e spoke, his voice was as clipped and precise as his moustache; in
fact it was so precise that it seemed almost mechanical.

"I am Dr. Lyon Sprague," he clipped. "What may I do for you?"

"I'm Steve Cornell," I said. "I'm here after source material for a
magazine article about Mekstrom's Disease. I'd prefer not to take my
material from a handout."

"Do you hope to get more?" he demanded.

"I usually do. I've seen your handouts; I could get as much by taking
last year's medical encyclopedia. Far too dry, too uninteresting, too
impersonal."

"Just exactly what do you have in mind?"

I eyed him with speculation. Here was not a man who would take kindly to
imaginative conjecture. So Dr. Lyon Sprague was not the man I'd like to
talk to. With an inward smile, I said, "I have a rather new idea about
Mekstrom's that I'd like to discuss with the right party."

He looked down at me, although our eyes were on the same level. "I doubt
that any layman could possibly come up with an idea that has not been
most thoroughly discussed here among the research staff."

"In cold words you feel that no untrained lunk has a right to have an
idea."

He froze. "I did not say that."

"You implied, at least, that suggestions from outsiders were not
welcome. I begin to understand why the Medical Center has failed to get
anywhere with Mekstrom's in the past twenty years."

"What do you mean?" he snapped.

"Merely that it is the duty of all scientists to listen to every
suggestion and to discard it only after it has been shown wrong."

"Such as--?" he said coldly, with a curl of his eyebrows.

"Well, just for instance, suppose some way were found to keep a victim
alive during the vital period, so that he would end up a complete
Mekstrom Human."

"The idea is utterly fantastic. We have no time for such idle
speculation. There is too much foggy thinking in the world already. Why,
only last week we had a Velikovsky Adherent tell us that Mekstrom's had
been predicted in the Bible. There are still people reporting flying
saucers, you know. We have no time for foolish notions or utter
nonsense."

"May I quote you?"

"Of course not," he snapped stiffly. "I'm merely pointing out that
non-medical persons cannot have the grasp--"

The door opened again and a second man entered. The new arrival had
pleasant blue eyes, a van dyke beard, and a good-natured air of
self-confidence and competence. "May I cut in?" he said to Dr. Sprague.

"C