The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Gray Plague, by Raymond F. Jones

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Title: The Great Gray Plague

Author: Raymond F. Jones

Release Date: February 18, 2009 [EBook #28118]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE

BY RAYMOND F. JONES

There is no enemy so hard to fight as a dull gray fog. It's not
solid enough to beat, too indefinite to kill, and too omnipresent
to escape.

[Transcribers Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact and
Science Fiction February 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Illustration]

Dr. William Baker was fifty and didn't mind it a bit. Fifty was a
tremendously satisfying age. With that exact number of years behind him
a man had stature that could be had in no other way. Younger men, who
achieve vast things at, say, thirty-five, are always spoken of with
their age as a factor. And no matter what the intent of the connection,
when a man's accomplishments are linked to the number of years since he
was born there is always a sense of apologia about it.

But when a man is fifty his age is no longer mentioned. His name stands
alone on whatever foundation his achievements have provided. He has
stature without apology, if the years have been profitably spent.

William Baker considered his years had been very profitably spent. He
had achieved the Ph. D. and the D. Sc. degrees in the widely separated
fields of electronics and chemistry. He had been responsible for some of
the most important radar developments of the World War II period. And
now he held a post that was the crowning achievement of those years of
study and effort.

On this day of his fiftieth birthday he walked briskly along the
corridor of the Bureau building. He paused only when he came to the
glass door which was lettered in gold: National Bureau of Scientific
Development,