he anthropologists will say."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe it was just a single mutation somewhere back there. Just a tiny
change of cell structure or metabolism that left one line of primates
vulnerable to an invader no other would harbor. Why else should man have
begun to flower and blossom intellectually--grow to depend so much on
his brains instead of his brawn that he could rise above all others?
What better reason than because somewhere along the line in the world of
fang and claw _he suddenly lost his sense of smell_?"

They stared at each other. "Well, he's got it back again now," Coffin
wailed, "and he's not going to like it a bit."

"No, he surely isn't," Jake agreed. "He's going to start looking very
quickly for someone to blame, I think."

They both looked at Coffin.

"Now don't be ridiculous, boys," said Coffin, turning white. "We're in
this together. Phillip, it was your idea in the first place--you said so
yourself! You can't leave me now--"

The telephone jangled. They heard the frightened voice of the secretary
clear across the room. "Dr. Coffin? There was a student on the line just
a moment ago. He--he said he was coming up to see you. Now, he said, not
later."

"I'm busy," Coffin sputtered. "I can't see anyone. And I can't take any
calls."

"But he's already on his way up," the girl burst out. "He was saying
something about tearing you apart with his bare hands."

Coffin slammed down the receiver. His face was the color of lead.
"They'll crucify me!" he sobbed. "Jake--Phillip--you've got to help me."

Phillip sighed and unlocked the door. "Send a girl down to the freezer
and have her bring up all the live cold virus she can find. Get us some
inoculated monkeys and a few dozen dogs." He turned to Coffin. "And
stop sniveling. You're the big publicity man around here; you're going
to handle the screaming masses, whether you like it or not."

"But what are you going to do?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Phillip, "but whatever I do is going
to cost you your shirt. We're going to find out how to catch cold again
if we have to die."

* * * * *

It was an admirable struggle, and a futile one. They sprayed their noses
and throats with enough pure culture of virulent live virus to have
condemned an ordinary man to a lifetime of sneezing, watery-eyed misery.
They didn't develop a sniffle among them. They mixed six different
strains of virus and gargled the