In a certain town, much like any other town, the people went about their business. At times, they were polite to each other, and at other times, not so polite. Most of the people were respectable and law abiding, and the few who were not ended up in jail sooner or later. This town was prosperous enough that only a few had to worry about having enough money to live on. The mayor thought things were going rather well.

But one day, two boys were walking home from school as they often did as they were in the habit of spending time together. When one of the boys, Perry, happened to look at his companion, Jimmy, he noticed a small gray spot on Jimmy's cheek.

"Jimmy, what's wrong with your face?" asked Perry.

"Same thing that's wrong with yours, Monkey Face," Jimmy retorted.

As Jimmy said those words, the gray spot on his face grew larger, or so it appeared to Perry.

"Maybe I look like a monkey to you, but you look like a rotting apple to me," said Perry to his friend.

Jimmy stopped walking and stared long and hard at Perry's face, looking for anything that could be wrong with it. He decided that the freckles on Perry's face were getting larger.

"You should talk. Looks like the spots on your face are taking over," said Jimmy.

Now it was Perry's turn to look Jimmy in the face. The spot on his cheek continued to grow right before his eyes.

"I'd wash that blotch off your cheek when you get home if I were you before your Mom sees it."

"Well, you'd better wash off your face before anybody sees it."

So, by the time Jimmy reached his house, he and Perry were not the best of friends. Jimmy greeted his Mother only in passing, making sure he did not give her a chance to look at him. He rushed up to the bathroom upstairs and peered anxiously into the mirror. At first, he could see nothing wrong. But after he had looked long enough, he thought, maybe, there was a small gray spot on his right cheek. He felt the skin there. Indeed, it felt just a bit tougher than the skin on the rest of his face. Maybe something was wrong with him after all.

Not knowing what else to do about it, Jimmy spent part of the afternoon doing his homework, part of it playing games on his computer, and part of it watching television. All the while, he kept fretting about the spot. When his Mother stepped into the television room, Jimmy instinctively covered his cheek. She didn't notice anything.

The situation became more awkward at the dinner table. When Jimmy kept a hand over his cheek, his Mother asked him to take his hand away from his face and show that he knew some table manners. When Jimmy moved his hand away, he realized he had made a mistake in trying to hide the gray spot. Now he would draw all the more attention to it. Jimmy talked up a storm for the next several minutes about anything that came into his head. Since his words made little sense and had no interest to anybody else, Jimmy's father finally told him to "shut his yap" and give the family some peace and quiet. When his parents went on to talk about things that were hopelessly boring, Jimmy's sister kept looking at him, as if hoping to find something wrong. Jimmy had to give her several dirty looks to make her turn away.

"Why are you constantly scratching your cheek?" asked his Mother while she was serving ice cream for dessert.

"I don't know."

"Let me take a look."

Much as Jimmy wanted to refuse, he knew he couldn't, so he clenched his teeth helplessly while his mother looked carefully at his cheek and shook her head.

"Hmm, there's this gray spot. Funny I never noticed it before. How did you get it?"

"I don't know."

"Does it bother you?"

"No."

"Then why can't you keep your hand away from it?" Father asked.

"I don't know."

"Hmm. maybe I-don't-know-itis is the sickness you've got," said Mother. "Perhaps you will have to go to the doctor. I hope it's nothing serious."

Father, in his turn, looked very carefully at the gray spot. "I've been noticing that you haven't been knowing much of anything lately," he said. "I don't know if this spot has anything to do with it or not. And your eyes are yellow, too. Did you know that?"

"No," Jimmy answered, his cheeks really burning now. "My eyes are fine. I see real good. If they were yellow, my eyes would start falling out and I wouldn't see well.

"Just look in a mirror, Yellow Eyes," said Jimmy's sister, "and you'll see how yellow your eyes are."

"We shall have to take you to the doctor tomorrow and find out what's really wrong with you," said Mother.

"I don't want to go see the doctor," Jimmy insisted. "He'll give me a shot."

"No he won't," said Mother. "He'll just look at your cheek and your eyes. Then he'll prescribe a nice cream for your cheek and some eye drops for your eyes and everything will be all right."

"No it won't," said Jimmy. "I hate eye drops."

"Listen to you mother!" Father ordered his son.

Jimmy knew when he was better off not arguing with his parents so he did not pursue the subject any further. Besides, he remembered he would get out of school if he went to the doctor, so maybe the trip would be worth it.

Jimmy's sister continued to look hard at her brother, hardly concealing her interest in seeing all that was wrong with him. When Jimmy stuck out his tongue at her, she ran through the house crying: "Jimmy is turning into a gray monster! Jimmy is turning into a gray monster!" Jimmy dutifully chased her around the house until Father stopped him on the grounds he was not well enough to exert himself so much.

Perry couldn't sleep that night for worrying about how Jimmy might have been afflicted with his strange illness and how contagious it might be. Perhaps Jimmy had eaten something wrong. His own mother was always yelling at him for not watching what he ate. It was also possible that Jimmy had done something wrong. Maybe he wasn't exercising enough. Perry ran his finger over both his cheeks. So far, so good. He looked at himself in the mirror. Still no sign of the illness. Maybe it wasn't contagious, or maybe he was just lucky not to have gotten it. However, Perry decided that for safety's sake, he should stop walking to and from school with Jimmy. More important, he would have to be on the lookout for other children who might have the disease. If he saw any signs that there might be an epidemic, he would be the first to report it and save the town.

So the next day, Perry walked to school with two other boys. It was both a relief and a satisfaction to him that Jimmy was not going to school that day. Since Perry thought he should really be on the lookout for the disease, he looked carefully at the two boys he was walking with. By the time they had reached the school, he could see that these boys, too, had gray spots on their faces. In fact, the spots appeared right before his eyes when he looked for them. One boy had the spot on his forehead, the other, right around his lips.

"How come you're looking at us like we'd turned into slimy reptiles?" one of the boys asked Perry.

Perry gathered himself together for a courageous stand because this boy was a bit bigger than he was. Then he spoke the truth.

"Because you are turning into slimy reptiles," Perry replied.

The insulted boys both dropped their school books and raised their fists. Perry's courage plummeted and he ran away as fast as he could. During school, he scrutinized the faces of all his classmates and his teachers. By lunch time, Perry had discovered the marks of disease on the faces of many of his fellow students and his teacher to boot. He had always known she was a sick woman. Now she was proving it. Unfortunately, the two boys to whom he had already spoken the truth continuing to cast threatening looks as Perry. He realized it was too dangerous to keep telling people the truth about themselves. If he did, he they would surely persecute him. An evil disposition seemed to be a symptom of the disease. Moreover, if he told his teacher what was wrong with her, she might send him to the principal. The principal! That was an idea!

Just as the bell was ringing for classes to resume after the lunch break, Perry appeared at the principal's office and announced that he had to see the principal on a very urgent matter. The secretary tried to explain to him that principal was busy reprimanding two boys who had engaged each other in a fistfight over lunch.

"But this can't wait!" Perry insisted.

"It will have to wait," the secretary replied.

"But the whole school might be infected by the time he sees me!" said Perry, growing more hysterical by the minute.

"What's going on out here!" the principal himself asked, the door of his office flung open.

"This student is---" said the secretary.

"This is something real important!" said Perry.

"Really important, you mean," said the principal.

Perry swallowed the correction and tried to find the right words for informing the principal of the crisis facing the school. As he tried to compose himself, he couldn't help but notice the two boys seated in the office. Both boys were threatening each other while the principal's back was turned. When they raised their hands, however, both showed gray claws where their hands used to be.

"Mr. Applemeier," Perry blurted out, "there's a really bad epidemic hitting the school. It makes kids' skin turn gray and -- and ---- it turns hands into claws and---"

"Perry, you are getting carried away by your imagination to the most absurd of lengths," said Mr. Applemeier. "I will have none of this. You have one hour's detention after school."

"But Mr. Applemeier---"

Then Perry saw his principal's hand turning into a gray claw right before his eyes. Perry bolted from the office and from the school.

It happened that Eugene, Jimmy's father, worked for Perry's father, Curtis. At just about the time that Perry was running from the principal's office, Eugene received a summons to his boss's office over the intercom. Eugene always went into these interviews with fear and trembling, and with good reason.

"Eugene!" Curtis snapped, as he flung a pile of papers onto the desk in Eugene's direction, "your work is an utter disgrace!"

"I'm terribly sorry it isn't up to your standards," Eugene replied, trying to look more humble and compliant than he felt.

"When are you going to be sorry enough to do your work up to my standards?" Curtis thundered while pointing a finger at his subordinate.

Eugene was cowering inside, searching for a reply that would retain his job for at least one more day, when he noticed a large gray spot on the hand that was pointed at him.

"Why, I will be sufficiently sorry when you get rid of that horrible ugly spot on your hand," said an emboldened Eugene.

"You will ---- What?"

"Just look at your hand," said Eugene.

Curtis looked at his hand in alarm and saw the gray spot for himself.

"When are you going to see a doctor about it?" Eugene asked, "it might be contagious, you know."

"Why, I think I'll have my secretary call my doctor right this minute," said a flustered Curtis.

"Now I know how my son got his gray spot," said Eugene, pressing his new advantage.

"What does your son have to do with this?"

"Why, he's got a gray spot on his cheek and you have a gray spot on your hand. Obviously, he got it from you, or from your son."

"If you value your job," said Curtis in a low, threatening voice, "you will not blame your son's trouble on me or on my son, Perry. Is that clear?"

"Loud and clear," said Eugene, who still felt better about himself and his job than he had felt in a long time.

"Say 'aah'," said Doctor Mayflower.

"Aah," Jimmy replied.

"Well, no gray spots down your throat," said the doctor.

"You want me to count my blessings?" Jimmy asked.

"You might as well. So far the gray spot on your cheek has me stumped," said Doctor Mayflower, a kind man who thought highly of his accomplishments. "You know, the funny thing about patients is that when they come in for a checkup while they're feeling good, there's something wrong with them, and when they come in complaining about something, there's nothing wrong at all."

Jimmy laughed uneasily. His anxious look into the mirror that morning had shown him a much larger gray spot than he had seen the night before.

"Well, I feel okay. Does that mean there's something wrong with me?"

"Just this hard gray spot covering half your face," muttered the doctor, "and your eyes turning yellow."

"They aren't turning yellow are they?" Jimmy asked anxiously. "They looked pretty good to me this morning."

"Sorry to say, your eyes don't look good. The gray spot on your cheek doesn't look good, either. I can see the infection spreading, too. I think I had better send a sample to the lab and see what they make of it."

Jimmy winced as the doctor scratched at the gray spot on his skin.

"There, that didn't hurt, did it?" asked the Doctor Mayflower.

"Yes."

"Hmm. Well, I'll give you a prescription for some pills that might help. You're a growing boy. You should be fine in a week or so."

The Mayor thought he was just being indulgent when he answered through the telecom that his secretary should usher the boy into his office. The job of Mayor had offered few challenges as the town seemed to run itself pretty well. Giving access to all the people, even the children, was good P.R. that should help keep him in office for another term or two.

"Have a seat, Perry," said the Mayor, putting forth his most congenial face.

Perry appeared to be a bit awed by the turquoise carpet, the dark wood paneling and the large stuffed chairs. He sat in the chair the Mayor pointed to and almost felt he was sinking into oblivion.

"What can I do for you, young man?" asked the Mayor.

"It's hard to explain, and you might not believe me, but I think this town is in real trouble."

"Why is that?" the Mayor asked, his smile starting to freeze on his face.

Perry told the story in a halting voice as if he could hardly believe it himself. He almost felt that he was betraying his best friend when he talked about Jimmy and the gray spot on his face, but he knew he had to tell the Mayor for the good of the city, regardless of the consequences for Jimmy.

"Thank you very much for the information," said the Mayor when Perry had finished saying what he had come to say. The smile was now completely frozen on his face. "I will look into the matter right away. You are a good young citizen and you have done your duty. You are to be most commended."

The Mayor shook Perry's hand vigorously and sent him on his way. The Mayor had not believed a word of Perry's story, of course, but since Doctor Mayflower was a friend of his, he thought it would make for a good excuse to call on him on the way home and shoot the breeze. As was usual on a warm spring evening, the Mayor found Doctor Mayflower sitting on a rocking chair on the front porch of his house.

"Hey Doc!"

"Hey Mayor!"

The Mayor sat down in the rocking chair next to the doctor and slapped him on the knee.

"Boy! Do I have one for you today."

"So you think you can top the tale I've got for you?" Doctor Mayflower returned.

"Just try to top this one. Little Master Perry came into my office, bold as brass, and told me that half the kids and half the teachers and the principal of the school are coming down with a disease that turns their faces gray and turns their hands into claws."

The Mayor laughed heartily, but stopped when he realized that the doctor wasn't laughing.

"I guess I can equal that," said Doctor Mayflower. "I examined one boy this morning who had a gray spot on his cheek. His eyes were turning yellow, too. Just after lunch, Perry's Dad himself came in. Sure enough, he had a big gray spot on his hand."

All traces of a smile on the Mayor's face disappeared.

"Why are you packing your suitcase, Eunice?" Curtis asked his wife.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, in a daze over the unexpected developments of the day.

"What do you think?"

"Surely you wouldn't leave me after all these wonderful years just because my left hand starts to turn gray."

"It isn't that I don't love you anymore; it's just that I can't take the risk of the children catching the infection."

"Doctor Mayflower doesn't even know if it's infectious or not."

"Perry thinks it is and he's seen the disease strike a lot of the kids at school."

"What does Perry know about this disease that I don't?"

"Enough to be afraid to come near you."

"But he's my own son!"

"Does that mean that you should infect your own son with your disease?"

With that, Eunice snapped her suitcase shut.

The next day, Doctor Mayflower found his waiting room crowded with patients such as he had never seen it crowded before. There were school children with their anxious parents and there were women with their anxious husbands and men with the anxious wives. He could see at a glance that all of the patients had spots on their faces or on their hands. He examined the cases as quickly as he could and dutifully took more samples from the gray spots to send to the lab. Thinking of Jimmy, the doctor also checked their eyes, and discovered that if he looked carefully enough, he could see that their eyes were tinged with yellow.

"Is it contagious?" asked one mother.

"I'm beginning to fear that it might be," said Doctor Mayflower. "I had two patients yesterday with these symptoms and today the waiting room is filled to the gills with patients with the same symptoms."

"Do I get to stay home from school?" asked the girl whom the doctor was examining.

"I am suggesting that everybody with these symptoms stay at home until we find out if the disease is contagious or not."

"Oh good! I can watch TV all day!"

"I suppose you could," said the doctor, "provided you can find anything worth watching."

"I will," said the girl, who didn't care what the doctor thought about her favorite TV programs.

The next patient was much more disquieting for Dr. Mayflower. Not only did the teen-age boy have a large gray spot on the side of his neck, but his right hand had turned into a gray claw. For the first time since earning his medical license, he felt sick to his stomach while treating a patient.

"How does your right hand feel?" Dr. Mayflower asked the youth.

"Fine."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Can you flex your fingers?"

"Sure."

The youth held out his claw and managed to make the thick nails move ever so slightly under the hoof.

"Do you think you are moving your fingers?" asked the incredulous doctor.

"Sure. I've got fingers, same as you."

In a sudden panic, Dr. Mayflower looked down at his own hand and was greatly relieved when he saw that he still had a normal hand.

During the afternoon the first emergency lab report came back to Dr. Mayflower's office. The lab technicians confessed that they could make neither head nor tail out of the samples they had been given. The only thing they could say was that each sample showed the same peculiarities, whatever those peculiarities were

"So!" cried Dr. Mayflower to his assembled staff, "I have discovered a new disease all on my little lonesome! Janice, type up a patent based on this lab report right away so that I can send it to the government."

"Do you want to call it Mayflower's Disease?" asked Janice.

"Why not?" the doctor responded. "I might as well become famous for all my trouble."

"You'll be earning your fame with a lot of trouble all right," said one of the nurses.

That night, Doctor Mayflower telephoned the mayor and told him about the incredible day he had had at the office. The Mayor called up all the doctors and nurses in town for an emergency meeting at City Hall. It so happened that the same scenario had occurred in every doctor's office in town.

"So it appears that we have an epidemic on our hands," said the Mayor.

"That appears to be the case," said a doctor. We should take precautions while we make sure that McCanney's disease is not contagious."

"It's Mayflower's Disease," said Dr. Mayflower, "I sent in the patent already."

"Regardless of what we call the disease," said the Mayor, "it appears that we should quarantine the town."

"But that will deprive every citizen of their basic civil rights," Doctor Flintstock protested.

"If we don't quarantine the town," said Dr. McCanney, "we will deprive our citizens and the citizens of all other towns of the fundamental right to good health."

"I just don't see why we should all panic before we know what's really happening," said Dr. Flintstock. "Besides, according to the lab report, the technicians simply do not know what Mayflower's Disease is. Perhaps it is nothing at all."

"Do you mean to say that gray spots and yellow eyes are nothing at all?" asked Dr. Mayflower.

"I mean that the disease may be nothing at all. After all, the patients I have treated all say they feel fine."

"Which proves they are sick," said Dr. McCanney.

Dr. Mayflower looked Doctor Flintstock in the eyes and found what he was looking for.

"I hate to announce this," said Dr. Mayflower, "but in the interests of public health, I must inform the City Council and my colleagues here present that Dr. Flintstock can't see what we mean because his eyes have turned yellow. As you know, yellow eyes are a symptom of Mayflower's Disease."

After a vote by the City Council, the town was quarantined by the Mayor's order. A few people who were visiting were unable to get out, and a few who were away could not return. There was a general feeling of panic throughout the town. Everybody looked into each others' faces looking for gray spots and yellow eyes. The more they looked, the more gray spots and yellow eyes they saw. Customers ran out of stores if they detected signs of Mayflower's Disease on those who waited on them, and store clerks ran out of their own stores when they were invaded by customers who picked up their items with gray claws instead of human hands.

School was closed the next day and the school building was used for all the townspeople to come for a medical check-up. First, the doctors and nurses were examined and half of them were diagnosed as having contracted Mayflower's Disease or McCanney's Disease, and so they found themselves among the patients and were barred from examining anybody.

To nobody's surprise, about half the people in town were found to be infected. The mayor, deeply concerned with the plight of his townspeople, also helped the doctors examine the people. As the day wore on, he saw more and more gray spots afflicting more and more people. At first, it had just been his political enemies, but by the end of the afternoon, even some of his best supporters showed signs of the illness as well. "Should have known they would turn against me, too," the mayor muttered under his breath. Since Perry had been the first to notice the disease, the Mayor suggested he help Doctor Mayflower with his examinations. The doctor was reluctant to enlist the aid of a child who knew nothing of medicine, but the Mayor insisted that Perry had proven his sharp wits and that he would be a great help to the town in this time of crisis. Indeed, many times, Doctor Mayflower owed his diagnosis to the sharp eyes of this bright boy.

Not every patient was willing to admit to being sick. For every citizen who could see his or her hands turning gray and hard, there was another who couldn't feel or see anything. When a policeman who had once caught Perry stealing apples from the grocery store appeared before the doctor, Doctor Mayflower was just about to certify him as still healthy when Perry pointed to a gray spot on his neck.

"Now that you point it out, I can see it quite plainly," said the sympathetic doctor.

"No you can't!" the policeman snapped. "There's nothing wrong with me and you know it!"

"But your eyes are growing yellow," said the doctor.

"They are not! I looked in the mirror this morning!"

"Maybe they weren't yellow then, but they are yellow now. You are now a patient."

"I am not a patient!"

So upset was the policeman that two other policemen had to drag him away so that the doctor could examine the next person. That night the jail was filled with patients who resisted the diagnosis and thus were considered dangerous to the public.

That night, the mayor, the remaining healthy aldermen, the healthy doctors, and a few other healthy and prominent citizens, including Jimmy's father, formed an emergency council. Since Perry had been the first to report the crisis to the Mayor, he was made an honorary member of the council. They discussed the terrible epidemic far into the night. The police reported incidents of chaos and unrest all over town. Parents were ejecting children from their homes and children were calling the police to eject their diseased parents. Homeless people were wandering all over town and moving into houses that had been emptied. If the neighbors saw diseased people move in next door, either they ran away to another neighborhood or they drove the unwanted neighbors away. It was clear that the sick people could not be allowed to run loose and infect everybody else. Something had to be done. By the following morning the council had a plan all worked out.

At dawn, the police rearranged the entire town. First, they corded off the houses where there was the most sickness. Those in that neighborhood who had not been diagnosed with either Mayflower's Disease or McCanney's Disease were quickly examined and, if still healthy, were asked to leave their homes. A few protested over leaving a child or parent behind, and out of compassion a doctor would then tell a grieving mother that she, too, had the illness so that she would be required to stay and take care of her ailing child. Those who were driven out of their homes quickly found that housing was no problem for them. They were free to move in to any house they wanted which had been vacated by the sick who were rounded up by the police and placed in the quarantined section. Of course, a few fights broke out when two broken families wanted the same house, but the telltale yellow eyes appeared on at least one disputant in such a case to settle the matter. Since Dr. Flintstock and several nurses were afflicted with the disease, there was no reason to send any healthy doctors or nurses into the quarantined area and risk their own lives. "Let the sick tend the sick," said one of the ministers, whose skin remained healthy, and what was left of his congregation said the same.

Diagnosing the disease was one thing. Treating it was another. No medicine seemed to work. One pill might cause an upset stomach and a skin cream might cause a rash. Other prescriptions had no effect whatever. When all the medical supplies of the town were exhausted, nobody thought anything of it, and by the end of the week, most of the pharmacists had also come down with the disease.

The healthy doctors and nurses, being very conscientious and self-sacrificing about their duties, continued to examine every person in town every day. The process took all day. First, each doctor and his or her team met each patient in a house at the edge of the quarantined area and examined the course of the disease while his secretaries made copious notes on all the symptoms. These symptoms became worse every day. Either more spots appeared on the body of the victim, or the one spot covered a larger area of the body. The doctors and nurses then examined every healthy, or formerly healthy, citizen. Dr. Mayflower reached the point when he could tell when a new citizen had caught the disease. Invariably, they would approach him reluctantly and refuse to talk about their health.

As the days went by, it became possible to log the course of the Disease. The gray spots tended to spread and multiply until the whole body became gray and hard. As this unhappy change took place, the eyes turned a deeper shade of yellow. The hands of many victims turned into paws, but this did not happen with everybody. The doctors agreed, when they compared notes, that the sick people whose hands turned into paws tended also to have their eyes turn a deeper shade of yellow. Dr. Mayflower then graciously allowed for the latter variant of the plague to be named McCanney's Disease. No sooner had this distinction been made then the doctors began to see patients whose heads started to change shape in different ways. One man would suffer a swelling of the forehead so that his eyes and mouth were almost hidden underneath it. Another man would suffer the opposite:his mouth and eyes would expand while his forehead shrank. One woman's face grew flat as a pancake, another's grew round as a pumpkin. The council concluded that as victims' heads changed shape, their brains were sure to be affected. Sure enough, tests bore out the expected results.

With the urging if the Emergency Council, the doctors and nurses asked more and more questions every day to both healthy and sick alike. What were they eating? What were they not eating? What music did they listen to? What music did they avoid? How much exercise did they do? Were they harboring angry thoughts? (This question was usually asked only of the victims of the Disease.) The members of the Council stayed up another full night to design an intelligence test. Each day, enough notes were taken with the data collected to fill several volumes. Each night, the doctor, the mayor and their emergency council pored over the material, looking for correlations that pointed to the cause of the disease. They found that everything and nothing seemed to cause it. The only correlation was that those citizens who had caught the disease rated lower on the emergency intelligence test.

The epidemic consumed so much of everybody's time that very little else took place in the town. All cultural events were canceled and the movie houses closed. Stores and business and service agencies became understaffed but then customers were fewer. Food supply became a problem. Food distributors from other towns would send trucks to the edge of the quarantined town where whatever volunteers could be rounded up would unload the trucks. Arguments over which store had ordered what food and which customers should have first preference broke out all over town. Members of the police force and fire department caught the Disease at roughly the same rate as the rest of the population so they continued their work, each in their own proper section of town. Once it was clear that the epidemic was going to last a long time, schools were started up again on each side of town, with the children in the "Sick Section" having to make do with an abandoned movie theater. However, since the teachers and children could think of nothing but the epidemic, nobody learned anything. Policemen who had been the best of buddies often ended up on different sides of the line. If tensions rose between the two parts of town, the police were the first to lead the fight until everybody wore everybody else out. In the meantime, the garbage went uncollected and the streets fell into disrepair.

The Emergency Council members continued to meet each day as they became more and more alarmed about the epidemic. During one of the interminable meetings, they came to the conclusion that preventive medicine was called for. It occurred to them that they might be able to detect grayness under the skin's surface of those who still appeared healthy. The next day, when the healthy people appeared for their examinations, the doctors gently scraped the skin's surface on the cheek. When the samples were put under a microscope, gray cells were often found. By nightfall, the quarantined part of town had doubled.

Not only were there conflicts between the sick and the healthy. The sick often quarreled among themselves as well. Perhaps if everybody's skin had hardened in the same way, and everybody had grown paws, they might have gotten along better. As it was, the people who had not grown paws rounded up those who had grown them and set up a quarantine within the quarantine to pen in those who lacked a pair of hands. Those whose heads had grown large and round refused to stay in the same house with those whose heads had turned flat as pancakes. After all, no sick person wanted to catch the disease somebody else had. Before long, there were at least five or six quarantines within the quarantine and debates raged daily and nightly over who truly belonged in which quarantine.

Jimmy was one of those who had grown a pair of paws. His forehead had swollen so much that other sick children called him Mushroom Face. He was the most hated person in town since he was the first to catch the disease. Every day he had to listen to people tell him that if it hadn't been for him, none of this would have happened. When the other sick people spent their small amounts of free time playing cards or Monopoly, Jimmy was never invited to join in. When the food distribution came round, most people tried especially hard to push Jimmy away and nobody gave him anything.

Jimmy's Mother had been another of the early afflicted, only she had not grown claws and so did not live in the same quarantined area as Jimmy. When Jimmy first heard she was sick, he tried to visit her but the people in that section drove him away for fear they would grow claws because of him. Later on his sister also caught the disease and she ended up in the same house as Jimmy did, but she was so angry with Jimmy for making her sick that she could not say a civil word to him.

Jimmy did have a couple of friends. Jill, another of the first children to be diagnosed with the Disease, was feeling so lonely herself that she would play Gin Rummy with Jimmy from time to time. When an old man named Hubert, who had taken Jimmy and some other children on fishing trips caught the disease, Jimmy felt very badly for him and he went to visit the old man. Even though Hubert did not grow a pair of claws, he didn't hold Jimmy's claws against him. The only problem was that they could only meet outside both their houses because nobody else approved of their meeting.

"It's not your fault I caught this darned disease," Hubert told Jimmy the first time they got together. "When a disease goes round, you never know who will get it first, who last, and who not at all. Maybe you caught it from somebody else coming down with it, only you broke out with it first."

"But everybody blames me for it," Jimmy complained.

"That's because everybody has to blame somebody else. The trouble is, everybody blaming everybody isn't making anybody well."

"But everybody is blaming me!"

"Does that include you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you blaming yourself?"

Jimmy didn't know what to say, so he played a game of checkers with Hubert and won it with a dramatic triple jump.

One day, Jimmy was feeling so bad he couldn't stand it. He walked to the barricade at the edge of town where there were a few trees and wildflowers. There he sat down to think. As he thought, he started to cry, for he felt very badly about what he had done to the town. Many people had turned into monsters because of him. He himself was the worst monster of all. If only he would die from the disease, he could stand it, but he showed no signs of dying.

Once Jimmy had cried so much he couldn't cry anymore, he looked down at a group of flowers. They were just outside the barricade. He had not seen anything quite like them. They were quite pretty with their dark red petals and their light green leaves. But as he looked, Jimmy could see that the flowers, too, were sick. On their leaves there were small gray spots. Then Jimmy saw that there were spots even on the petals.

"No!" Jimmy cried to himself. "I won't have it. There must be something in this town that isn't sick besides the council members!"

Jimmy continued to study the afflicted flowers. Even with the spots, they were beautiful. He began to stroke the leaves gently, wishing that the spots would go away. When he finally withdrew his hand, the leaves were different! The spots had gone away where he had rubbed them. Encouraged by what had happened, Jimmy stroked the flowers' petals. The same thing happened again. Underneath the gray spots on the petals, he found the original red color after all! Jimmy carefully tore off a petal from which he had rubbed the spots away and started to rub one of his paws with it. He didn't expect anything to happen, and when the paw started to turn into a hand, and a brighter color of hand at that, he became scared. What would people think of him now?

Jimmy first ran to the house where his friend Hubert was staying and called him outside.

"What can a monster like me do for a monster like you?" Hubert man chuckled.

"Uh, maybe you can be a different monster than you are," said Jimmy, not knowing whether to make a joke or be serious.

"You mean you know how to turn my hands into paws like yours?"

"I thought you weren't blaming me for everything," Jimmy retorted.

"Well, not so far."

"Can I rub your hand with this flower petal and see what happens?"

"It'll be your fault, whatever happens," said Hubert.

"Uh - it'll be your fault if you decide to let me do it."

"Hmm. Your words are another triple jump," said the old man. "I can see some pink returning to your right hand, so maybe you're on to something. It'll be my fault if I take your word for it and start getting cured myself."

So Hubert cautiously rubbed the flower petal on his hand. It did not turn into a paw; it turned into a hand without the tough gray skin that had afflicted him.

"Well I'll be a hare-tailed alligator!" exclaimed Hubert. "Where did you find this flower?"

"I'll show you."

Jimmy took the old man to the edge of the barricade where he had found the flowers. They gathered up several flowers that became healthy when they rubbed the petals with their hands and returned to the quarantined houses with them.

One of the first people they went to was Jill. She looked at the flower petal skeptically, then shrugged her shoulders and let Jimmy rub the petal on her cheek. Even when all the gray was wiped off her face, revealing a layer of brown skin underneath, she hardly believed that it had happened. When Jimmy's approached his sister, she screamed at first.

"I just want these spots to go away," Jimmy explained. "You know, maybe if there's gray under the healthy skin of everybody who isn't sick, there's also healthy skin under the gray of the sickies like us."

At first, Jimmy's sister did not believe him. She was convinced she would be a monster forever and ever. But when Jimmy told her over and over again what had happened with the flowers he had discovered she finally began to listen. In the end, she let her brother rub the petal on her hands and face. When she saw the look in her brother's eyes and then looked at herself in a mirror, she discovered that Jimmy was right. Spots of pink were beginning to appear on her face and paws.

"We're going to get better!" cried Jimmy's sister.

"Yes, we are," said Jimmy. "We shall have to tell the council. Maybe we'll get a medal for putting an end to the epidemic!"

But when the children, the old man and a few others who had been healed reported to the council, the response was disappointing.

"There are new spots on their hands and faces!" Perry was quick to point out.

"Yes, there are," said Doctor Mayflower. "The course of this disease is most interesting. First one color of spots, and then another. Hmm. We may have to start a new quarantined house for the people who develop this new variant of the disease."

"But I'm better!" Jimmy protested. "Can't you see for yourselves?"

The doctor shook his head.

"I'm afraid you look as sick as ever to me," said the Mayor. "First gray spots, then a hard gray skin, and then pink spots on top of that!"

"And look at his eyes!" said Jimmy's father.

Doctor McCanney looked closely into Jimmy's eyes.

"Yes, you are right," said the doctor. "A coat of white is growing over the coat of yellow. This is getting serious. Next thing we know, you'll be blind, my poor boy."

So the Council ordered the doctors and nurses to begin looking for pink spots on all the sick people. They found the new symptoms quickly enough on everybody whose skin had been rubbed by a flower petal. Many of these people went away feeling that they were more monstrous than ever.

Just as word spread throughout the town that the epidemic was lifting, the word was also spreading that new variants of the disease had broken out. Some people rushed up to Jimmy, his sister, the old man, and a few others who had gathered some flower petals. When they were touched with the petals, they too, were healed. Other people ran away from Jimmy and all others who had the flower petals. Eugene went on a rampage against this new outrage and tried to get his hands on the so-called healing flowers and destroy them. Dr. Flintstock dispatched a sample of the flowers to the lab and received the report that no medicinal properties were found under the microscope. Jimmy had to endure so many insults that he wished he had never found the healing flower. Meanwhile, the policemen rounded up all those who had what was called the pink variant of the disease and herded them into houses in the quarantined area that had been evacuated by those whose condition had not so deteriorated.

The next day, when everybody lined up for their checkup, the variants of the disease multiplied. One variant, in which pink or yellow or brown spots appeared over the gray spots, was given the name of Flintstock's Disease. Once the new reports were in, the members of the council called another meeting to discuss the alarming developments. The epidemic was a more serious matter than ever. They looked at each other with their yellow eyes and shook their gray heads.