Highways in Hiding | Page 6

the rest of the class sailed
through, just because I was not fast enough to read their minds and put
my own ability to work. It made 'em suspicious and so here I am, a
mere doctor instead of a scholar."
"There are fields for you, I'm sure."
He nodded. "Two. Psychiatry and psychology, neither of which I have
any love for. And medical research, where the ability to grasp another
doctor or scholar's plan, ideas and theories is slightly more important
than the ability to dig esper into the experiments."
"Don't see that," I said with a shake of my head.
"Well, Steve, let's take Mekstrom's Disease, for instance."
"Let's take something simple. What I know about Mekstrom's Disease
could be carved on the head of a pin with a blunt butter knife."
"Let's take Mekstrom's. That's my chance to make Scholar of Medicine,
Steve, if I can come up with an answer to one of the minor questions.
I'll be in the clinical laboratory where the only cases present are those
rare cases of Mekstrom's. The other doctors, espers every one of them,
and the scholars over them, will dig the man's body right down to the
last cell, looking and combing--you know some of the better espers can
actually dig into the constituency of a cell?--but I'll be the doctor who
can collect all their information, correlate it, and maybe come up with
an answer."
"You picked a dilly," I told him.
It was a real one, all right. Otto Mekstrom had been a mechanic-tech at
White Sands Space Station during the first flight to Venus, Mars and
Moon round-trip with landings. About two weeks after the ship came
home, Otto Mekstrom's left fingertips began to grow hard. The
hardening crawled up slowly until his hand was like a rock. They
studied him and worked over him and took all sorts of samples and
made all sorts of tests until Otto's forearm was as hard as his hand.

Then they amputated at the shoulder.
But by that time, Otto Mekstrom's toes on both feet were getting solid
and his other hand was beginning to show signs of the same. On one
side of the creepline the flesh was soft and normal, but on the other it
was all you could do to poke a sharp needle into the skin. Poor Otto
ended up a basket case, just in time to have the damned stuff start all
over again at the stumps of his arms and legs. He died when hardening
reached his vitals.
Since that day, some twenty-odd years ago, there had been about thirty
cases a year turn up. All fatal, despite amputations and everything else
known to modern medical science. God alone knew how many
unfortunate human beings took to suicide without contacting the big
Medical Research Center at Marion, Indiana.
Well, if Thorndyke could uncover something, no one could claim that a
telepath had no place in medicine. I wished him luck.
I did not see Thorndyke again in that hospital. They released me the
next day and then I had nothing to do but to chew my fingernails and
wonder what had happened to Catherine.

III
I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I became known
as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiled
accusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. I
talked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking for
information and ending up as a complainant against party or parties
unknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more
lines out than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more
nibbles than they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had
gone when the police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected
hourly, meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine
collection of psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really

baffled. I talked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for
breakfast on the day I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who
could sense the color of the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor
color-esper, primitive so to speak. These guys were good, but no matter
how good they were, Catherine Lewis had vanished as neatly as
Ambrose Bierce.
I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,
and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter the
Hereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.
Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,
made me a complete mental wreck.
It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,
and find that all you