a little like a postgraduate student, and Mitchell suspected that that was his intention.

He shook hands warmly with Mitchell. "Good of you to ask me over, Steven."

Macklin threw a big arm across Ferris' shoulders. "How have you been, Harold?"

Ferris' face flickered between pink and white. "Fine, thank you, doctor."

Macklin dropped on the edge of the desk and adjusted his pipe. "Now what's this about you wanting my help on something? And please keep the explanation simple. Biology isn't my field, you know."

Mitchell moved around the desk casually. "Actually, Doctor, we haven't the right to ask this of a man of your importance. There may be an element of risk."

The mathematician clamped onto his pipe and showed his teeth. "Now you have me intrigued. What is it all about?"

"Doctor, we understand you have severe headaches," Mitchell said.

Macklin nodded. "That's right, Steven. Migraine."

"That must be terrible," Ferris said. "All your fine reputation and lavish salary can't be much consolation when that ripping, tearing agony begins, can it?"

"No, Harold, it isn't," Macklin admitted. "What does your project have to do with my headaches?"

"Doctor," Mitchell said, "what would you say the most common complaint of man is?"

"I would have said the common cold," Macklin replied, "but I suppose from what you have said you mean headaches."

"Headaches," Mitchell agreed. "Everybody has them at some time in his life. Some people have them every day. Some are driven to suicide by their headaches."

"Yes," Macklin said.

"But think," Ferris interjected, "what a boon it would be if everyone could be cured of headaches forever by one simple injection."

"I don't suppose the manufacturers of aspirin would like you. But it would please about everybody else."

"Aspirins would still be used to reduce fever and relieve muscular pains," Mitchell said.

"I see. Are you two saying you have such a shot? Can you cure headaches?"

"We think we can," Ferris said.

"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?" Macklin asked. "I know that much about the subject."

"There are a number of different causes for headaches—nervous strain, fatigue, physical diseases from kidney complaints to tumors, over-indulgence—but there is one effect of all of this, the one real cause of headaches," Mitchell announced.

"We have definitely established this for this first time," Ferris added.

"That's fine," Macklin said, sucking on his pipe. "And this effect that produces headaches is?"

"The pressure effect caused by pituitrin in the brain," Mitchell said eagerly. "That is, the constriction of blood vessels in the telencephalon section of the frontal lobes. It's caused by an over-production of the pituitary gland. We have artificially bred a virus that feeds on pituitrin."

"That may mean the end of headaches, but I would think it would mean the end of the race as well," Macklin said. "In certain areas it is valuable to have a constriction of blood vessels."

"The virus," Ferris explained, "can easily be localized and stabilized. A colony of virus in the brain cells will relax the cerebral vessels—and only the cerebral vessels—so that the cerebrospinal fluid doesn't create pressure in the cavities of the brain."

The mathematician took the pipe out of his mouth. "If this really works, I could stop using that damned gynergen, couldn't I? The stuff makes me violently sick to my stomach. But it's better than the migraine. How should I go about removing my curse?" He reinserted the pipe.

"I assure you, you can forget ergotamine tartrate," Ferris said. "Our discovery will work."

"Will work," Macklin said thoughtfully. "The operative word. It hasn't worked then?"

"Certainly it has," Ferris said. "On rats, on chimps...."

"But not on humans?" Macklin asked.

"Not yet," Mitchell admitted.

"Well," Macklin said. "Well." He thumped pipe ashes out into his palm. "Certainly you can get volunteers. Convicts. Conscientious objectors from the Army."

"We want you," Ferris told him.

Macklin coughed. "I don't want to overestimate my value but the government wouldn't like it very well if I died in the middle of this project. My wife would like it even less."

Ferris turned his back on the mathematician. Mitchell could see him mouthing the word yellow.

"Doctor," Mitchell said quickly, "I know it's a tremendous favor to ask of a man of your position. But you can understand our problem. Unless we can produce quick, conclusive and dramatic proof of our studies we can get no more financial backing. We should run a large-scale field test. But we haven't the time or money for that. We can cure the headaches of one person and that's the limit of our resources."

"I'm tempted," Macklin said hesitantly, "but the answer is go. I mean 'no'. I'd like to help you out, but I'm afraid I owe too much to others to take the rest—the risk, I mean."

Macklin ran the back of his knuckles across his forehead. "I really would like to take you up on it. When I start making slips like that it means another attack of migraine. The drilling, grinding pain through my temples and around my eyeballs. The flashes of light, the rioting pools of color playing on the back of my lids. Ugh."

Ferris smiled. "Gynergen makes you sick, does it, doctor? Produces nausea, eh? The pain of that turns you almost wrong side out, doesn't it? You aren't much better off with it than without, are you? I've heard some say they preferred the migraine."

Macklin carefully arranged his pipe along with the tools he used to tend it in a worn leather case. "Tell me," he said, "what is the worst that could happen to me?"

"Low blood pressure," Ferris said.

"That's not so bad," Macklin said. "How low can it get?"

"When your heart stops, your blood pressure goes to its lowest point," Mitchell said.

A dew of perspiration had bloomed on Macklin's forehead. "Is there much risk of that?"

"Practically none," Mitchell said. "We have to give you the worst possibilities. All our test animals survived and seem perfectly happy and contented. As I said, the virus is self-stabilizing. Ferris and I are confident that there is no danger.... But we may be wrong."

Macklin held his head in both hands. "Why did you two select me?"

"You're an important man, doctor," Ferris said. "Nobody would care if Mitchell or I cured ourselves of headaches—they might not even believe us if we said we did. But the proper authorities will believe a man of your reputation. Besides, neither of us has a record of chronic migraine. You do."

"Yes, I do," Macklin said. "Very well. Go ahead. Give me your injection."

Mitchell cleared his throat. "Are you positive, doctor?" he asked uncertainly. "Perhaps you would like a few days to think it over."

"No! I'm ready. Go ahead, right now."

"There's a simple release," Ferris said smoothly.

Macklin groped in his pocket for a pen.