unhappily. “I can see it, too.”

“These Americans!” Eklund said bitterly. He wiped his damp forehead. The picture Carlstrom had drawn was accurate but hardly appealing. “One simply can’t trust them. Publishing a report as important as that as a laboratory release. They should have given proper credit.”

“They did,” Carlstrom said. “They did—precisely. But the world, including us, was too stupid to see it. We have only ourselves to blame.”

“If it weren’t for the fact that the work was inspired and effective,” Christianson muttered, “we might have a chance of salvaging this situation. But through its application ninety-five per cent of cancers are now curable. It is obviously the outstanding contribution to medicine in the past five decades.”

“But we must consider the source,” Eklund protested. “This award will make the prize for medicine a laughingstock. No doctor will ever accept another. If we go through with this, we might as well forget about the medical award from now on. This will be its swan song. It hits too close to home. Too many people have been saying similar things about our profession and its trend toward specialization. And to have the Nobel Prize confirm them would alienate every doctor in the world. We simply can’t do it.”

“Yet who else has made a comparable discovery? Or one that is even half as important?” Christianson asked.

“That’s a good question,” Carlstrom said, “and a good answer to it isn’t going to be easy to find. For my part, I can only wish that Alphax Laboratories had displayed an interest in literature rather than medicine. Then our colleagues at the Academy could have had the painful decision.”

“Their task would be easier than ours,” Christianson said wearily. “After all, the criteria of art are more flexible. Medicine, unfortunately, is based upon facts.”

“That’s the hell of it,” Carlstrom said.

“There must be some way to solve this problem,” Eklund said. “After all it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. Perhaps that might offer grounds—”

“I don’t think so,” Carlstrom interrupted. “The means in this case aren’t as important as the results, and we can’t deny that the cancer problem is virtually solved.”

“Even though men have been saying for the past two generations that the answer was probably in the literature and all that was needed was someone with the intelligence and the time to put the facts together, the fact remains that it was C. Edie who did the job. And it required quite a bit more than merely collecting facts. Intelligence and original thinking of a high order was involved.” Christianson sighed.

“Someone,” Eklund said bitterly. “Some thing you mean. C. Edie—C.E.D.—Computer, Extrapolating, Discriminatory. Manufactured by Alphax Laboratories, Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. C. Edie! Americans!!—always naming things. A machine wins the Nobel Prize. It’s fantastic!”

Christianson shook his head. “It’s not fantastic, unfortunately. And I see no way out. We can’t even award the prize to the team of engineers who designed and built Edie. Dr. Hanson is right when he says the discovery was Edie’s and not the engineers’. It would be like giving the prize to Albert Einstein’s parents because they created him.”

“Is there any way we can keep the presentation secret?” Eklund asked.

“I’m afraid not. The presentations are public. We’ve done too good a job publicizing the Nobel Prize. As a telecast item, it’s almost the equal of the motion picture Academy Award.”

“I can imagine the reaction when our candidate is revealed in all her metallic glory. A two-meter cube of steel filled with microminiaturized circuits, complete with flashing lights and