* * * * * Mitchell greeted the orangish sunrise with a feeling of defeat. He turned from the window to face the instruments of his laboratory. Mrs. Macklin had come. Numbly she signed the release allowing the restorative treatment. By the time she, Carson and the mathematician left, Macklin had been able to say "mama" and--embarrassingly--"papa" to him. Mitchell was confident he would regain his full senses and that the brain cells had only become passive, and had not decayed. But still it was only the wiping out of one horrendous mistake. Months and months of work wasted. The door banged open and a small man entered with a long, slender brown paper bag and proceeding on an aeronautical search pattern. "Dr. Ferris!" Mitchell said. "You mustn't take it so hard. I tried to get in touch with you. But at least I have been able to administer the antitoxin to Dr. Macklin." "Who gives a damn about that egghead?" Ferris said, placing the paperbag upright on the work table. "Don't you understand, man? We're rich! Where are the glasses?" "Rich?" Mitchell said. "Doctor, would you like me to help you over to your own quarters?" "Relax, Mitchell. I'm not _that_ drunk. I know what I'm talking about. I tell you the F-M Virus is going to make us rich! Powerful! Men like Elliot Macklin will be insignificant beside us." He knew that Ferris was in sober earnest. "What do you mean, Doctor?" Ferris turned, his thin face lit up with a flush of pleasure. "Mitchell, we have something to make people permanently stupid! People can stop thinking temporarily by using alcohol or narcotics or watching television. But we--only you and I--have something to let them stop thinking permanently. And we'll make them pay for it--for the shot and the rent on the condition. Who _wants_ to think? A handful of people. Who _has_ to think to do routine paperwork or push a button or pull a lever? A bunch of happy, content morons can do all of that. We'll return man to his natural, pre-evolutionary state of stupidity. As for those of us who _don't_ take the treatment, we have it made! Made!" Mitchell stared at him. "Don't you get it, Mitchell?" Ferris roared. "_We have the ultimate tranquilizer!_" Mitchell thought of the world after the F-M Virus had been given it. He thought: In his condition, if I shoved Ferris so that his head cracked into the corner of the table, no one could prove anything. I could destroy our records.... No, it wasn't any good. Some other researcher somewhere else was bound to isolate the F-M Virus. None of it was any good. He groped blindly towards the door. He had to get out, get to a drugstore, buy some aspirins. His head was killing him. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Headache, by Jim Harmon