had a cigarette this morning. I can smell it clear
over here, and it's bringing tears to my eyes. And if I didn't know
better I'd swear neither of you had had a bath in a week. Every odor in
town has suddenly turned foul--"

"_Magnified_, you mean," said Jake. "Perfume still smells sweet--there's
just too much of it. The same with cinnamon; I tried it. Cried for half
an hour, but it still smelled like cinnamon. No, I don't think the
_smells_ have changed any."

"But what, then?"

"Our noses have changed, obviously." Jake paced the floor in excitement.
"Look at our dogs! They've never had colds--and they practically live by
their noses. Other animals--all dependent on their senses of smell for
survival--and none of them ever have anything even vaguely reminiscent
of a common cold. The multicentric virus hits primates only--_and it
reaches its fullest parasitic powers in man alone_!"

Coffin shook his head miserably. "But why this horrible stench all of a
sudden? I haven't had a cold in weeks--"

"Of course not! That's just what I'm trying to say," Jake cried. "Look,
why do we have any sense of smell at all? Because we have tiny olfactory
nerve endings buried in the mucous membrane of our noses and throats.
But we have always had the virus living there, too, colds or no colds,
throughout our entire lifetime. It's _always_ been there, anchored in
the same cells, parasitizing the same sensitive tissues that carry our
olfactory nerve endings, numbing them and crippling them, making them
practically useless as sensory organs. No wonder we never smelled
anything before! Those poor little nerve endings never had a chance!"

"Until we came along in our shining armor and destroyed the virus," said
Phillip.

"Oh, we didn't destroy it. We merely stripped it of a very slippery
protective mechanism against normal body defences." Jake perched on the
edge of the desk, his dark face intense. "These two months since we had
our shots have witnessed a battle to the death between our bodies and
the virus. With the help of the vaccine, our bodies have won, that's
all--stripped away the last vestiges of an invader that has been almost
a part of our normal physiology since the beginning of time. And now for
the first time those crippled little nerve endings are just beginning to
function."

"God help us," Coffin groaned. "You think it'll get worse?"

"And worse. And still worse," said Jake.

"I wonder," said Phillip slowly, "what t