4
Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind amass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the woodafire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all aroundthe man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could havekilled him ten times over, but it was more desirable to opencommunication. So he missed 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-dutyblast-rifles. One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hidingplace. That man's rifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained.
One, so Calhoun presently discovered--was working his way behindunderbrush to a shelf from which he could shoot down at Calhoun.Calhoun had dropped into a hollow and pulled Maril to cover at thefirst shot. The second man happily planned to get to a point where hecould shoot him like a fish in a barrel.
The third man had fired half a dozen times and then disappeared.Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to the rear, hopingthere was no protection from that direction for Calhoun. It would takesome time for him to manage it.
So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying toget above him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar toCalhoun's breastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point atwhich the other man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless.
Then Calhoun sent a dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. Itheated up. Steam rose in a whitish mass and blew directly away fromCalhoun. He saw that antagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that hewas positive that there was a patch of blue pigment on the right-handside of the back of his neck.
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 tacticswith blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. Butsomething from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the grounddirectly upwind from 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 Marilaltogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, notscorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe andplunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them.They were then halfway to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.
But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His musclestwitched and tensed. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme ofagitation. He swore, but a Med Ship man would not react to suchsymptoms as a non-medically-trained man would have done. Calhoun wasfamiliar enough with tear gas, used by police on some planets.
But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged Marilonward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it--panicgas. Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibberingterror.
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 attitudeenabled him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the baseof the Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need notbe counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for somemoments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull onlyfeet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and letloose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the rifle of allits 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 blast-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.He got at an oxygen bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously,should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act toincrease the oxygenation of the bloodstream and muscles, and to makesuperhuman exertion possible if necessary.
Breathing ninety-five percent oxygen produced the effect theterror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normaland his body relaxed. He held out his hand and it did not tremble.He'd been affronted to see it shake uncontrollably when he pushed themicrophone button for Maril.
He turned to her. She hadn't spoken into the mike.
"They may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! Theycould be somebody else, maybe criminals who planned to raid the minefor a shipload of its ore."
"Nonsense," said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to besure. But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be moreon the way here from wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now weknow some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of that andwe'll go on."
He took the microphone. An instant later his voice boomed in thestillness outside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill whirringof invisible small creatures.
"This is the Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_," said Calhoun's voice,amplified to a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after thecargo ship from here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Wealdthey don't know how it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner orlater they'll search here.
"Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've ever beenhere! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talk offusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your traces, they'llbe still more scared! So cover up your tracks and 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.Then he shrugged and seated himself at the control board.
"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they'veoutsmarted 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 with those astrogational chores which began withorienting oneself to galactic directions after leaving a planet whichrotates at its own individual speed. Then one computes the overdrivecourse to another planet, from the respecting coordinates of the worldone is leaving and the one one aims for.
Then, in this case at any rate, there was the very finicky task ofpicking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose planets one was hisdestination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine precision.
"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"
Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensationof falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity,and the blackness outside the Med Ship. The little craft was inoverdrive again.
After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily, "I don't know whatyou 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.But this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine peopleshouldn't do things out of desperation! Being desperate jogs the brainoff-center. One doesn't think straight!"
"I know now that I was ... very foolish."
"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here Irun into a situation that the Med Service should have caught andcleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Serviceobligation; it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at thebasic problem, those
idiots on Orede--It'd happened before I reachedWeald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead menthat nobody intended to kill."
Maril shook her head.
"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun, annoyed, "shouldn't have goneto Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at leasthave stayed on a continent where there were no people from Wealddigging a mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! Theycould be spotted! I believe they were.
"And again, if it had been a long way from the mine installation, theycould probably have wiped out the people who sighted them before theycould get back with the news! But it looks like miners saw menhunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins, and then gotback to the mine with the news!"
She waited for him to explain.
"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "Sosomething had to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wipedout or the story that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited.The blueskins tried for both. They used panic gas on a herd of cattleand it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like thefour-footed lunatics they are!
"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.
"He wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen or heard before-hand. Theymight try to verify the blueskin story later, but they wouldn'tbelieve anything with certainty. It should have worked!"
Again she waited.
"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into theship. Also unfortunately, panic gas got into the ship with them. Sothey stayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off. Theyheaded for Weald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set forWeald anyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away fromwhatever he imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the shipwere still crazy with panic from the gas they kept breathing untilthey died!"
Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked, "You don't think theDarians 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. "No! Not where you're guessing, orhoping. Not on Dara. Just because I act as if Darians were humandoesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a Med Service man, and I'm actingas I think I should." His tone became exasperated.
"Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual, andpossible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it finds proofthat blueskins are in space again and caused the death of Wealdians,it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombson Dara to wipe it out!"
Maril said fiercely, "They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quickerthan starvation, at least!"
Calhoun looked at her, more exasperated 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. Would youmind taking a book or something and going into the other cabin?Murgatroyd and I would like a little relaxation from reality. Withluck, if I go to sleep, I may only have a nightmare. It'll be aterrific improvement on what I'm in now!"
Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was notpossible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and brooded. Thereis brooding and brooding. It can be a form of wallowing in self-pity,engaged in for emotional satisfaction. But it can be, also, a way ofbringing out unfavorable factors in a situation. A man in optimisticmood can ignore them. But no awkward situation is likely to beremedied while any of its elements are neglected.
Calhoun dourly considered the situation of the people of the planetDara, which it was his job as a Med Service man to remedy or at leastimprove. Those people were marked by patches of blue pigment as aninherited consequence of a plague of three generations past. Becauseof the marking, which it was easy to believe a sign of continuinginfection, they were hated and dreaded by their neighbors. Dara was aplanet of pariahs--excluded from the human race by those who fearedthem.
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,monstrous herds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough forDarians to build a ship or ships and try to bring food back to itsstarving people. But that desperately necessary enterprise had nowroused Weald to a frenzy of apprehension.
Weald was, if possible, more hysterically afraid of blueskins thanever before, and even more implacably the enemy of the starvingplanet's population. Weald itself prospered. Ironically, it had suchan excess of foodstuffs that it stored them in unneeded spaceships inorbits about itself.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tighthulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try tosteal--if it could be called stealing--some of the innumerable wildcattle of Orede.
The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended notto hear. Or maybe that didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayedby all of humanity off their world. They'd been threatened andoppressed by guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down anyspacecraft they might send aloft....
So Calhoun brooded, while Murgatroyd presently yawned and climbed tohis cubbyhole and curled up to sleep with his furry tail carefullyadjusted over his nose.
A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal ona Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noisescarefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhounraised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come fromoutside.
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. "Did I make a noise? I was having a bad dream."
"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth justoccasionally! Come out, please!"
There were stirrings. After a little it opened and Maril appeared. Shelooked as if she'd been crying. She said, quickly, "I probably lookqueer, 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, becauseI'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can help me withmy job. I've figured some things out. For some others I need facts.Will you give them to me?"
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 thingsfirst, you know. But this is a first thing! So long as Darians don'tlook like the people of other worlds, they'll be believed to bedifferent. If they look repulsive, they'll be believed to be evil.
"Tell me about those patches. They're different sizes and differentshapes and they appear in different places. You've none on your faceor hands, anyhow."
"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.
"I thought--"
r /> "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 growup they'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.
"When you left Dara," he said, "you were carried a long, long way, tosome planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and wherethe name meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere elseand forgotten 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,and Korvan--"
Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on thename she'd mentioned.
"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," hesaid absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once!There's a virus, a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humansare immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physicalcondition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do.But once they're established they're passed on from mother to child.And when they die out it's during childhood, too!"
He poured coffee for the two of them. Murgatroyd swung down to thefloor 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 purelya source 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'retouchy. 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 onWeald if I'd been known as ... what I am! And there's Korvan, whoarranged for me to be sent away as a spy and advised me to do justwhat you said: 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."
She turned and moved toward the door to the cabin. Calhoun lookedafter her.
"Maril."
"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 thereis no profession in which a really competent man tries to understandwomen. Calhoun, annoyed, had to let fate or chance or disaster takecare of Maril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with.
But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in thereference tapes. He came up with an explicit collection of informationon exactly the subject he needed. He left the control room to go downinto the storage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultrafrigid storage box, whose contents were kept at the temperature ofliquid air.
He donned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted atiny block of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass wasembedded. It frosted instantly he took it out, and when the storagebox was closed again the block was covered with a thick and opaquecoating of frozen moisture.
He went back to the control room and pulled down the panel which madeavailable a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biologicallaboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raiseit very, very gradually to a specific temperature and hold it there.It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantityof the same culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus withgreat exactitude.
"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think Ican rest."
Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the MedShip. The girl 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 dismissable murmurings now andagain. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for suchinfinitesimal stirrings of sound, carefully recorded for this exactpurpose, the feel of the ship would have been that of a tomb.
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 theblock--no longer frosted--in the culture microscope and saw itsenclosed, infinitesimal particles of life in the process ofmultiplying on the food that had been frozen with them when they werereduced to the spore condition. He beamed. He replaced the block inthe incubation oven and faced the day cheerfully.
Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted, withMurgatroyd eating from his own platter on the floor, a tiny cup ofcoffee alongside.
"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.
In theory, a Med Service man had all the authority needed for this orany other emergency. The power to declare a planet in quarantine, socutting it off from all interstellar commerce, should be enough toforce cooperation from any world's government. But in practice Calhounhad exactly as much power as he could exercise.
And Weald could not think straight where blueskins were concerned, andcertainly the authorities on Dara could not be expected to belevelheaded. They had a history of isolation and outlawry, and longexperience of being regarded as less than human. In cold fact, Calhounhad no power at all.
"May I ask whose influence you'll exert?" asked Calhoun.
"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who thinks a great deal ofme. I don't know his present official position, but he was certain tobecome prominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and yourattitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to helpyou, I'm sure."
"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."
She started. "How did you know?"
"Intuition," said Calhoun dryly. "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 was very quiet. Murgatroyd tried to enterinto pretended conversation with her, but she was not able to matchhis pretense.
On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached. While theship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to lookforward with confidence to the future. But when contact and, in afashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer,prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, butthere were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.
Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.
"I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out. IfI can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow myadvice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideasit probably will get; and isn't doing what I suspect it is--why,maybe something can be done."
"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock. There was no sensationattached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. Itwas now time for the end. He might find most anythin
g having happened.His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could havesent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state ofdesperation....
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 ofthe blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it.
He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking forcoordinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There wasconfusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were notready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently theship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward.
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,with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trainedon the Med Ship itself.
"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Yourship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"
* * * * *