And as before, Jim Franklen, now an older but still struggling Franklen, was still working on the same question; and Thomas Winter, also older and more resigned, urged Franklen on.
"Hindsight," said Franklen sourly, "is infinitely superior to foresight, or at least it is better accomplished."
Winter nodded. "This is what we might have expected," he said. "Years and years ago when Hohmann started this last war. Now we're all in a position where strife might well break out at any moment. And the question is whether to break out in open strife at once, or wait it out and hope for the best. We can no longer move leisurely. Hohmann has seen to it that for every advance he has made, we've made a greater one. But now he is fresh out of available land to spread out across, and he's looking at us. We've been dragged and dragged by his indirectness into this situation, where the United States as it was is no longer just we folks, but encompasses a myriad of peoples, types, and governmental ideas. True, Washington is still the seat of government, but that makes it seem as though we were to blame for our own expansion."
"I may be able to help," said Franklen at last. "I think I've got the answer, finally."
He said no more about it, but he was gone, somewhere for three months, after which he returned long enough to pick up Dr. Shield and fly with him to Europe. He gained audience with Edvard Hohmann within a few hours.
"My American friend," exclaimed Hohmann, taking Franklen's hand. "And this?"
"This is Dr. Shield," said Jim. "He's been instrumental in tracking down some of the many plagues that have hit the world."
"Perhaps he can tell us where so many different illnesses come from," said Hohmann, interestedly. "A kind Providence, that offers both myself and your government the chance, to become great—it is kind, and I say right that we have prospered—seldom seems in existence at the proper time."
"Sometimes illnesses emerge from the common welter of human frailties only because they have been eclipsed by more common ailments," said Shield. "There is one other way in which an illness can suddenly break out. Mutations. If you recall, the photographic industry nearly went out of business when atomic power came in, because there were radioactive atoms everywhere—even in the emulsions and the films themselves. That has been largely abated, but only by special methods. The world, right now, is bathed in many many more kinds of radiation than ever before. Where once only alpha particles were, now are protons and neutrons and both positive and negative electrons, and gamma from here to there in wave length. Illness comes from bugs, Commissario Hohmann, and bugs as well as humans can evolve. The possibilities are limitless, it requires only a diligent search—"