She began to cry silently, the big tears rolling slowly on to the pillow. I stroked her damp hair back from her forehead and kissed her eyes gently. "Maybe you aren't sterile," I said hopefully, "and even if you are it doesn't matter. I love you, and I'll always love you, whether we have children or not." * * * * * "I wonder how many years we'll have to spend cooped up in here?" I said, half-seriously to Dr. Hallam later that night. Pat was sleeping soundly under the influence of a capsule of sodium amytal he had given her. We had cooked a steak dinner and now we sat, weary but relieved, over our coffee. "Lord alone knows," he said. "We'll have to stay here now until we see if you and I are going to catch this thing and what the effects will be. I hope for the sake of our research project we do get it, although I'm not happy about being a guinea pig. Even if it proves to be a suitable weapon we still have to come up with a cure for it, or rather a vaccine to prevent it, so our own people and our allies are protected." "Why include the allies?" I said, merely for the sake of argument. "Won't that increase the risk of the Reds learning our plans?" "It will, unless we take a calculated risk. I believe we should manufacture vaccine and stockpile it, not to be issued until the disease is actually causing epidemics in Russia. Then we can fly the vaccine all over the world and let our friends use it. Some people may catch the disease, but not too many. We might even offer some to the Russians, to allay their suspicions, making sure it's too late to help much." "But don't you think they'll get wise?" "Of course! But if we do it right I believe they won't dare to use open aggression any more than we are doing." "This kind of undeclared war could go on interminably, as the Cold War seemed to do back in the Fifties," I said gloomily. "It probably could," Hallam agreed. "Our one hope is to effect a change in leaders, or at least in policy, in Russia. Maybe, just maybe, new leaders will arise who will work with the democracies for a world system of government." "A faint hope," I said, "but I'll go to bed now before that cheerful thought yields to glum reality." I checked Pat before I turned in. She was resting well and I thought she looked a little less feverish. Her head felt cooler and her pulse was about normal. Sadly, thinking of her loss and mine, I closed the door behind me. * * * * *