The Coffin Cure

The Coffin Cure

By

4
(3 Reviews)
The Coffin Cure by Alan Edward Nourse

Published:

1957

Pages:

24

Downloads:

3,065

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The Coffin Cure

By

4
(3 Reviews)

Book Excerpt

ng wrong at all.

The bus ride was a nightmare. It was a damp, rainy day; the inside of the bus smelled like the men's locker room after a big game. A bleary-eyed man with three-days' stubble on his chin flopped down in the seat next to him, and Phillip reeled back with a jolt to the job he had held in his student days, cleaning vats in the brewery.

"It'sh a great morning," Bleary-eyes breathed at him, "huh, Doc?" Phillip blanched. To top it, the man had had a breakfast of salami. In the seat ahead, a fat man held a dead cigar clamped in his mouth like a rank growth. Phillip's stomach began rolling; he sank his face into his hand, trying unobtrusively to clamp his nostrils. With a groan of deliverance he lurched off the bus at the laboratory gate.

He met Jake Miles coming up the steps. Jake looked pale, too pale.

"Morning," Phillip said weakly. "Nice day. Looks like the sun might come through."

"Yeah," said Jake. "Nice day. You--uh--feel all right this morning?"

"Fine,

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Clever story. Researchers finally cure the common cold and discover it isn't a parasite, it's a symbiont.

The characterizations are good for a pulp story, and the predicament is funny. Good yarn.
Funniest story in the half dozen SF anthologies where I've read it.

Delighted to find some stories by Alan Nourse which i hadn't yet managed to source here at many books.

Another writer here whom I adore is F Anstey, although what I think his funniest story isn't included in the biblio here
Cute science fiction short story about Dr. Coffin's cure for the common cold. The cure ends up causing problems of it's own.