The last vial

A little late, I pulled my Ferguson Cross-Country '62 into the space reserved for me and stepped out. The clouds were low and moving fast but the rain was soft on my bare grey h...

When the Pathology Lab was being built, Dr. Hallam had insisted on a completely separate Research Unit on the third floor. It sat up there, next to the Animal House, a part of w...

The sloop bucked a little as the bow chopped into a wave and fell a few points off course. The steady chugging of the small marine engine pushed her on, sidling up over the low...

We came back through the big glass doors hand in hand. The night watchman, making his last round, nodded and smiled at us as we wound up the stairs to the penthouse. We went thr...

At midnight I awoke suddenly. My mind was alert and bright, with that extreme clarity which comes sometimes after working hard on a problem. The moon was pouring a pale light ov...

It wasn't far to Pat's apartment. The APC's were working and the ache in my head had gone, replaced by a soreness over the actual bruise. I drove slowly, reluctant to part with...

"My theory was right. The bomb was full of virus," he said, his face lighting up happily for an instant. Then, as the thrill of discovery faded, grimness clouded his eyes. "At l...

In the early part of the new year, work piled up increasingly. Under instruction from the Minister of Health of British Columbia, the Virus Research Laboratory was turned over t...

The Ides of March, as I like to call the month, were upon us. Once in a while the sun peered through the heavy clouds, sliding its pale beams between their tumbling banks to rea...

Towards the end of April the Canadian research team left for Hong Kong. Now that intercontinental air traffic had ceased, Sea Island was quieter than usual, but even so, the roa...

The sunny days slid by as we explored farther and farther north. The weather held fair all that month except for a few quick showers that washed the warm decks and cooled the qu...

The week after our landing in Japan, we moved out again with full GI equipment. Our enemy clothing and arms went along in sealed wooden boxes as cargo, not to be opened again un...

I had a headache--a sonofabitch of a headache to put it bluntly, and my eyes felt as if some gremlin had got in behind them and was squeezing hard on the eyeballs. It had starte...

At last light we sent out a small party to set up a diversionary attack behind the factory. There was a little gully screened by low bushes that seemed a suitable place from whi...

There was a faint smell of decay, of cold moist flesh, in the air. I shoved up from the sand and rose wearily to my feet. I looked down and saw the wet stain spreading over me f...

"We have to get out of here," I said to Anders one day in the last week, after we had examined our patients. "The A-bomb carrier is probably on its way right now."

"Fasten your seat belts." The light flashed on in the passenger cabin of the Canadian Pacific Airlines jet. We were going down through the overcast. Vancouver was ten minutes away.