One more message flashed from the moon. The pioneer was dying. His Matson's Disease had been cured but the ulcer was spreading into vital areas. However, he suggested, tiny doses of diluted venom, administered over a long period of time, might....
The message ended in the middle of a word as through their telescopes astronomers saw a great flare go up from the moon's surface, a thousand times brighter than the communications light.
The explanation was self-evident. Electron-displacement power packs were treacherous. When their stored power reached a certain minimum level they became highly explosive. The pioneer had sacrificed his remaining days of life to transmit vital information to the world which had given him birth.
Everything stopped for a day and night as the entire civilized world went into deepest mourning for the man who had died 238,840 miles away—everything but work on the fleet of spaceships. That did not even falter.
George Carlin gave up his rented room, bought a car, and drove across country to the Midwestern city housing the headquarters of Carlin Industries.
He did not get past the outer offices. Carlin Industries had been forced long before to develop a system for handling cranks and crackpots, and it operated only too well. Matson's Disease had made such changes in Carlin's features that he was not recognized. At last he was forcibly ejected.
That was his final effort. He had become a nonentity, a nobody, and so he wanted only to die. But with his identity he had lost his nerve. He did, however, have enough money to avoid drawing even one sober breath.
It is history how nine rockets reached the moon, transferred their remaining fuel, and one finally returned bearing a cargo of living moon-lice as a gift beyond all price. The frantic medical campaign, during which two thousand victims of Matson's Disease had their deaths hastened as doctors sought the proper dosage, is also history.
But then there was a cure—and another—and still more. The treatment became standardized as means were found for stabilizing the venom and controlling its potency. The government assumed charge, and every citizen afflicted with the plague was not only entitled to treatment but compelled to take it.