."

* * * * *

Four days later it was reported that Judge Brinton, the well-known
champion of Category rights, was ill with Blue Martian fever. Three
little-known nuclear physicists living in the same apartment in Oak
Ridge developed symptoms on the same day. Sporadic cases of Blue Martian
flared up all over the continent. Occasionally a whole family was
affected--husband, wife, and all the children. There was a mild epidemic
at MIT, a more serious one at the School of Social Structure, and at
Harvard Medical School nearly a third of the senior class, and they the
most brilliant, were hospitalized at the same time.

Rumors blanketed the country like a fog, and people everywhere became
uneasy. There were no deaths from the illness, but the very idea that an
infectious disease could flare up unpredictably all over the nation, out
of control, was frightening. It was said that the disease had been
beamed to Earth by alien enemies from space; that all its victims became
sterile; or that their minds were permanently damaged.

It was also said, though people laughed even as they repeated the rumor,
that if you once had Blue Martian Fever you'd become immortal. This
particular theory had been clearly traced to the ravings of a red-haired
madwoman who was confined to Psycho-detention, but still it was too
ridiculous not to repeat. For a week, comedians rang a hundred changes
on the basic joke:

Wife: Drop dead!

Husband: I can't. I've had Blue Martian.

The unrest became so great that Leader Marley himself appeared on the
telecaster to reassure the nation.

He was an impressive figure on the lighted screen, resting solid and at
ease in a leather chair, raising his massive black head, lifting his big
hand to gesture as his rich voice rolled out.

"You have nothing to fear," he said. "Under your beneficent Leaders,
infectious disease has been wiped out many years ago. BureauMed informs
me that these scattered cases of Blue Martian fever have been caused by
the escape of a few _Fafli_ insects, which have, since then, been
isolated and destroyed. The illness has no serious after-effects. And as
for the rumors that it confers immortality--"

He allowed his face to break into a pitying smile as he slowly shook his
head, looking regretful and yet somehow amused.

"Those who continue to spread gossip about the fever will only reveal
themselves as either psychotics or traitors. Whichever they a