sat, noting the phone book he had used,
studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she
asked.

Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single
government worker sick."

"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."

"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own
scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of
office workers--business, not government--and new parents and newly
engaged girls and...." He shrugged.

"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"

Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just
guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."

"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big
offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and
two-girl offices or small businesses."

"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor,
dentist or attorney?"

"Nor a single postal worker."

Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable
thing. Thank heaven for--"

He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before
both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her
teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.

Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half
the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."

"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same
thing--only not quite as severe--in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."

"Writers?"

"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the
hard hit."

"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are
fine--writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."

Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a
country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about.
Nobody's sick in his valley."

"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his
cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all
lumped together."

"What does it show?"

"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up--no medical releases. Must
mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the
first hit?"

"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass