"Mrs. Macklin! I think I had better talk to you later when you are calmer."
Mitchell dropped the receiver heavily. "What could be wrong with Macklin?" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone.
Ferris frowned, making quotation marks above his nose. "Let's have a look at the test animals."
Together they marched over to the cages and peered through the honeycomb pattern of the wire. The test chimp, Dean, was sitting peacefully in a corner scratching under his arms with the back of his knuckles. Jerry, their control in the experiment, who was practically Dean's twin except that he had received no injection of the E-M Virus, was stomping up and down punching his fingers through the wire, worrying the lock on the cage.
"Jerry is a great deal more active than Dean," Mitchell said.
"Yes, but Dean isn't sick. He just doesn't seem to have as much nervous energy to burn up. Nothing wrong with his thyroid either."
They went to the smaller cages. They found the situation with the rats, Bud and Lou, much the same.
"I don't know. Maybe they just have tired blood," Mitchell ventured.
"Iron deficiency anemia?"
"Never mind, doctor. It was a form of humor. I think we had better see exactly what is wrong with Elliot Macklin."