CHAPTER 4
Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a massof splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afireby a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the manit had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed himten times over, but it was more desirable to open communication. So hemissed, intentionally.
Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, butthey did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty blast-rifles.One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding-place. That man'srifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained. One--so Calhounpresently discovered--was working his way behind underbrush to a shelffrom which he could shoot down at Calhoun. Calhoun had dropped into ahollow and pulled Maril to cover at the first shot. The second manhappily planned to get to a point where he could shoot him like a fishin a barrel. The third man had fired half a dozen times and thendisappeared. Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to therear, in hope there was no protection from that direction for Calhoun.It would take some time for him to manage it.
So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying to getabove him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to Calhoun'sbreastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at which theother man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless. Then Calhoun senta dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It heated up. Steam rosein a whitish mass and blew directly away from Calhoun. He saw thatantagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he was positive that therewas a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand side of the back of hisneck.
He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thickundergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreadingflames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle-tactics withblast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But somethingfrom him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground directly upwindfrom Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.
It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girlMaril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from theflung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether.Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched orburning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. Inclear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them. They were then halfwayto the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.
But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles twitchedand tense. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of agitation.Calhoun was familiar enough with tear-gas, used by police on someplanets. But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urgedMaril onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it.Panic gas! Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering terror.A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physicalsensations, wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and afrantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physicalsensations are induced by other means will--ordinarily--find his mindyielding to terror.
Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude enabledhim to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base of theMed Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not becounted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for somemoments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feetfrom Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose astaccato of fire which emptied the rifle of all its charges.
Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook andtrembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outerairlock door just as another blaster-bolt hit.
"They--they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they onlyknew--."
"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and heraged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.
He pushed a button on the control-board. He pointed to a microphone. Hegot at an oxygen-bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously, should bean antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to increase theoxygenation of the blood-stream and muscles, and to make superhumanexertion possible if necessary. Breathing ninety-five per cent oxygenproduced the effect the terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heartslowed nearly to normal and his body relaxed. He held out his hand andit did not tremble.
* * * * *
He turned to Maril. She hadn't spoken into the mike yet.
"They--may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! Theycould be somebody else--maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine fora shipload of its ore ..."
"Nonsense!" said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be sure.But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more on theway here wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we know some of themare in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and we'll go on."
He took the microphone. Instants later his voice boomed in the stillnessoutside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill of invisible smallcreatures.
"This is the Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty," said Calhoun's voice, amplifiedto a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the cargo-shipfrom here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald they don't knowhow it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or later they'llsearch here. Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you'veever been here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talkof fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find yourtraces, they'll be more scared still! So cover up your tracksand--get--away--from--here!"
The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. Butit was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, andit could be heard for miles.
But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time. Thenhe shrugged and seated himself at the control-board.
"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they'veout-smarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"
The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end allnoises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By thetime it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clearspace and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether. He busied himself withthose astrogational chores which began with orienting oneself togalactic directions after leaving a planet which rotates at its ownindividual speed. Then one computes the overdrive course to anotherplanet, from the respective coordinates of the world one is leaving andthe one one aims for. Then,--in this case at any rate--there was thevery finicky task of picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whoseplanets one was his destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fineprecision.
"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"
Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation offalling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity, andthe blackness of the Pit outside the Med Ship. The little craft was inoverdrive again.
After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily.
"I don't know what you plan now--."
"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get theblueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know. Butthis thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine, people shouldn'tdo things out of desperation!"
"I know now that I was--very foolish--."
"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I runinto a situation that the Med Service should have caught and cleaned upgenerations ago! But it's not only a Med Service obligation, it's acurrent mess! Before I could begin to get at the basic problem, thoseidiots on Orede--. It'd happened before I reached Weald! An emotionalexplosion triggered by a ship full of dead men that nobody intended tokill."
Maril shook her head.
* * * * *
"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun annoyedly, "shouldn't have goneto Orede in the first pla
ce. If they went there, they should at leasthave stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald digginga mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They could bespotted! I believe they were! And again, if it had been a long way fromthe mine installation, they could probably have wiped out the people whosighted them before they could get back with the news! But it looks likeminers saw men hunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins,and then got back to the mine with the news!"
She waited for him to explain.
"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "So somethinghad to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped out or thestory that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited. The blueskinstried for both. They used panic-gas on a herd of cattle and it made themcrazy and they charged the settlement like the four-footed lunatics theyare! And the blueskins used panic-gas on the settlement itself as thecattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd beenout of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of thesettlement to think about, and he wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen orheard beforehand. They might try to verify the blueskin story later, butthey wouldn't believe anything certainly! It should have worked!"
Again she waited. So Calhoun said very wrily indeed;
"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the ship.Also unfortunately, panic-gas got into the ship with them. So theystayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off and headed forWeald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set for Wealdanyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away from whateverhe imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship were stillcrazy with panic from the gas they were re-breathing until they died!"
Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked;
"You don't think the--Darians intended to kill?"
"I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's alwaysurging the police to use panic-gas in case of public tumult. But it'stoo dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take ahundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit totheir craziness! The whole thing was handled wrong!"
"But you don't blame them?"
"For being stupid, yes," said Calhoun fretfully. "But if I'd been intheir place, perhaps ..."
"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly.
Calhoun jerked his head around. He said;
"No! Not where you're guessing--or hoping. Not on Dara. Just because Iact as if Darians were human doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a MedService man, and I'm acting as I think I should." His tone becameexasperated. "Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations,actual and possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it findsproof that blueskins are in space again and caused the death ofWealdians it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to dropfusion-bombs on Dara to wipe it out!"
Maril said fiercely;
"They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker than starvation, atleast!"
Calhoun looked at her more exasperatedly than before.
"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he saidbitterly; "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he saiddrearily; "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of healthproblems! And that's right in my lap with all the rest!"
He stood up. Then he sat down again.
"I'm tired!" he said flatly. "I'd like to get some sleep."
Maril understood. She picked up a book and went into the other cabin.
* * * * *
Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was notpossible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and considered thesituation of the people of the planet Dara. Those people were marked bypatches of blue pigment as an inherited consequence of a plague of threegenerations past. Dara was a planet of pariahs, excluded from the humanrace by those who had been conditioned to fear them.
And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were ofno mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede, monstrousherds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for Darians tobuild a ship or ships and try to bring food back to its starving people.But that desperately necessary enterprise had now roused Weald to afrenzy of apprehension. Weald was if possible more hysterically afraidof blueskins than ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of thestarving planet's population. Weald itself throve and prospered.Ironically, it had such an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them inunneeded space-ships in orbits about itself. Hundreds of thousands oftons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight hulks, while the people ofDara starved and only dared try to steal--it could be calledstealing--some of the innumerable wild cattle of Orede.
The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not tohear--or maybe they didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed byall of humanity beyond their world. They'd been threatened and oppressedby guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any space-craftthey might send aloft.
So Calhoun pondered ...
* * * * *
A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on aMed Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefullygenerated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun raised hishead. He listened sharply. No sound could come from outside.
He knocked on the door of the sleeping-cabin. The noises stoppedinstantly.
"Come out," he commanded through the door.
"I'm--I'm all right," said Maril's voice. But it was not quite steady.She paused. "I was just having a bad dream."
"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth occasionally! Comeout, please!"
There were stirrings. After a little the door opened and Maril appeared.She looked as if she'd been crying. She said quickly;
"I probably look queer, but it's because I was asleep."
"To the contrary," said Calhoun, fuming, "you've been lying awakecrying. I don't know why. I've been out here wishing I could sleep,because I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can helpme with my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I needfacts. How about it?"
She swallowed.
"I'll try."
"Coffee?" he asked.
Murgatroyd popped his head out of his miniature sleeping-cabin.
"_Chee?_" he asked interestedly.
"Go back to sleep!" snapped Calhoun.
He began to pace back and forth.
"I need to know something about the pigment patches," he said jerkily."Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now. First things first,you know. But that is a first thing! So long as Darians don't look likethe people of other worlds, they'll be considered different. If theylook repulsive, they'll be thought of as evil.... Tell me about thosepatches. They're different-sized and different-shaped and they appear indifferent places. You've none on your face or hands, anyhow."
"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.
"I thought--"
"Not everybody," she said defensively. "Nearly, yes. But not all. Somepeople don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches ontheir skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow upthey're just like--the people of Weald or any other world. And theirchildren never have them."
Calhoun stared.
"You couldn't possibly be proved to be a Darian, then?"
She shook her head. Calhoun remembered, and started the coffee-maker.
"When you left Dara," he said, "You were carried a long, long way, tosome planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where thename meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else andforgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not ablueskin?"
"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters, andKorvan--."
Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the namethat sh
e had mentioned.
"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," hesaid absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once! There'sa virus--a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans are immuneto them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical condition for themto take hold and produce whatever effects they do. But once they'reestablished they're passed on from mother to child.... And when they dieout it's during childhood, too!"
He poured coffee for the two of them. As usual, Murgatroyd swung down tothe floor and said impatiently;
"_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
Calhoun absently filled Murgatroyd's tiny cup and handed it to him.
"But this is marvellous!" he said exuberantly. "The blue patchesappeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered--whenthey recovered?"
* * * * *
Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professionalconsiderations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely asource of information.
"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliatingquestions you want to ask?"
He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully;
"I'm stupid, Maril, but you're touchy. There's nothing personal."
"There is to me!" she said fiercely. "I was born among blueskins, andthey're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on Wealdif I'd been known as--what I am! And there's Korvan, who arranged for meto be sent away as a spy and advised me to do just what yousaid,--abandon my home world and everybody I care about! Including him!It's personal to me!"
Calhoun wrinkled his forehead helplessly.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, "Drink your coffee!"
"I don't want it," she said bitterly. "I'd like to die!"
"If you stay around where I am," Calhoun told her, "you may get yourwish. All right. There'll be no more questions, I promise."
She turned and moved toward the door to the sleeping-cabin. Calhounlooked after her.
"Maril," he called out to her.
"What?"
"Why were you crying?"
"You wouldn't understand," she said evenly.
Calhoun shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He was aprofessional man. In his profession he was not incompetent. But there isno profession in which a really competent man tries to understand women.Calhoun annoyedly had to let fate or chance or disaster take care ofMaril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with.
But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in the referencetapes. He came up with an explicit collection of information on exactlythe subject he needed. He left the control-room to go down into thestorage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultra-frigid storagebox, whose contents were kept at the temperature of liquid air. Hedonned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a tinyblock of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was embedded. Itfrosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage-box was closedagain the block was covered with a thick and opaque coating of frozenmoisture.
He went back to the control-room and pulled down the panel which madeavailable a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological laboratory.He set the plastic block in a container which would raise it very, verygradually to a specific temperature and hold it there. It was,obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity of thesame culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with greatexactitude.
"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I canrest."
Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med Ship.The girl Maril may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in achair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable ofsleeping-places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curledover his nose. There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissablemurmurings now and again. They kept the feeling of life alive in theship. But for such infinitesimal stirrings of sound--carefully recordedfor this exact purpose--the feel of the ship would have been that of atomb.
But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the tapedsounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but neverthelessestablishing an atmosphere of their own.
* * * * *
Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read theinstruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the block--nolonger frosted--in the culture-microscope and saw its enclosed,infinitesimal particles of life in the process of multiplying on thefood that had been frozen with them when they were reduced to the sporecondition. He beamed. He replaced the block in the incubation oven andfaced the day cheerfully.
Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted.
"I've been thinking," said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you ahearing for--whatever ideas you may have to help Dara."
"Kind of you," murmured Calhoun. "May I ask whose influence you'llexert?"
"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who--thinks a great deal of me.I don't know his present official position, but he was certain to becomeprominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your attitude,and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help you, I'msure."
"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."
She started.
"How did you know?"
"Intuition," said Calhoun drily. "All right. I'll count on him."
But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-dayand all the next. The girl remained quiet.
On the ship-day after, the time for breakfast approached. And while theship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look forwardwith confidence to the future. But when contact and--in afashion--conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer, prospectsseemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but there were somany ways in which they could be frustrated! Weald's political leaderscould not oppose hysterical demands for action against blueskins, aftera deathship arrived with no signs whatever of blueskins as responsiblefor its cargo of corpses. It was certain that a starving Dara would tendto desperate and fatal measures against hereditary enemies.
Calhoun sat down at the control-board and watched the clock.
"I've got things lined up," he told Maril wrily, "if only they work out._If_ I can make somebody on Dara listen and follow my advice and _if_Weald doesn't get ideas and isn't doing what I suspect it is, maybesomething can be done."
"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the ship-clock. There was nosensation attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and theend. It was now time for the end. He might find that absolutely anythinghad happened while he made plans which would immediately be seen to behopeless. Weald could have sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in sucha state of desperation that ...
As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly alight-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhounwent into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of theblazing yellow star. It took time to reach it. He called down,identifying himself and the ship and asking for coordinates so his shipcould be brought to ground. There was confusion, as if the request wereso unusual that the answers were not ready. The grid, too, was on theplanet's night side. Presently the ship was locked onto by the grid'sforce-fields. It went downward without incident.
Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within eachother, until the ship actually touched ground.
Then he opened the exit-port, and faced armed men in the darkness, withblast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained on theMed Ship itself.
"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Yourship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"