"We are trying to stop being fools. Or some of us are. But something seems to defeat our efforts."
"Yes." Keen interest showed on the face of the Martian. "Do you have this problem too? I wonder if it's the same something—"
"We live in the same universe."
"Can you state the problem more exactly?"
"I can give you an illustration of it. At the same time, I will give you my reason for being here." Ronson took a deep breath, considered the words he was going to use. "I'm a bio-physicist. This means that my specialty is the living cell and the changes that can and do take place in it. We have a name for one of the changes that may take place there—cancer."
"A disease."
"Yes. And a very serious one. Often tied up with radioactivity, it is a change that takes place in the interior of a living cell."
"I know—"
"No less than eight times in the past hundred years, human doctors have found a cure for this mutation within the cell. Each cure worked, perfectly, for a time."
"And then—"