Mendelhaus winked at his guest.
“Seevers calls it masochism when we observe a fast-day or do penance.
And there he sits, ripping off patches of his own hide to look at through his peeping glass. Masochism—heh!”
“Get out, preacher!” the scientist bellowed.
Mendelhaus laughed mockingly, nodded Paul toward a chair, and left the lab.
Paul sat uneasily watching the back of Seevers’ lab jacket.
“Nice bunch of people really—these black-frocked yahoos,” Seevers murmured conversationally. “If they’d just stop trying to convert me.”
“Doctor Seevers, maybe I’d better—”
“Quiet!
You bother me. And sit still, I can’t stand to have people running in and out of here.
You’re in; now stay in.”
Paul fell silent.
He was uncertain whether or not Seevers was a dermie.
The small man’s lab jacket bunched up to hide the back of his neck, and the sleeves covered his arms.
His hands were rubber-gloved, and a knot of white cord behind his head told Paul that he was wearing a gauze mask.
His ears were bright pink, but their color was meaningless; it took several months for the gray coloring to seep to all areas of the skin.
But Paul guessed he was a dermie—and wearing the gloves and mask to keep his equipment sterile.
He glanced idly around the large room.
There were several glass cages of rats against the wall.
They seemed airtight, with ducts for forced ventilation.
About half the rats were afflicted with neuroderm in its various stages.
A few wore shaved patches of skin where the disease had been freshly and forcibly inflicted.
Paul caught the fleeting impression that several of the animals were staring at him fixedly.
He shuddered and looked away.
He glanced casually at the usual maze of laboratory glassware, then turned his attention to a pair of hemispheres, suspended like a trophy on the wall.
He recognized them as the twin halves of one of the meteorites, with the small jelly-pocket in the center.
Beyond it hung a large picture frame containing several typewritten sheets.
Another frame held four pictures of bearded scientists from another century, obviously clipped from magazine or textbook.
There was nothing spectacular about the lab.
It smelled of clean dust and sour things.
Just a small respectable workshop.
Seevers’ chair creaked suddenly.
“It checks,” he said to himself. “It checks again.
Forty per cent increase.”
He threw down the stub pencil and whirled suddenly.
Paul saw a pudgy round face with glittering eyes.
A dark splotch of neuroderm had crept up from the chin to split his mouth and cover one cheek and an eye, giving him the appearance of a black and white bulldog with a mixed color muzzle.
“It checks,” he barked at Paul, then smirked contentedly.
“What checks?”
The scientist rolled up a sleeve to display a patch of adhesive tape on a portion of his arm which had been discolored by the disease.
“Here,” he grunted. “Two weeks ago this area was normal.
I took a centimeter of skin from right next to this one, and counted the nerve endings.
Since that time, the derm’s crept down over the area.
I took another square centimeter today, and recounted.
Forty per cent increase.”
Paul frowned with disbelief.
It was generally known that neuroderm had a sensitizing effect, but new nerve endings… No. He didn’t believe it.
“Third time I’ve checked it,” Seevers said happily. “One place ran up to sixty-five per cent.
Heh!
Smart little bugs, aren’t they?