In the year 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon searched Florida in vain for a fabled fountain with wonderful curative powers. He didn't find the fountain. Ironically, he died on the trip back to Spain of illness contracted during the search.

Centuries later Doctor Peter Garrison found it, the Fountain of Youth. It was not in south Florida like Ponce de Leon thought, but Peter stumbled on it just as surely as if old Ponce had parted the palmettos and fell in it, and then found an alligator in it. Just like Peter's fountain.

It was nearly a year after Dr. Garrison started the first test on ten human volunteers before the first negative note was made in any of the ten health diaries that the participants were told to keep. Bart Adams wrote, 'Today I feel a general weakness and lethargy that I have never felt before.' On the morning of the next day, as Bart tried to walk from his bed to the bathroom, he collapsed and fell to the floor, unconscious. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital but he never regained consciousness and died before noon. That alligator had been lurking, unseen and unsuspected in Peter's "Fountain of Youth."

Dr. Peter Garrison had disappointed his father when he chose to devote himself to research, rather than treat people. "But I am treating people," Peter said over and over, "When other doctors use the knowledge that comes from the work we researchers do!" William Garrison understood, he just didn't want to admit that he wanted to shine in the reflected glory of his son, the town doctor.

Henry, Michigan was a small town, room for only one doctor and one hardware store, Garrison's. It had put Peter through school and his sister, Janice, too. It would have put Bill's youngest son, Sam, through if he had wanted to go. Old Bill Garrison had been a builder, he built the store from scratch. Starting with a few borrowed dollars worth of inventory, he had made it the strongest reason for the town's existence. It was admitted that he had been the town's leading citizen. People expected that one of Bill's boys would follow in his footsteps and that became Sam.

"It's strange," Sam said years later, "How little I knew Peter. He was six years older and Janice was between us in age. I don't even remember fighting with him, we just didn't have much in common."

There was nothing wrong with Sam's memory, Peter and Sam might have been from different parents, they were so unlike in their personalities. Sam took over Peter's baseball equipment without a murmur of complaint from Peter. Peter just didn't want it anymore. It was the same with a fishing rod that Peter had gotten for Christmas one year. When Sam took it, it had hardly been used. Sam still had it, along with about a dozen others, years later. Sam was willing to go around looking like Huckleberry Finn, or at least a friend of his. Peter was careful in his appearance, dark hair always combed, clothes neat and on the conservative side of whatever style was accepted that year.

Sam was a Junior in high school when he visited Peter at Peter's school for the first time. Actually he had gone to Chicago with a group of his school's football team to see the Bears play. His father insisted that he go see Peter, hoping that some element of college life would appeal to Sam and that he would get interested in higher education. After the game, Sam found his way to Northwestern and to the place Peter shared with some other medical students. Peter introduced him to some of the fellows at dinner at the house that evening, showed him around the campus with emphasis on the labs, and got him back out to O'hare for the flight back home. Nothing rubbed off on Sam at all, unless it was a dislike of the friends that Peter had introduced him to. If anything the effect of the visit was just the opposite of what Bill Garrison hoped for, Sam and Peter reconfirmed that they had nothing in common and little concern about it, and Sam wanted no part of a four year study program away from the comfortable, small town environment of Henry.

"I can't be like Peter," Sam told his father, "He's a brain. I don't want to go away to college. I'd rather work in the store."

Where Peter had been at the top of all his classes, Sam Garrison was about in the middle. There was no doubt that he could have brought home better grades but getting them might have interfered with something more important that he had to do. He was a pretty good football player but not the star of the team. Where Peter's dark good looks had made the girls wish that he was less interested in studies and more in dating, Sam's attraction was his warm friendliness, directed equally to boys and girls.

After graduation Sam felt at home in the store and it soon became clear to Bill that Sam had the potential capability to take it over. Sam was satisfied with that, and no hurry either, there were too many other things to do while he had the time and before he got tied down. As it worked out, Sam never did get tied down. His assumption of the management of the store was as gradual and as unmarked by milestone events as his increasing waistline or his receding hair line. It was the same with his dating Joan Anderson. While they were still in school they had dated but not exclusively with each other. It was only after some of the other boys had left town that Sam and Joan found themselves seeing each other more often as they eased into a pattern of familiarity, knowing as it continued that it was developing into a solid base for their marriage. There was little that they didn't know about each other, Henry was too small a town for people to have hidden lives. Sam's fishing trips or his participation in town sporting events were no more a surprise to Joan than her club and girl friends or her shopping trips to Detroit were to Sam. It seemed like half the town attended their wedding, most had been expecting it for a couple of years. It was no surprise that Peter didn't come.

Peter finished his formal residency and still didn't return to Henry, he was so involved in the AIDS research program that he stayed on as part of the team. His work was in genetics and it was clear that this would be his chosen field of research. It was not only fascinating to him, he soon became an acknowledged expert in the group that was working with the AIDS virus. That was the group that got credit for the breakthrough that brought to an end the AIDS epidemic. Peter's own contribution to that effort became well known and resulted in an offer to join the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta.

His big discovery came there. In less than a year he had developed what he called ISSA, an acronym for Immune System Support Additive. The enterprising reporter who had gotten wind of it and wrote of it long before Peter was ready to announce it, called it "The Fountain of Youth".

It was the AIDS virus itself that Peter used to develop ISSA. Such a strong virus. It had shown that once it was in the blood stream it became invincible. Millions of people had died before Peter and his group had used a genetically modified form of the virus itself to control it's spread.

Peter's great discovery came when he found that one experimental form of the modified virus actually made it work as an ally to the immune system rather than as an enemy. The modified virus assisted and so strengthened the white corpuscles in their work that nothing escaped them. Nearly two years of development and testing indicated that these allies to the body's own defenses against all disease would be safe to use and effective in maintaining a perfectly healthy body.

By the news media people he was hailed as a modern Jonas Salk. The end to all disease was at hand, he had found the answer to the world's health problems. Some way they found the means to follow all his experiments, reporting on the incredible successes in minute detail. The results of the tests on animals were so promising that public demand reached the hysterical stage, leading to demonstrations by health groups and even some litigation over the right of the public to have access to this supplement. Fortunately, federal laws prevented it's use on humans until controlled testing had been completed.

Approval was finally granted for a limited test of the serum. Finding volunteers to take the injections was no problem, the problem came in deciding how many and which ones. The choice of ten was finally completed, using care to select people with different health histories and racial backgrounds. Some variations in age was also obtained in the final group.

The ten who got the supplement were injected on succeeding days of the week for two consecutive weeks. Bart Adams was the first to be called in for the all day examination that preceded the injection. Two weeks later, Darrin Graves completed the list. Each of the ten agreed to keep a record of their general activities and note anything that affected their health or well being. Each month these records were reviewed by Peter and his team in Atlanta. As the months went by and the reports showed a complete absence of illness of any kind in any one of the test group, the confidence level of both the research team and the medical reporters grew. Plans were made for the further use of the ISSA serum and although these plans were not made public, the press made projections of their own as to how the world would be freed from all disease by the use of this serum.

When nearly a year later Bart Adams died, after writing of "a general weakness and lethargy that I have never felt before", the output of the media toward the public started it's change from elation and optimism to disappointment, then criticism.

Peter was informed by telephone that afternoon. He made arrangements for an autopsy to be performed by the pathology group at the Center. He also called all his team together and spent hours discussing the possibilities. Before the autopsy was performed, Martha Neal had collapsed. She died before Peter could reach her bedside. When Charles Wheeler died on the following day the significance of the sequence of death matching the sequence of injection was discovered. Peter called in the remaining seven participants, installing them immediately in adjacent rooms in one wing of the hospital. Blood tests were made almost hourly while Peter and every other member of the team tried desperately to find an answer to the problem.

After Elwood Dorman, who was number four, died on Thursday, the rest of the group demanded confirmation of the pattern that was developing. Peter explained as well as he could that whatever had been changing in the bodies of the first four was very precise in its change pattern, and that it probably was changing in the bodies of the rest of the group at the same rate, therefore he and everyone else in the research group was working night and day to find an answer before anyone else died.

That was little satisfaction to the doomed test group. Before Maria Garcia died, she pointed out that their rooms were assigned in the same order of their injection dates. "It's going right down the hall, room by room, and I'm next," she sobbed and ran into her room. She never came out alive. Peter had to relax the stringent rules against visitors. Some demanded to go home to wait their day to die but Peter resisted and asked that they all stay where they could be reached and treated as efforts continued to find a way to stop whatever was happening to them. Peter visited with Betty Moe, number six, in the privacy of her room. He found her standing at the window, looking out at the pine forest on the other side of the parking lot.

"Hello, Dr. Garrison," she said, "Come to tell me goodbye?"

Strangely enough it was said without bitterness. Peter felt a burden of responsibility for the ten lives that were being lost, one by one. When the test had started he hadn't even known their names, now he not only had all their names indelibly written in his mind, there were faces attached to the names of those still alive. As he looked at this young woman he wondered what had motivated her to take the injection, nearly a year ago, signing the release that had clearly stated that there were unknown risks.

"No," he replied, "I came to talk to you about how you might help. Betty, if the same pattern holds for you as it has for five other people who have now died, then there is something happening in your immune system or somewhere in your body right now that will bring about your death soon."

"Yes, Monday is my day, isn't it?"

"What motivated you to take part in this experiment, Betty?"

"How could you ask that? This was sold as the answer to all mankind's health problems. You yourself told us that the main question was how long the effect would last, not whether the side effects would kill us! I think that you should give me credit for wanting to help get the serum tested and available for others along with the benefit to myself if it worked."

"Oh, I do, Betty, I do! That's why I'm here now. I know that something is going to go on in your body in the next seventy two hours that is important to everybody that has taken this supplement. If we can't find out what it is and find a way to prevent it there will never be the benefit that this supplement has given you for the past forty nine weeks. You haven't had a cold, a headache or any other illness, you haven't even suffered from menstrual cramps. Now, I need all the help that you and others in this group can give to find the answer. Will you stay and help?"

"I've got friends. I'd like to spend some time with them but I'll try to help. What do you need from me, more blood?"

"I want it all," Peter told her. "I want to replace all your blood to see if we can get to whatever is changing in your system that makes everything seem to break down all at once."

Peter did just that. All Betty's blood was changed. Donors who had not had the supplement, contributed enough to completely change Betty's blood. It was then tested in every way possible. On Monday Betty died.

The Detroit newspaper was under the door when Sam opened the hardware store on Monday morning. Peter's picture was on the front page. A year ago Peter had been smiling in the pictures they used with the stories about the promise of the supplement, now Sam saw his serious and worried looking face, caught by the camera as he hurried through a hospital door. Below the photo was a boxed listing of the dead and the dying. Beside each name was the date of death, past or expected.

"A very tasteful bit of reporting," Sam growled sarcastically.

Sam hadn't really been surprised when Peter's work had kept him from attending his own father's funeral. Sam had handled everything, not expecting that Peter would break a pattern that had been set in his first year at Northwestern. Bill Garrison had continued to pay for Peter's education, quietly sending checks in response to the terse notes from Peter telling him what the needs were. Only when Peter moved to Atlanta did the requests stop. The notes stopped, too. Occasionally a card came to his mother, who wrote to him regularly, whether he answered or not. Peter phoned her after Sam had told him on the phone that their father had died. It was to her that Peter explained why he couldn't come to the funeral. She accepted that as she had accepted his absence from all the family Christmas gatherings.

Sam Garrison did most of his work in the mornings, letting the assistant manager have his lunch and return before Sam went to lunch. Sometimes he came back to the store but more often he didn't. There were just too many important things to do. George Hamilton was Sam's best friend all through high school. When he came back home with a law degree, he and Sam took up right where they left off. Instead of skipping class to go fishing they left their respective offices to do the same thing, or play golf, or go to Detroit for a ball game. George was Best Man at Sam and Joan's wedding. He had moved into his father's law office and had the same relaxed approach to work that he had all through school. It was George who handled Bill Garrison's estate. He was surprised when he pulled Bill's will and went over it with Sam.

"You know he left everything to you, Sam?"

"No, I didn't know that for sure but I've been getting that kind of a feeling for a year or so."

"Do you think that there will be any objections from anyone else in your family?"

"No, I don't think so. There really isn't that much, except for the store and I know that neither Janice or Peter wants that. Peter is doing well financially as far as I know, and Janice, too. She probably makes more than Peter does. They know that I will continue to take care of Mother. I have been for the last few years, anyway."

Sam had done that without conscious thought, just as he had taken over the store, never considering any options, never feeling slighted or burdened. As his father's abilities had gradually decreased, Sam had assumed all the responsibility for maintenance of what they called the big house, the home that Bill Garrison had built for a bigger family than he ever had. Sam had been the last, and it was just as well. Now, Sam and Joan brought his mother into their smaller home to live with them.

"You'd be just too lonesome in that big house all alone," Joan told her. "Here with us you can help me with the kids if you feel like it, and you can just rest in your room whenever you want to."

Sam's mother wanted it to be the other way, with Sam and Joan, along with their two children, moving into the big house with her. Joan knew that wouldn't work and Sam agreed. "It would still be her house, not mine," Joan said. "I couldn't do anything comfortably". A year went by and Sam's mother got even less active before the subject came up again. "It'll be different now," Sam told Joan. "She's been out of it long enough to lose that feeling of total possessiveness." They moved into the big house, made some changes to give Sam's mother a comfortable room and separate bath, and Joan took over. Except for Mother's rooms, it was Joan's to do with as she pleased.

Now, as Sam went to the little office in the back of the store, he laid the Detroit paper on the desk and put on a pot of coffee. The old-fashioned percolator bubbled away as he read about the tragic results of what was expected to be a routine test. Five individual pictures were spread across the top of page three. Each of the ones who had died were described in the story which followed. Sadly, Sam read about them, one by one, their lives described in as much detail as enterprising reporters could glean from family, friends, schoolteachers and employers.

He had just started the article describing Peter and his background when the telephone rang. The thought that the tragic results of Peter's experiment would bring questions to Henry, Michigan hadn't occurred to him. It was a surprise to hear that the caller was a reporter from Detroit.

"Mr. Garrison, this is Barry Knowles, of the Detroit Times" was his opening remark. Then without giving Sam time to respond, asked, "Have you talked with your brother since his test people started dying?"

Sam hesitated. Barry Knowles had an article on page one of the paper in his hand. "No sir, I haven't," Sam replied.

Sam looked at the Knowles article as Barry asked the next question. "Do you think your brother had the right to use these people as human guinea pigs?"

Sam didn't answer for a moment, "Just a minute, Mr. Knowles, I'm looking at your article on the front page of today's paper."

"Well, you've kept up with this tragedy, then?"

"I see, Mr. Knowles, that you deplore the fact that this test was conducted. I remember clearly that nearly a year ago you demanded in a front page article in this same paper that the supplement be released for public use while these tests were just being started. How do you reconcile these two different positions?"

"Mr. Garrison, the public has a right to know how you feel about this situation, and what you think of your brother's activities!" Knowles ignored Sam"s question.

Sam hung up. He then put the telephone on the answering machine with the night message on and watched the blinking lights as the machine answered call after call.

"What do I feel?" Sam asked himself. Sympathy for his brother for one thing. "He's got to be feeling terrible about this. I know he is not callous about human life, and the apparent failure of his development of something that would have made life so much better for so many people has got to be a blow to him." In spite of the fact that Sam hadn't talked to Peter since his father's funeral, he picked up the phone. He had to look in the desk drawer for the address book that had Peter's office phone number in it. When the phone was answered it was a woman's voice.

"Dr. Garrison"s office, Mrs. Gower speaking."

"This is his brother, Sam Garrison, is Peter available?"

"Oh, Mr. Garrison, he is so busy. Right now he's in a meeting with some of the staff. He's refused all calls, the press has been driving us crazy."

"I can imagine, they got to me a while ago. Well,.."

"Just a minute, his door just opened"

Sam held on to a quiet phone for a couple of minutes then, after a couple of clicks on the line, Peter's voice, "Sam, how are you?"

"I'm fine Peter. Been reading about your problems, just wanted to call and give you my moral support. Can't offer much else but wish I could help some way."

"Thanks, Sam. Just that helps. I hear the news media is having a field day. Haven't had time to read the papers myself. Can't blame them I guess, It's a tragic thing."

"Yes, different from a year ago, isn't it?"

"Yes, we haven't given up on anything though, Sam. We just had a meeting, discussing some of the things that we can be doing to try to change the prognosis for the remaining members of the test group. Sam, I've got to get busy starting some of those things right now. Thanks for your support, it really means a lot to me. Give my best to Mother and your family, will you?"

(Continued in Part 2)