“Is it possible?” Hardanger’s tone was dry but his face was set. “A deadlier poison than this damn’ botulinus? Seems kind of superfluous to me.”
“Botulinus has its drawback,” Gregori said quietly. “From a military viewpoint that is. Botulinus you must breathe or swallow to become infected. It is not contagious. Also, we suspect that a few countries may have produced a form of vaccine against even the refined type of drug we have developed here. But there is no vaccine on earth to counteract the newest virus we have produced — and it’s as contagious as a bush-fire.
“This other virus is a derivative of the polio virus — infantile paralysis, if you will — but a virus the potency of which has been increased a million times by — well, the methods don’t matter and you wouldn’t understand. What does matter is this: unlike botulinus, this new polio virus is indestructible — extremes of heat and cold, oxidisation and poison have no effect upon it and its life span appears to be indefinite, although we believe it impossible — we hope it impossible — that any virus could live for more than a month in an environment completely hostile to growth and development; unlike botulinus it is highly contagious, as well as being fatal if swallowed or breathed; and, most terrible of all, we have been unable to discover a vaccine for it. I myself am convinced that we can never discover a vaccine against it.” He smiled without humour. “To this virus we have given a highly unscientific name, but one that describes it perfectly — the Satan Bug. It is the most terrible and terrifying weapon mankind has ever known or ever will know.”
“No vaccine?” Hardanger said. His tone wasn’t dry this time but his lips were. “No vaccine at all?”
“We have given up hope. Only a few days ago, as you will recall, Colonel Weybridge, Dr. Baxter thought he had found it — but we were completely wrong. There is no hope, none in the world. Now all our efforts are concentrated on evolving an attenuated strain with a limited life-span. In its present form, we obviously cannot use it. But when we do get a form with a limited life-span — and its death must be caused by oxidisation — then we have the ultimate weapon. When that day comes all the nations of the world may as well destroy their nuclear weapons. From a nuclear attack, no matter how intense, there will always be survivors. The Americans have calculated that even a full-scale Soviet nuclear attack on their country, with all the resources at Russia’s disposal, would cause no more than seventy million deaths — no more, I say! — with possibly several million others as a result of radiation. But half the nation would survive, and in a generation or two that nation would rise again. But a nation attacked by the Satan Bug would never rise again: for there would be no survivors.”
I hadn’t been wrong about Hardanger’s lips being dry, he was licking them to make speaking easier. Someone should see this, I thought. Hardanger scared. Hardanger truly and genuinely frightened. The penitentiaries of Britain were full of people who would never have believed it.
“And until then,” Hardanger said quietly. “Until you have evolved this limited life-strain?”
“Until then?” Gregori stared down at the concrete floor. “Until then? Let me put it this way. In its final form the Satan Bug is an extremely refined powder. I take a salt-spoon of this powder, go outside in the grounds of Mordon and turn the salt-spoon upside down. What happens? Every person in Mordon would be dead within an hour, the whole of Wiltshire would be an open tomb by dawn. In a week, ten days, all life would have ceased to exist in Britain. I mean all life. The Plague, the Black Death — was nothing compared with this. Long before the last man died in agony ships or planes or birds or just the waters of the North Sea would have carried the Satan Bug to Europe. We can conceive of no obstacle that can stop its eventual world-wide spread. Two months I would say, two months at the very most.
“Think of it, Superintendent, think of it. If you can, that is, for it is something really beyond our conception, beyond human imagination. The Lapp trapping in the far north of Sweden. The Chinese peasant tilling his rice-fields in the Yangtse valley. The cattle rancher on his station in the Australian outback, the shopper in Fifth Avenue, the primitive in Tierra del Fuego. Dead. All dead. Because I turned a salt-spoon upside down. Nothing, nothing, nothing can stop the Satan Bug. Eventually all forms of life will perish. Who, what will be the last to go? I cannot say. Perhaps the great albatross for ever winging its way round the bottom of the world. Perhaps a handful of Eskimos deep in the Arctic basin. But the seas travel the world over, and so also do the winds: one day, one day soon, they too would die.”
By this time I felt like lighting a cigarette myself and I did. If any enterprising company had got around to running a passenger rocket service to the moon by the time the Satan Bug got loose, they wouldn’t have to spend all that much on advertising.
“What I’m afraid of you see,” Gregori went on quietly,” is what we may find behind that door. I have not the mind of a detective, but I can see things when they lie plainly before me. Whoever broke his way into Mordon was a desperate man playing for desperate stakes. The end justified by any means — and the only ends to justify such terrible means would be some of the stocks in the virus cupboard.”
“Cupboard?” Hardanger drew down his bushy brows “Don’t you lock those damn’ germs away somewhere safe?”
“They are safe,” I said. “The lab walls are of reinforced concrete and paneled with heavy-gauge mild steel. No windows, of course. This door is the only way in. Why shouldn’t it be safe in a cupboard?”
“I didn’t know.” Hardanger turned back to Oregon. “Please go on.”
“That’s all.” Gregori shrugged. “A desperate man. A man in a great hurry. The key to the locker — just wood and glass — I have in my hands here. See? He would have to break in. In his haste and with the use of force who knows what damage he may not have done, what virus containers he might not have knocked over or broken? If one of those had been a Satan Bug container, and there are but three in existence . . . Maybe it’s only a very remote chance. But I say to you, in all sincerity and earnestness, if there was only one chance in a hundred million of a Satan Bug container having been broken, there is still more than ample justification for never opening that door again. For if one is
broken and one cubic centimetre of tainted air escapes—–”
He broke off and lifted his hands helplessly. “Have we the right to take upon ourselves the responsibility of being the executioners of mankind?”
“General Cliveden?” Hardanger said.
“I’m afraid I agree. Seal it up.”
“Colonel Weybridge? ”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Weybridge took off his cap, ran his hand through the short dark hair. “Yes, I do now. Seal the damn’ place up.”
“Well. You’re the three men who should really know what they are talking about” Hardanger pursed his lips for a moment, then glanced at me. “In the face of expert unanimity, it should be interesting to hear what Cavell thinks.” ”
“Cavell thinks they’re a pack of old women,” I said. “I think your minds are so gummed up with the idea of the Satan Bug on the loose that you’re incapable of thinking at all, far less thinking straight. Let’s look at the central fact — central supposition, rather. Dr. Gregori bases all his fears on the assumption that someone has broken in and stolen the viruses. He thinks there’s one chance in a thousand that one of the containers may have been broken, so if that door is opened there’s one chance in a thousand of menace to mankind. But if he has actually stolen the Satan Bug, then the menace to mankind becomes not one in a thousand — but a thousand to one. For heaven’s sake take the blinkers off for a moment and try to see that a man on the loose with the viruses presents an infinitely greater danger than the remote chance of his having broken one inside those doors. Simple logic says that we must guard against the greater danger. So we must get inside the room — how else can we begin to get any trace of the thief and killer, to try to guard against the infinitely greater danger? We must, I say.”