Wiley Connors, the Vice President, after being duly sworn into office, scrapped all of Murdock's plans and began building his own political platform for the election of 1976, barely a year off. He thought it was time once again to hit the older voters--geriatrics was doing wonders for longevity since the new drug, Protinose, made possible the stimulation of new growth of active cells in liver, kidneys, and pancreas--where they lived: Free medical care. It had failed in the past, but at that time there were not enough old voters to carry it. Now, with no Congressional meddling (the Senators and House members who were still in office considered the job a sinecure), and the vote-machines making a genuine voice-of-the-people possible, it might keep the tide flowing toward the Democratic Party in the upcoming fall. At this time, Lloyd Bodger, who had been Speakster of the House during Murdock's tenure, and was now Vice President of the country, was stricken in his office by an onslaught of what was first diagnosed as a perforated ulcer, but on the operating table was discovered to be duodenal cancer. The extensive inroads of the malignancy made its removal impossible without terminating the life of the patient, so a new method of treatment was attempted. A length of heavy lead foil, plastic-coated, and impregnated with radium, was wound about the infested area and the incision was closed. In theory, while the lead foil shielded Bodger's organs from the radium, the radium could bathe the malignant cells alone in its deadly emanations. This method, heretofore theorized but never tried, was the last hope of saving Bodger's life. In three weeks, at which time the malignancy should be gone, Bodger underwent surgery once more for the removal of the foil. The malignancy, it was found, had vanished as hoped, but an unexpected development had occurred. In some manner, the cell structure of Bodger's spleen and pancreas had been affected by the irradiation to the extent that the blood cells and insulin respectively formed by these organs were abnormal. The iron in the hemoglobin was found to be radioactive to the ratio of one part in five million, and on the increase, while the insulin was contaminated with a change of the carbon atom in the molecule to Carbon-14, the two developments making a high concentration of radiation near the thoracic cavity, a slight rise in which could prove fatal. Bodger was put on a special diet which included a daily intake of five hundred cubic centimeters of cadmium-gel, the doctors hoping that the radiation-absorption of the cadmium would keep physical deterioration to a minimum. The best prognosis they could agree upon for Bodger, however, was six more months of life. * * * * *