Illustration by Authur George

Quentin Thomas, lawyer, and his favorite client, Walter Gruen (Gruen Pharmaceuticals), had been motoring along the Skyline Drive that Wednesday morning. They had stopped at a deserted overlook, parked the car, got out, and they were looking down into the valley and the seven loops in the Shenandoah River, when something shrieked through the air behind them and exploded with a blinding light into the front of the lawyer’s brand-new Pathfinder.

The two men stood paralyzed a moment, then rushed back to the car. The radiator was steaming and sizzling and gurgling. Whatever had hit it had left a six-inch hole in the grille. The coolant mix of water and glycol was dribbling away on something very hot and was immediately changing into steam.

Thomas put his hands on his hips and looked dubiously at his friend. “Meteor?”

“Meteorite,” corrected the chemist. “Can I have it?”

“It’s all yours.” The Lawyer reached into the front seat for his car phone. “Meanwhile, let’s see if the ranger can find us a tow truck.” As he placed the call he was thinking a few feet farther west, and he… or Gruen… oh well… No use thinking about it. They had been lucky. But never underestimate your chances of being struck by a meteorite. That woman in Alabama… the thing went through her roof… actually scraped her leg… And that village in India… one had hit a dog. “Oh, hello? Ranger? Look, I have a problem…”

They were waiting as Thomas walked into the conference room. Gruen, of course. And Ben Blake, the chief chemist, and a young woman with intense dark eyes and sunken cheeks whom he had seen in the lab but whose name he did not know. Gruen introduced him to Dr. Lacey, bioanalyst.

“Mary,” she said.

“Quentin.”

In the center of the table lay two pieces of black rock, each half the size of a coffee mug.

“It’s your meteorite,” Gruen explained. “Net weight, about 3½ pounds. Ben?”

“It’s definitely from Mars, Quentin,” said the scientist. “We’ve done a lot of work on it. Walter thought we should have this meeting before we publish.”

Thomas eyed the two pieces thoughtfully. “Yes… quite right.” He frowned. “Mars?” The word hung there.

Gruen smiled. “I didn’t believe it myself at first. Actually, it’s in good company.”

Blake said, “Counting this one, there are now at least fourteen Martian meteorites in our museums. The five-kilo rock returned last year by Pathfinder Five—‘PV’—is of course the current standard. Before that, it was the four-pound meteorite found in the Allan Hills of Antarctica in 1984—ALH 84001. Our little prize is geologically and chemically quite similar to PV and ALH 84001. PV and our rock were thrown high into the Martian air by a tremendous meteoric impact some fifteen million years ago. They were already four billion years old when that happened. PV fell back to the planet’s surface but our rock was hurled into an escape orbit. It circled the sun for fifteen million years and was exposed to cosmic rays that modified its surface in characteristic ways. We can calculate the time it spent in space by radiometric dating. Some minor gravitational perturbation—maybe a passing asteroid—knocked it out of solar orbit, and so, Quentin, last year it hitched a ride on your auto.” He handed Thomas a pair of plastic gloves. “Go ahead, pick it up. Either piece, both… You can’t hurt them.”

Thomas snapped the gloves on and picked up one of the pieces. It was black on the outer surface, but a mottled gray where the diamond saw had sliced through. Obviously, some sort of internal irregularities. Pores? he wondered. He looked up questioningly at Blake.

“We’ll start with the easy stuff,” said the chemist. “As you know, both PV and ALH 84001 have properties that strongly suggest life. Our rock has all these. Number one, the tiny globules of carbonate. We have similar chemistry on our own planet: creatures in Earth oceans take in carbon dioxide from the air and likewise convert it to carbonates. Second—within those globules, we find PAH’s—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, such as are produced by living organisms when they decay. Third, within the globules, we find two kinds of magnetic minerals, iron oxide and iron sulfide—components of certain Earth bacteria. Fourth—the rims of the globules contain structures suggesting that microbacteria had once lived there.”

Thomas peered closely at the shard. “Suggestive…”

Blake said, “True, but at the outset, we must point out that each and every one of these four characteristics could have been produced inorganically, without the aid of any kind of life. However, we believed it practically impossible that all four could have been produced simultaneously inorganically, and in the same locus. And with that thought in mind, we investigated further.” He paused, looked over at Gruen, who nodded.

The chemist continued. “So far, nothing really different from PV or ALH 84001. However…

Here his voice shifted into a dead laconic monotone, which Thomas sensed was an attempt to conceal excitement. “However, there’s one very big difference. We recovered a viable life form from our rock. When we sawed open the rock we found a colony of something—microcells in an internal fissure. Apparently the colony was sufficiently deep inside to resist destruction by heat, and was chilled so quickly by the cold of space that it was preserved intact. Recall, ordinarily when DNA ages, it tends to break into small pieces, about one to two hundred base pairs. That didn’t happen here.”

Thomas thought back. DNA had been recovered from insects and vertebrates of a hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth. But he knew both PV and ALH 84001 were supposed to be over four billion years old. His eyes suddenly widened. “But—from Mars? Do you realize—?”

Gruen’s mouth tightened in a half-smile. “Yes indeed. Life on Mars. But do we dare announce what we have? When the news gets out, the media all over the world will explode. Our labs would be in total disarray overnight. Oh, we know the full story will come out sooner or later, but right now we believe the publicity would seriously damage our research. We need more time. At the moment we think the Martian microorganism is useful, very useful. But is that the whole story? Can it also be deadly? Is there a downside? We don’t think so, but we don’t want to identify the source until we know more.”

The lawyer nodded. “Makes sense.”

Blake said, “Meanwhile our culture vats are working twenty-four hours a day. We now have several kilos of the product. We’re preparing a paper for Science—no mention of Mars.”

Thomas frowned. “Careful. .. premature disclosure could screw up your patent program.”

“No patent,” Gruen firmly. “We’re dedicating it to the public.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows. “No patent? It’s just an academic curiosity? No commercial possibilities?”

“We’re not certain,” Gruen said. “But if it does what we think, it will be very useful indeed. And that’s why we want it to be freely available to the public. Ben?”

“Watch this,” Blake said. The lights dimmed. The screen on the opposite wall lit up. “A little drama recorded by the electron microscope. The blob in the lower right is a T-cell, one of the most important cells of the human immune system. Thirty minutes earlier we infected that cell with a Bis virus, which we assume is now in the process of integrating itself into the DNA of the cell and taking over command of the cell machinery. Now watch the upper left-hand comer.”

At the mention of “Bis” the lawyer sat up straight. On the day the World Health Organization announced that HIV-vaccine was a success, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta announced the outbreak of 37 cases of what was tentatively styled HIV-Bis, or Bis for short, followed the next month by thirty deaths. Like HIV, Bis attacked the immune system and thereby destroyed the body’s defenses against the so-called opportunistic diseases, which then moved in and killed.

“Bis? Ah!” The lawyer noted a tiny blob moving in slow zigzags toward the right of the screen. It stopped, seemed to pulse and vibrate for a moment, then it headed straight for the infected cell.

“Your new bug?” said Thomas.

Gruen nodded.

The little creature hit the cell surface, paused, moved slowly along the surface, stopped.

“That’s the exact spot where the Bis virus went in,” Blake said.

“How does your boy know?” Thomas asked.

“Not sure, but we think Bis may have left traces of its sheath membrane dangling on the T-cell’s hydrophilic surface. We can’t detect it, but it’s evidently a red flag to our guy. We call him Anti-Bis, incidentally.”

Anti-Bis vanished.

The act seemed instantaneous, and Thomas started. “That was fast!”

“Wait—” said Blake. With his laser pointer he indicated to a second tiny disc on the screen. It was moving steadily toward the infected T-cell.

“Another Anti-Bis?” muttered Thomas.

“And still two more,” said Blake, pointing with the laser, “They are all going in, right behind number one.”

“Good God,” whispered Thomas. “They hunt in packs?”

“Like wolves, or wild dogs.”

Scary, thought Thomas.

The invaded cell began to shudder. It bulged, contracted, vibrated.

“If you could hear it,” Gruen said, “it would sound like World War III. They’re tearing the cell’s viral component into little pieces. When they finish that, they go after any toxins in the cell that the virus may have had time to make.”

“And then what?” said Thomas.

“After they clean up inside,” said Gruen, “they all divide. From what we can tell, one stays inside, guarding the cell against future invasion. The rest crawl out again and go looking for free-floating virus and for more infected cells.”

“But what if Mr. Bis mutates?”

“That’s where it really gets interesting,” said Blake. “Bis’s mutation is in response to a chemical signal in the blood or wherever Bis is hiding. Maybe Bis smells his mortal enemy, like the rabbit scenting the stalking coyote. He quickly transposes a couple of his RNA codons. Ordinarily this would conceal him from certain cells in our immune system. It’s almost as though it’s an act of intelligence, but of course it isn’t—it’s simply a non-volitional chemical response. And it doesn’t work Anti is ahead of him. He mutates certain codons in his own nucleid strand, and Mr. Bis is once again highly visible, and helpless. Look.” The chemist changed the slide and a luminous image shone on the far wall.

“Here’s our Anti-Bis, enlarged at thirty thousand.”

Thomas squinted at a throbbing sphere with a double wall and an internal cylinder. “Looks a lot like HIV.”

“In general appearance, yes, but that’s all. Mary?”

Mary Lacey said, “We’ve often wondered about the very first life on Earth—the protocell—how it was formed, what it looked like. Anti-Bis gives us the answer. Our earliest visible evidence on Earth is the stromatolites, stony columns formed by early bacteria, at least three and a half billion years ago. They lived on carbon dioxide, they had no nucleus, and were probably photosynthetic. We believe those life forms had evolved from even earlier forms that left no record. Our ancestral protocell most likely came into existence at least four billion years ago, probably under conditions quite similar to those that generated our Martian friend. All that was needed was hot water, ammonia, ultraviolet light from lightning, carbon dioxide, maybe energy such as the sun, or electrical energy from lightning.”

She paused, looked around the table. Thomas thought at first she was just checking to see whether they were paying attention, but then he saw the faraway look in her eyes, and it seemed to him just then that she might be some prehistoric priestess standing on the edge of an ancient scum-crusted tidal pool, and she would lift her arms, and utter magic words, and life would begin.

She continued. “The raw materials were there. The ammonia and carbon dioxide reacted to form amino acids, urea, purines, pyrimidines, with phosphates coming in from abounding minerals. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were present, jostling around, trying to hook up in the proper order. This finally happened, and probably by accident. It may have taken several million years for it to happen, but time was no problem. And finally life did indeed happen: click click click. The right pieces slammed together in that submicroscopic world, the nucleic acids joined hands, and we had the protocell.”

Thomas looked around him covertly. Gruen and Blake surely knew all this, but they were leaning forward, as rapt as he.

Dr. Lacey said, “How does this protocell differ from other purine: pyrimidine assemblies?”

“For one thing, it’s ravenous. But it’s particular. It grabs up uracil, adenine, cytosine, guanine, but it does this in a certain picky order, and suddenly it finds it is making long polymeric strings. It spits them out as a copy of itself. That’s how it replicates. And if it can’t find free-floating molecules to gobble up, it attacks clusters and groups, anything not exactly like itself.”

She focused on the lawyer, like a teacher boring in on a dull student. “Our ancestral protocell was a killer, Quentin, and it wasn’t even yet a cell with a protective shell and all sorts of goodies inside, stuff to make spiders, elephants, Homo Sapiens. Here on Earth that came soon enough. On Mars, though, the seas dried up, the atmosphere blew away, and everything stalled. Until now.”

Okay, Mary, he thought, I believe.

Gruen said, “All living things use the same genetic code. Hence it would appear that all life arose from a common ancestor. And here he is, Quentin, Anti-Bis: your great-great-great granddaddy, vicious, savage, hungry as a bear coming out of hibernation.”

“If he’s so mean and nasty,” Thomas said, “why doesn’t he attack every cell in sight?”

“Each of our cells wears a white hat,” Mary Lacey explained, “An ‘MHC’—major histoincompatibility complex. We condition Anti to our specific MHC’s before he goes to work. Like explaining to guard dogs who the good guys are.”

“So now what?” asked Thomas.

“Our obvious goal is Bis,” said Gruen. “Maybe we’ve finally found the cure. But of course Anti has never been tried on real people. We have to set up test protocols with FDA. Terminal Bis patients have to join the program. It could be a total flop. And even before we get to that, we want to make more tests in glass.”

Thomas frowned. “The rock is already public knowledge, and the microlife you found soon will be.”

“That’s fine, Quentin,” Gruen said calmly. “We’re dedicating it to the public. Anybody can make it.”

Somehow this did not surprise the lawyer. He shrugged. “Bis is a twenty billion a year market, and you’re giving Anti away? Why, Walter?”

“Basically, for ego reasons, I guess. And maybe a little guilt. Bis treatment is presently running well over ten thousand dollars per person per year, and it’s not really very effective. That’s just for the medicine. You pay that or you die a lot sooner. The things that worked for HIV are useless for Bis. It’s like starting over, and if Anti-Bis works, and is controlled by the drug industry, its price will go through the roof. Industry will get rich, but a lot of people won’t be able to afford the program. Of course a lot of the cost will be picked up by insurance. But a lot won’t be. A great many people won’t be able to afford the medicine. Without medication they die quicker, sometimes in two or three years after infection. But if Anti-Bis works, Quentin, inability to pay won’t cost your life. With everybody able to make Anti, it’ll cost about the same as diet pills.”

Thomas pondered this. True, Bis medication was presently a multi-billion dollar a year industry, with at least half-a-dozen major suppliers, even though nothing really worked. Are they going to sit idly by while Walter Gruen tosses Anti into the public domain? “Suppose,” he said, “someone else gets the patent?”

“How could they?” asked Blake. “We’re first.”

“We are, aren’t we?” said Gruen. “First?” But there was uncertain edge in his voice.

Thomas’s eyebrows arched. “Are you? Someday you may have to prove it. You ought to at least get your records in order.”

“Such as?” asked Blake.

“For starters, right away deposit a culture at American Type Culture Collection—ATCC, in Rockville, and give them a full enabling written description on how to process the specimen. They’ll preserve Anti in liquid nitrogen and they’ll make samples available to anyone who asks. That should at least give you a legal date for a public disclosure.”

Quentin Thomas subscribed routinely to several watch services that alerted him to U.S. and foreign patents dealing in fields of particular interest to his clients, including of course Bis.

This morning he watched, fascinated and alarmed, as the text of the European patent application scrolled up on his monitor. He immediately called Gruen. “I’m e-mailing you a copy. We need to talk. I can get there within the hour. Better bring Blake in, maybe Mary Lacey.”

It was The Club. It had no other name. It was the kind of restaurant where reservations were required even for a cup of cappuccino, the napkins were as thick as towels, the maître d’ wore a pince-nez, and the calories were stated for everything on the simple linen-paper menu.

Quentin Thomas had eaten here before. He rather enjoyed the show and the sham, which he considered better than the food.

The four sat around the table, finishing coffee. John Gordio, president and CEO of Catley-Torgsen, and his longtime attorney, J. Reginald Alfrey, sat opposite Thomas and Gruen.

Thomas found the two executives an interesting study in similarities and contrasts. Both were wealthy. With his client it was old money: everything had been handed to him on a platter. The other had clawed his way to the top and now mostly delegated the clawing to underlings. Both exuded power. With Gruen it was quietly understated; one had to look twice. Gordio wore it like cologne.

“Shall we cut to the chase?” Gruen said.

Gordio nodded slightly. “Umph.” He was not a tall man, and though not actually fat, he did not carry his excess weight gracefully. He waddled. If you were a woman, thought Thomas, you’d be six months pregnant. He was not surprised to learn that Gordio was addicted to pizzas “with everything.”

J. Reginald Alfrey, on the other hand, looked trim and sat elegantly erect. Probably got up at seven and jogged, thought Thomas. Which maybe I should get into. After this is over. Maybe.

Gruen continued. “You’d like to build a fifty-million dollar plant to make Catsup.”

“That’s Cat-sen,” Gordio corrected mildly. “Jealous competitors love to mispronounce it. Cat-sen, Walter. From our corporate name, Catley-Torgsen. But you’re right, we’d like a build a big plant to make it.”

“You would need exclusivity,” Gruen said.

Gordio took a sip of coffee, peered in Gruen’s general direction. “Of course.”

“A strong patent,” Gruen said. The other executive grunted. Gruen said, “John, you cannot get a strong patent for your Catsup, at least not in the U.S.”

Gordio smiled faintly. “You mean because of your ATCC?”

He looked over at Alfrey, lifted a shoulder slightly.

Alfrey said, “Walter, no American court would consider your ATCC an anticipation of our patent. You failed to file a description with your specimen.”

“Beg to differ, Reggie. The front end of the RNA is the process description. Gives full details of the product, its isolation and use. Granted, it’s in code, but it’s readily decipherable.”

“Code?” said Gordio. “Really? Hm.” He exchanged glances with Alfrey.

The lawyer shrugged. “We thought maybe that’s what it was. But we didn’t have the key, we couldn’t decipher it, and we let it go. Anyhow, by then we had completed our invention. Why do you mention your ATCC?”

“Because,” Gruen said, “just now, ATCC 06 is a sword of Damocles hanging over your patent. If a court says one skilled in the art can read that code, ATCC 06 is a good disclosure, your patent is anticipated, and Catsup is wide open, and you have no monopoly.”

Gordio studied him dourly. “Walter, let’s not be stupid. Bis will be a twenty-billion-dollar a year market. I want it. Just me, Walter—not you, not anybody else. Don’t mess with my patent, Walter.”

There was a grim edge to Gruen’s smile. “Twenty billion is nineteen billion clear profit, John. There’ll be lots of poor people who can’t pay, and they’ll die. My way, they can live, and you and I can still stay in business. C-T is doing well right now, with no Catsup. You don’t need exclusivity.”

“The Board meets next month,” Gordio said, “and they’re going to authorize the new Cat-sen plant.”

“We doubt that very much, John. Quentin?”

Thomas said, “Tomorrow morning we are filing a petition for a Public Use Proceeding in the Patent Office, under 37CFR 1.292.”

“Public… use… ?” The C-T executive looked blank. “Reggie…?”

Alfrey frowned. “Public Use… rarely used, but it’s in the rules. Basically, if somebody thinks he knows of a public use a year prior to your filing date, he can demand that the office hold a hearing. Really no problem, John. They’d have to prove that one skilled in the art could easily read their coded process description.”

“So we’re not worried?”

“No, we’re not worried.”

“And we can get a decision out of the Patent Office in time for the Board meeting next month?”

Alfrey looked unhappy.

“John, Reggie,” Thomas said, “Public use proceedings are now running about two years, from date of filing to final decision.”

Gordio said sourly, “Walter, this is blackmail. Can we deal?”

“You mean, a quick decision, yes or no on your patent?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine with me. What did you have in mind?”

“Reggie?”

“How about arbitration?”

Gordio frowned. “Could they win?”

“Not likely.”

“Quentin?” Gruen said.

His lawyer shrugged. Everything would depend on readability of the code. Was Mary Lacey right? Could one skilled in the art readily decode the description? Very probably. It truly was a simple thing. And any way you looked at it, arbitration was Gruen’s best chance. He said quietly, “Try this. Okay, if we arbitrate. But if the arbitrator finds that the coded description on ATCC 06 is readable by one skilled in the art, C-T will withdraw their patent.”

Gordio and Alfrey studied each other a moment. “Okay,” the executive said. “Provided—if this arbitrator fellow finds ATCC is not readable by… by…”

“By one skilled in the art,” Alfrey interpolated.

“Yeah, then you agree that our patent is valid and enforceable, and that ATCC 06 infringes.”

Thomas looked at Gruen, nodded.

“Agreed,” Gruen said.

“Now, about the details,” Alfrey said. “I suggest that we submit the question to the American Arbitration Association, go by their rules; it’ll be a one-day hearing, testimony under oath, and limited to the question of readability of the code. We take the morning, you the afternoon. Or reverse—we don’t care.”

“Quentin?” asked Gruen.

“Sounds fine. Let Reggie draw up the papers.”

“Judge.” They still called him that, even though he had retired from the bench over ten years ago. Retirement had made sense, at least at the time. He and his wife Helen had planned an extended world tour, trying to catch up on a dozen vacations they had never taken. And then she had contracted a terminal illness and it had all collapsed. That had been a hard time. To hold himself together he had written a book, he had guest-lectured in the law schools, and he had been accepted as an arbitrator by the American Arbitration Association. And that was the avocation he liked best. He loved being the sole arbiter and judge in a complex case that both parties thought needed immediate one-day resolution, with a final decision from which no appeal could be taken. It was like being the United States Supreme Court, with all nine Justices rolled into one.

He did not sit on a high custom-upholstered chair behind a bench at these hearings—no, generally just a simple office desk and chair,, facing a similar chair for the witness and fold-up tables for the parties. Everything was recorded by closed-circuit video, and video transcripts were available by the end of the session, backed up by the transcripts prepared by the stenographic reporter. There was no ‘bar’ to shut out an open-court audience from the proceedings. Indeed, none was needed, for the public was excluded. He could wear a business suit at the arbitration, of course, like the lawyers, but no, he chose the robe. Black, flowing, authoritative. The tradition of the robe was indeed ancient. It far predated even the Roman fora. One sees it in the friezes of the law courts of the ancient Egypt and in the bas-reliefs of Hammurabi’s Susa. It symbolized four millennia of the peaceful settlement of men’s quarrels. And of this, he, Penfield Grant (“Old Granite”), was still an active part. For which he was grateful, for he dearly loved to umpire these intellectual fights. This one promised to be a good one.

How had they come to select him as arbitrator? Easy. Under the expedited procedures in the Arbitration Rules, a list of five candidates was submitted to each party. Each party could strike two candidates. The parties had stricken a total of four, probably people they knew and thought were biased one way or the other. That had left him.

He had read the pre-hearing briefs submitted by the parties, and he knew it involved technologies way over his head—codes, chemistry, microbiology… Well, he still knew how to listen and how to ask questions.

So, he thought, as Wellington said at Waterloo, let battle commence. He looked over his desk at the two groups. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

His audience returned the greeting, and he continued. “We have for arbitration the case of Catley-Torgsen, whom we will style as Claimant, versus Gruen Pharmaceuticals, Respondent. Normally the Association attempts to complete a hearing in one day, and I understand that is not only acceptable here, but is insisted on by the parties. So we will get right to it. Counsel, will you please identify yourselves.”

“J. Reginald Alfrey, for Catley-Torgsen, Claimant.”

“Quentin Thomas, for Gruen Pharmaceuticals, Respondent.”

“Thank you, gentlemen, please be seated. I presume the other gentlemen are principals and witnesses. We’ll get to everybody in due course. Meanwhile, let me sum up the strictures imposed on this proceeding, as stipulated by the parties.

“There is only one issue: is the process information allegedly coded into American Type Culture Collection Number 06 readily comprehensible to one skilled in the art? If I decide that it is, then in that case Claimant will withdraw its patent application covering the ATCC product. But if I decide that it is not thus comprehensible, Respondent agrees that Claimant’s patent is valid and agrees never to manufacture the product in question.

“Testimony will be limited to the issue as stated. “Claimant opens, completes by twelve noon. Cross examination limited to fifteen minutes per witness. An hour for lunch. Resume at one, Respondent comes on, completes by four. Closing statements, thirty minutes each.” He looked up sharply. “All agreed?”

The two lawyers said, “Yes, your honor.”

“Good, Mr. Alfrey, opening statement?”

“Yes, Mr. Arbitrator. Catley-Torgsen is a very large pharmaceutical manufacturer. We have plants all over the world, with over fifty thousand employees. Our annual research budget is over a billion dollars. As part of our research we developed a new drug which we call ‘Cat-sen.’ This new drug has great potential in the treatment of the well-known devastating viral disease, Bis. Much testing still has to be done, of course.

“If it proves out, we want to go into commercial production. For this we would need exclusivity, which of course means patent protection. So we duly filed for a patent. Respondent Gruen learned about our patent, still pending in the Patent Office. They claim that a certain biological specimen anticipates our patent. The specimen was indeed deposited with the American Type Culture Collection more than a year before we filed our patent. Ordinarily this would be sufficient to invalidate our patent. However in this case no enabling process data accompanied the deposit, so in effect there was no public disclosure, nothing available to one skilled in the art as to how to reproduce or use the specimen. Gruen, however, takes the position that all necessary process data are coded… their word, your honor, into the preliminary nucleid stretch in the specimen, and that the coded description can be readily decrypted by one skilled in the art. We contend that the description is impossible to decrypt and that therefore the specimen does not anticipate our patent. To prove our case, I will offer one witness plus several affidavits. Shall I proceed with my witness?”

“Just a moment.” The arbitrator looked over at the other lawyer. “Mr. Thomas, you can make your opening statement now, or reserve it for your afternoon session. If you give it now, I will extend Mr. Alfrey’s time pro quanto.”

“Later, your honor.”

“Good. Call your witness, Mr. Alfrey.”

“I call Dr. Emil Kintsch.”

John Gordio had introduced Thomas and C-T’s expert witness to each other earlier in the morning, and the Gruen lawyer had detected nothing cryptic about the cryptologist at the time. With his average height, honest brown eyes, friendly smile, Kintsch could pass as a solid citizen, a pillar of any community. And yet, thought Thomas, within a few minutes, with a little help from Reggie, this man of unassailable integrity will begin twisting the truth into fantastic shapes. Sad. It’s the money.

“Your full name,” said Alfrey, “and the city where you reside?”

“Dr. Emil Kintsch, Columbia, Maryland.”

“Are you presently employed?”

“Yes. I own and operate Kintsch Associates, a cryptology service.”

“And what does that involve?”

“Two things, basically. We prepare encryption algorithms for clients, and we attempt to decrypt encrypted messages submitted to us by clients.”

“What exactly is an ‘encryption algorithm’, Dr. Kintsch?”

“It’s a computer program organized around a key. Say you want to send a secret message, such as ‘We bid ten million dollars. ’ Now if the key is two digits, say ‘25’, the programwould add 2 to the first letter in the message, and ‘w’ becomes ‘y’. To the next letter we add 5, and ‘e’ becomes ‘j’, and then repeat. To recover the message, the receiver decrypts in reverse.”

“How long would it take a computer to crack that code?”

“An ordinary P.C.? Nanoseconds.”

“Not very secure?”

“No, but of course it was only a two-digit key, about ten bits on the computer. Since a bit would be either zero or one, that key would have two to the tenth bits, or only 1,024 possibilities. To achieve anything approaching even semi-security, one would need a key exceeding 128 bits. That would give a total of two to the power of 128 possible keys—which calculates to 3 followed by 38 zeros. The average mainframe processing a million possibilities a second would need 10 to the twenty-fifth years to try all key variations, with a fifty percent chance of success by the quadrillionth year. And yet the National Security^ Agency permits export of encryption software using a 128-bit key, so we must assume the government has computer capacity in the basements of Fort Meade that can readily decrypt algorithgms using a 128-bit key. Aside from that, we have been able to confirm that a student at the University of California, Berkeley, broke a 128-bit key in three and a half hours using a number of parallel work stations at the college.”

“Are you saying that any code can be broken if given enough time and computer capacity?”

“Most can be broken, not all. They present varying degrees of security. In the extreme case, security can be unconditional, total. Brute force won’t work. For example nobody can break a one-time pad unless he has the key.”

“Explain one-time pad.”

“It’s a key that’s used only once. Both sender and receiver have a sheet with the same random key numbers. The sheet is used once, then destroyed, and they go on to the next sheet. Or instead of a pad of sheets they can use a book. For example ‘201-46’ would mean page 201, line 4, 6th word in the line. They say Rommel used a book in his African campaign.”

“But a key can be useful, even though not totally secure?”

“Oh, absolutely. In fact, that’s the situation with most keys. Security can be only partial, yet adequate, where commercially available computer capacity and time are insufficient to crack the algorithm. We call such algorithms computationally secure’. They can be broken, but not with resources available to the decrypter. For example a megacomputer within the budget of most large corporations can crack a 56-bit key in an average of three and a half hours, seven hours guaranteed. And yet such algorithm can be considered secure from most hackers and private citizens. To be secure from corporate competitors, a much longer key would be required, of course, and to defeat NSA, certainly one considerably longer than 128 bits. Actually, probably no repetitive code can be considered safe from NSA computers. The best the code user can hope for is to delay solution for a few days.”

“Doctor, does your organization have access to megaframe computers?”

“Yes, several. In our own shop, of course, and on loan-time access in over forty universities.”

“All told, roughly comparable to NSA’s computers?”

“We’re getting there.”

“Dr. Kintsch, I hand you a one-page print-out. Can you identify it?”

“Yes. This is the message said to be encoded in ATCC 06. It consists of several thousand letters, G, U, A, and C, in apparently irregular order. You asked Kintsch Associates to decrypt the message.”

“And did you?”

“No. We tried, but we failed.”

“Explain how you tackled the problem.”

“Our major efforts were based on the feet that since there were only four letters in the target message, a simple substitution code—letter for letter—was not indicated. So we asked the computers to try doublets—AC, AG, AU, and so on, looking for repetition and frequencies. This didn’t help. We were able to set up a frequency table, and the computers worked at it for a couple of hours, but no English sentences popped up. Then we went to triads, such as UUU, CCC and so on. We knew, of course, that on a gene each triad made an amino acid in a human cell. But all we got was a string of amino acids. Well, of course we weren’t looking for amino acids, that was a blind alley. It was as though the encrypter was teasing us. We went on to sets of quadruplet letters, then quintuplets, and so on. We ran over fifty megaframes in parallel for seven days and nights.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“You tried other systems?”

“Yes. Our associates worked simultaneously, while we were working in our own shop.”

Alfrey returned to his table and picked up a sheaf of papers. He handed one set to Judge Grant, another to Thomas, and the third he handed to the witness. He addressed Grant. “Your honor, these are affidavits of experts in the cryptology field. I would like to describe them briefly for the record.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Alfrey.”

“First, affidavit of Dr. Marvin Mallory, now retired, formerly employed in the CIA Code Office. Dr. Mallory attempted to solve the message with known commercial algorithms, including DES, LOKI 91, IDEA, GOST, and Blowfish. Next—”

“Wait a minute,” Thomas said. “They all say, they used their best efforts, and could not decrypt the target message?”

“Yes.”

“Respondent has no objection to their admission.”

“Thank you. Then I think we’re about through on direct. Just one more question for Dr. Kintsch. Sir, in light of your own work and the findings of these twelve outsider experts, what do you conclude as to decryptability of the message alleged for ATCC 06?”

“Sir, I cannot swear that it is unconditionally secure. If it is decryptable, the key must be quite long, perhaps running to 512 bits or more. By way of comparison, we bear in mind that the Pentagon’s H-bomb secrets and the CIA’s roster of American spies uses only 128 bits. That leaves us with three possibilities. The target message is either computationally secure, or the encryptor used a one-time pad, or it’s a bunch of gobble-de-goop nonsense.”

“In plain English, the solution, if any, is beyond the skill of the art?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing further,” Alfrey said. “Your witness, counselor.”

“Just one question,” Thomas said. “Dr. Kintsch, were you aware that if you or any associates solved the message, you would thereby destroy your client’s patent?”

The cryptographer stared owl-eyed at the lawyer. “Really? I had no idea!”

Thomas grinned. “Nothing further.”

Dr. Kintsch was excused. He bowed sternly to all and left the room.

“And that completes my testimony,” said Alfrey. “It’s only eleven thirty. I’d like to reserve my final half hour for dosing.”

“No objection,” Thomas said. He glanced at his opponent from the comer of his eye. The man radiated victory. Not so last, thought Thomas. It’s not over yet. The arbitrator looked about the room. “Seems a bit early to recess for lunch. Are you ready with your case, Mr. Thomas?”

Respondent’s lawyer was silent.

“Mr. Thomas?” repeated Grant.

“A moment please, your honor. I think—yes—”

There was a knock at the door. Everyone looked around.

Quentin Thomas called out, “Come in!”

The door opened, a girl in a checkered uniform entered, carrying a flat square box. The odor immediately filled the room. Her eyes connected with Thomas’s. She smiled. “Pizza, anyone?”

Alfrey squinted hard at her. He tried to say something, but his larynx was apparently temporarily paralyzed. He gurgled. Gordio stood, wide-eyed, whispered something unintelligible. Judge Grant simply sat, looked quizzical, and waited.

Thomas spoke to her quietly. “Any trouble coming up?”

“No sir, not really. A man in a black suit stopped me in the hall. I told him Mr. Gordio had ordered the pizza, and he let me on by.”

“Very good. And now perhaps you’d better leave the pizza in the hall outside. We’ll get to it later.”

“Yes sir.” She reopened the door, put the box outside.

Alfrey demanded sternly, “Mr. Thomas, you know this young woman?”

“I do.”

“Then get her out of here!”

“Gentlemen,” queried Grant, “what’s going on?”

“Your honor,” Thomas explained, “may I introduce Ms. Hatfield. She is here on official business. She is in fact my one and only witness.”

“Witness? Witness?” demanded Alfrey. “What are you talking about? What could she possibly testify to? How to make pizzas? Your honor, how can you permit this mockery? I demand that you act! Call Security!”

“Sit down, Mr. Alfrey. Ms. Hatfield, are you here to testify?”

“I am, your honor.”

“Objection!” called Alfrey.

“Your honor,” Thomas said, “I think I can throw some light on Ms. Hatfield’s presence here.”

“Please do.”

“Somewhat over a year ago my client sent a messenger to ATCC in Rockville, Maryland with a biological specimen subsequently identified as ATCC 06 327, plus details of a process for isolation, culture, and use of the material. If matters had gone as planned, the messenger would have left the process document at ATCC along with the specimen, well more than a year before Catley-Torgsen filed its patent application, and such deposit would have constituted a bar to the patent under 35 USC 102. The messenger left the biological specimen but not the document, and he has now disappeared. A replacement document was eventually sent to Rockville, but too late to invalidate the patent.” He paused and studied Gordio from the corner of his eye. The C-T executive was squinting thoughtfully at Ms. Betsy Hatfield. Yes, thought Thomas, the disguise worked, she got through, and now you’re wondering whether you ought to be worried. Yes, Big John, you ought to be worried.

He continued. “Though we had left no printed description with the specimen, for the sake of completeness and in an excess of caution a Gruen scientist had encoded the culture details in the specimen itself, and she intended that this information be readily comprehensible to one skilled in the art. We had expected to prove this readability by a witness, a virologist coming up from Atlanta. He was to have flown up last night, but we received information at the last minute that he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident on his way to the airport. He is presently in traction in an Atlanta hospital.” He looked briefly at John Gordio. The man’s face was inscrutable. You bastard, thought Thomas. Would you have killed the man?

He resumed. “While we had no reason to anticipate foul play—and indeed, we accuse no one, nevertheless we thought best to play it safe, and be ready with a back-up witness. To ensure her safe passage, Ms. Hatfield comes to us under the cover of her actual employment, a delivery girl for Checkers Pizza. If she is permitted to testify I believe we can wrap up this arbitration within the hour.”

“And we still object,” declared Alfrey. “She’s obviously not qualified. The whole thing is a farce!”

Grant rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Should youth and a uniform disqualify her? I say no. She’s eligible. A question remains, however. It’s now nearly twelve. Shall we recess for lunch, or shall we play on through?”

“Respondent can stay,” Thomas said.

Alfrey and Gordio conferred. “We too,” the lawyer said. “But Mr. Gordio wonders if he could have the pizza?”

She brought the box back in and presented it to the executive with a curtsey.

Grant said, “Will the reporter swear the witness.”

She was sworn in, then took the witness chair.

Thomas said, “State your full name and city of residence.”

“Betsy Hatfield, Columbia, Maryland.”

“Age?”

“Seventeen.”

“Are you employed?”

“Yes sir, I’m a delivery girl for Checkers Pizza.”

“Full time?”

“No sir, just certain hours. I’m going to Howard County Community College full time.”

“How did you and I meet?”

“One day the Finance Officer at the college called me into her office. You were there.”

“I told you why I was there?”

“You said you were looking for a student—male or female—who had had biology in high school and who could do some homework and then testily about it in a patent case. You gave me a sheet with a lot of letters on it. You said it was a description of a biological specimen deposited with the American Type Culture Collection, and that it was in code. You asked me if I thought I could decode it. I said I didn’t know anything about codes. The whole thing looked pretty doubtful. Also, Mr. Thomas, meaning no disrespect, I couldn’t figure you out. I thought maybe you were actually… after… oh never mind.”

Thomas smiled. “So what happened next?”

“You said, take the paper home, think about it, call you if I wanted to tackle it. You said, if I solved the code, your client would pay my college expenses.”

Alfrey was up and objecting. “Your honor! You hear this? She’s barely out of high school. This witness is obviously not a qualified cryptanalyst. She cannot be permitted to testify in this very complicated matter.”

“Overruled. This is interesting—let’s listen.”

“So you took it home?” Thomas said.

“Yes sir. I called you that night and read off the solution to you. Somebody at Gruen called the Finance Office next day. For which I thank you, Mr. Thomas.”

“The pleasure is ours, Ms. Hatfield. Now then, did I give you any help? Any tips, like try this, or try that, or try’ such and such a system?”

“No sir. You said I had to do it all on my own, no help, no coaching, or it wouldn’t count. I was even afraid to use my P.C.”

“But you solved it. So explain how.”

“Yes sir. Well, I looked at the text. There were four different letters, G, U, A, and C. And since it’s a biological material, that translates to guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine. The ‘U’ means we’re looking at RNA, and a string of RNA nucleides. RNA synthesizes proteins in the cell. It does this by stringing together amino acids. There are twenty amino acids in our cells. Each amino acid is called up by its own special set of nucleides in the RNA. These sets are called codons, and each codon is made up of three nucleides. For example, the codon UUU calls for phenylalanine, UCU for serine, UAU for tyrosine, and so on. There are more codons than there are amino acids, so some amino acids are coded by several different codons. Also, one codon means ‘start’, and several mean ‘stop’.”

“Ms. Hatfield,” Thomas said, where did you get this information?”

“I had biology in high school, Mr. Thomas. I was pretty good at it. Remember?”

“Yes, of course. Please go on. What did you do next?”

“Well, the next step was to write the message out as a series of codons, then translate each codon into its corresponding amino acid.”

“Why do that?”

“Well, once you have everything down as the names of the acids, you can calculate the frequency of the names, then you can assign letters of the alphabet to the names. You do this with reference to the frequencies of the letters in an English text. You follow the same procedure Poe used in solving the code The Gold Bug.”

And now The GUAC Bug, thought Thomas. “What frequencies did you use?”

“Poe’s frequency list is adequate: a, o, i, e, h, n, r, s… I forget the rest. But I used linotype frequency, e, t, a, o, i, n, s, h… Quite similar to Poe’s, but probably a bit more accurate for current English, especially as to frequencies of ‘e’ and ‘t’.”

“So you assumed it was a simple substitution code, a given amino acid meant a given letter?”

“To start, yes sir, I thought I’d try that. Actually, substitution is the only kind of code I know. We used to pass notes with it in school. Okay?”

“Of course.” We all did, thought the lawyer. “Go on.”

“After I tabulated the amino acid frequencies in the message, I called the most frequent amino acid, ‘e’. That turned out to be leucine. Also, the ‘stop’ codons, UAA, UGA, and UAG set off several three-letter words that I suspected might be ‘the’. If I was right, that confirmed ‘e’ and right away gave me ‘t’ and ‘h’. So I called proline ‘t’ and that made histidine ‘h’. It looked good. Next I went to the two-letter words. Several had a ‘t’—and pretty soon I had ‘at’, ‘it’, and ‘to’, which gave me the vowels. I filled in all the letters over the names of the respective amino acids, leaving blanks where I had yet to determine the letter. Filling in the blanks was duck soup. ‘t_is’ is of course ‘this’, and since ‘o_’ is probably ‘or’ or ‘on’, I looked ahead a little to see which would make the best sense. If it’s ‘or’, I get ‘_iter’ and then ‘liter’ right away, so ‘o_’ had to be ‘or’. Actually the only two-letter word that gave me any trouble was ‘_1’, but I finally decided the blank was ‘m’, which I got after I filled out ‘hu_an’. The easiest two-letter word of course was ‘__’.”

“Which was?”

“ ‘cc’, Mr. Thomas. What else?”

“Of course. How long did it take you to completely decode the message?”

“About an hour. I’m afraid I sort of rushed it, because I didn’t want to be late for work.”

“I now show you a page of handwritten script. Can you identify this?”

“Yes sir. This is the message as I decoded it and wrote it out.”

“Offer in evidence, your honor, photocopies to opposing counsel and Mr. Gordio.”

Alfrey walked over, snatched the sheets from Thomas’s hands, gave him a venomous scowl, walked back to Gordio. They began scrutinizing the papers.

“That completes my direct. Your witness, Mr. Alfrey.”

“Yes, just one minute, please.” He continued to study the exhibit as he carried it toward the girl. He stopped and appeared to mark something in the text. “Now, Ms. Hatfield… ah, may I call you Betsy?”

“And I’ll call you Reggie? Sure, Reggie, go ahead.”

Grant put his hand over his mouth.

“Well, perhaps on the other hand… we’d best hold off on first names. Ah, Ms. Hatfield, you said the message used only twenty different amino acids?”

“Yes sir.”

“And every letter in the message was represented by an amino acid?”

“Yes sir.”

“You’ve sworn to tell the truth, Ms. Hatfield.”

“Yes sir.”

“But not every letter in the message has its corresponding amino acid, does it?”

“I do believe it does, Mr. Alfrey. Did you have some particular letter in mind?”

“I hand you your own translation, Ms. Hatfield. Would you please read the highlighted phrase?”

“Sure. It says ‘…extracted in a flask…’ Okay?”

“Fine. What amino acid stands for the letter ‘x’, Ms. Hatfield?”

“Oh, I see your problem. Actually, there is no amino acid for ‘x’, or ‘z’, and four other letters, which I forget just now. Whoever designed the message used ‘e-k-s’ for ‘x’. There are amino acids for each of those three letters. That’s what he did. I simply smoothed out the spelling.”

“Ah! You admit you altered the text!”

“I guess you could say that. I also put a period at the end.”

“So you lied when you said—”

Thomas was on his feet, but Judge Grant beat him to it. “Knock it off, counselor,” he growled.

“Withdrawn.” The cross-examiner gave the witness a sidelong glance. “Ms. Hatfield, what arts are you skilled in?”

“Not much of anything, I guess. Except maybe cooking. I make pretty good breaded veal cutlets. And last Thanksgiving I fixed the turkey all by myself, for eleven people. I—”

Alfrey interrupted. “Biology? You had only high school biology, no biology in college?”

“Yes sir.”

“You’re not really an authority in the field of microbiology?”

“No sir.”

“Or pharmaceuticals?”

“No sir.”

“Code breaking? You never worked at Fort Meade?”

“No sir.”

“What’s the chemical name of aspirin?”

“Acetyl salicylic acid.”

That stopped him for a moment. He stood and looked at her, puzzled. “How did you know that?”

“That was the password in our girls’ club when I was in sixth grade.”

Reggie, thought Thomas, you have just dug yourself a hole you’ll never get out of. You have proved one doesn’t have to be skilled in any art to read the code.

The corporation lawyer seemed to sense that cross had not gone well. “Nothing further.”

Thomas said, “No redirect. And if Ms. Hatfield is not needed further, I think she would like to be excused. She has a class at HoCo in thirty minutes.”

“Science?” asked Grant.

She said, “No sir, ballet.” And holding her arms over her head, she twirled in a perfect pirouette, then headed for the door.

The arbitrator sighed, shook his head, looked at his watch. “It’s one o’clock. A choice again—do you want to recess for lunch, or wind it up now?”

“I have no rebuttal,” Alfrey said, “but I do have an important motion.”

“On my time?” clipped Thomas. But then he thought, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot. “Oh well, go ahead, shoot.”

Alfrey drew himself up firmly. “Move to strike Ms. Hatfield’s testimony in its entirety. By her own admission she is not skilled in any art relative to ATCC 06. By prior written agreement, the parties were each bound to offer evidence only from witnesses skilled in the art. A pizza delivery girl simply doesn’t qualify as an expert.”

“Oppose,” Thomas said quickly. “In the first place, there is nothing in our arbitration contract that limits witnesses to those skilled in the art. Second, despite lacking any special skills, our pizza lady solved the code quickly and handily. A fortiori, one actually skilled in the art of microbiology would have been able to do the same.”

“I agree,” Judge Grant said. “Motion denied. Anything further? Nothing? So let us conclude. I declare this hearing terminated.” He turned to the computer terminal on his desk and began typing slowly, hunt-and-peck. As he typed he spoke in a firm clear voice. “I… find… for… Respondent Gruen Pharmaceuticals.”

Alfrey watched this in dismay. The printer whirred in near silence, Grant pulled off the document, signed it with a ball-point pen, and handed copies to the lawyers. “Mr. Alfrey?” Claimant’s counsel looked numb. The jurist finally had to touch the man’s hand with the edge of the paper before his fingers reached out for it.

“And now,” Grant said amiably, “we are going off the record.” He nodded to the reporter. “Ms. Johnson, we thank you for your assistance here. You are excused. As you leave, would you please switch off the TV camera.” As the door closed behind her the arbitrator addressed the group. “I think I can now give you the basic rule that governs this case and all cases like it. The rule is short and simple, but nobody is required to stay.”

Nobody moved.

As he continued the trace of a smile seemed to flicker around his mouth. “The rule is this: ‘One successful pizza delivery girl beats thirteen failed experts.’ ” He rose from the desk and started toward the door. In a moment he was gone.