yes--but nothing of a group nature. What little panic there was at the
beginning disappeared once people realized that there was no place to
go. And a grim passivity had settled upon the survivors. Civilization
did not break down. It endured. The mechanics remained intact. People
had to do something even if it was only routine counterfeit of normal
life--the stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.

It would have been far more odd, Mary decided, if mankind had given way
to panic. Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as terrible as
this--and racial memory is long. The same grim patience of the past was
here in the present. Man would somehow survive, and civilization go
on.

It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct. The whole vast
resources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity were focused
upon Thurston's Disease. And the disease would yield. Humanity waited
with childlike confidence for the miracle that would save it. And the
miracle would happen, Mary knew it with a calm certainty as she stood in
the cross corridor at the end of the hall, looking down the thirty yards
of tile that separated her from the elevator that would carry her up to
the clinic and oblivion. It might be too late for her, but not for the
race. Nature had tried unaided to destroy man before--and had failed.
And her unholy alliance with man's genius would also fail.

She wondered as she walked down the corridor if the others who had
sickened and died felt as she did. She speculated with grim amusement
whether Walter Kramer would be as impersonal as he was with the others,
when he performed the post-mortem on her body. She shivered at the
thought of that bare sterile room and the shining table. Death was not a
pretty thing. But she could meet it with resignation if not with
courage. She had already seen too much for it to have any meaning. She
did not falter as she placed a finger on the elevator button.

Poor Walter--she sighed. Sometimes it was harder to be among the living.
It was good that she didn't let him know how she felt. She had sensed a
change in him recently. His friendly impersonality had become merely
friendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed into
something else. But it wouldn't now. She sighed again. His hardness had
been a tower of strength. And his bitter gallows humor had furnished a
wry relief to grim reality. It had been nice to work with him. She
wondered if he would miss her.