The Rangers kept busy. Only one or two remained in the house to cook and look after Kim and me. The rest lay low during the day and reconnoitred by night so that they were soon familiar with the layout of the virus factory and the surrounding country. They briefed me on every trip they made until I felt I knew it almost as well as if I'd seen it myself.
That week, Anders came three times. We always had guards posted and, once he knew he was safe, he relaxed and talked quite volubly in Russian or English.
"It may be fortunate for you that you have had Songho Fever," Anders said, during one of these early talks.
"Why so?"
"The western world has not yet discovered the cause of it, but we have."
He was obviously proud of the achievements of his laboratory, in spite of the horrible use to which they had been put.
"It's a very simple virus, carried, as you suspected, by mites which live on small rodents. We have now taken that virus and changed it so that it does not require to pass through other animals as part of its life cycle. It can now pass in droplets of sputum from one man to another. In the process of change it has become much more virulent, almost one hundred percent fatal, I would say, with an incubation period of only one or two days. Also it is now extremely infectious and, I believe, far worse than the measlepox. That is the virus we have begun producing, in large quantities, in our factory."
"What are the symptoms of this new disease?" I asked.
"It acts much like the natural disease except for its extreme rapidity. There is a tremendous increase in the hemorrhagic tendency, with fatal bleeding into the gastrointestinal tract, the urinary system, or sometimes the lungs. The victims die in shock within forty-eight hours, as a rule."
"How do you know how it will act on human beings?" I said curiously although I thought I already knew the answer.