* * * * *
Dillman grinned and pulled open a green metal wall cabinet. He filled
two tumblers with the syrupy swamp wine and handed one of the glasses
to Caffrey. The captain of the ship drank half, breathed loudly, and
emptied the glass.
He hunched deeper into the shock chair, resting. "I'll be glad when
it's over, Dillman. Really glad."
"Do you mean that, sir?"
"Hell yes, I mean it. In this business you've got to be tough. But
I'll be damned if a man can go on kicking people around all the time.
Someplace, he's got to stop. Well, this trip'll make my pile and I can
stop. Got a job waiting, shuttling passengers to the Temple Ruins west
of Red Sands on Mars."
"This isn't any party," Dillman admitted. "Slavery's a funny thing. I
thought it went out a long time back, but everybody on Earth is making
such mental advances ..." he pointed at his skull and grinned wryly
"... that they just haven't got any time to do any real work. And of
course, these poor wastrels we've got on board aren't really human
beings. How do they make them, Cap?"
Caffrey shrugged. "God knows. The Globulars on Centauri four turn them
out by the hundreds. Almost as good as human beings.
"They have kids, they get sick, they get mad, and they don't mind
working. They don't know what else to do." He sighed, watching the
circle of Mars beginning to grow big and bloated and red beyond the
window. "Although it's one hell of a job to put muscle on them."
Dillman poured out some more liquor and raised his glass. His eyes were
bits of hard rock. "Here's to the last trip, Cap. And I only hope the
big boys of Workers, Incorporated, give me this ship."
Caffrey nodded and drank.
A green sign flashed over a bank of machinery. END OF EXERCISE PERIOD,
it blinked, END OF EXERCISE PERIOD, END OF....
Rising, Caffrey walked to the machinery, pulled a large leather-handled
switch. He visualized with pleasure the great doors opening, and the
androids, the artificial humans, stumbling back into the dim stinking
holds to wait quietly on the last stage of the trip before the chains
closed on them. Caffrey laughed out loud.
"Dirty joke?" Dillman asked, faintly anxious.
"No. Just thinking about what I'll get paid. Two thousand solars. Why
man, that's enough to live on for years! Plenty of wine, and an easy
job, and women, bless 'em."
Dillman started to reply when the com system rattled. The big man moved
to the machine and pressed the button.
"Caffrey, bridge," he growled. "What the hell is...."
A quiet voice cut him off, deadly, precise like a small knife slicing
into him. "Captain, this is Doc. I'm down in the android hold. You'd
better come right away."
"Doc," Caffrey began, but the machine clicked off. He slammed it with
his fists. "Doc, damn it, Doc...." There was only the faraway rumble of
the ship's great iron heart.
He swung around, heading for the door. "Come on," he said quickly.
"Nothing's going to happen. Not on this run. Nothing...."
They ran through the halls under the blue lights, clambered down the
ladders, ran through more halls.
And then they stood in front of the big black door. Caffrey turned the
wheel, slowly at first, and then faster, until it spun and blurred into
invisibility. He stepped back and the doors opened.
* * * * *
The hold was dark and musty. In the tiers of bunks, the androids
huddled like not-quite-black shadows. They said nothing.
They watched. There was only a smell of antiseptic in the air,
healthful, clean and rotten all at the same time.
Caffrey and Dillman moved through the endless rows of bunks. Farther
down, Caffrey could see Doc crouching over a low bunk, his cigarette
lighter aflame. He knelt there, a small bulbous gnome of a man, with
weary defeated eyes and thin hair lying over his skull. An android boy
of about seven years lay on the bunk.
Doc looked up as they stepped up to him.
His face was filled with the weariness of his eyes, with too many years
and too much that was wrong.
"Well," said Caffrey, watching him. Doc's lighter jumped and flared
bright when he spoke.
"The boy is sick," Doc said. "Very sick."
Caffrey clicked his fingernails together. "Did you call me down here
for that?" There was a restless stirring from the bunks.
"Certainly," Doc replied. "It might be dangerous."
"What the hell's the matter with him?"
Doc shrugged. "I don't know. How do I know what kind of diseases
androids get. Don't you understand what this could mean?"
"No," said Caffrey, "I don't." His voice hardened. "I'm going back up
to the chart room. We dock on Mars in a few hours."
Doc sighed and lifted his misshapen body. "All right." He turned to a
woman near the bed. The woman's eyes were liquid and full of hurt. "I
can't do anything," Doc said. "I don't know what's the matter with
him." Caffrey felt stupid, seeing sorrow expressed for a woman who
wasn't even human. Doc snapped his lighter closed and the circle of
fire was gone. Caffrey breathed easily.
"It's too damned dark," Dillman whispered as they moved toward the
door. He stumbled against a bunk and swore.
"Keep quiet," Doc said very softly. "Just you keep quiet."
Caffrey closed the black door and passed out cigarettes. The smoke
whirled up to the ventilators like a dancing blue dragon. "Doc," he
said, trying to control his anger, "I'd like to know why you're getting
so excited."
"This is the first time I've seen disease in an android," the little
man replied. "I don't know whether the disease is harmful to them or
not. I mean seriously harmful. But remember what Terran scarlet fever
did on Antares second. We've taken care of scarlet fever. It isn't
fatal to us. But remember what it did to the people on Antares second."
"Yeah," said Dillman, leaning against the wall and covering his eyes.
Caffrey remembered too; the bodies and the fine yellow buildings and
the rot and the inability to stop the corruption. The system had known
panic.
"I see," he said. "You think whatever's wrong with that kid, even
though it might not bother them much, might ... kill us? Is that it?"
"Yes," said Doc. He blew out some smoke.
Caffrey grabbed his arm. "Nothing's going to happen. This cargo is
going to Mars and nothing's going to happen. I've worked for this a
long time. Understand? No sick kid is going to keep me from landing on
Mars."
"You're the captain," said Doc. He shambled off down the corridor,
trailing a worm of blue smoke in the air behind him. He rounded a
corner out of sight, small and gnarled and tired of arguing. The last
of the smoke vanished into the ventilators.
Dillman laughed gratingly with effort. "Let's go get the rest of that
bottle, Cap."
"Sure," said Caffrey.
They were three hours out from Mars when the com system came to life
again. Caffrey jumped up out of the shock chair and jabbed the switch.
A nervous, excited voice came screeching at him.
"Skolnik, Captain."
"What's wrong?"
"It's Doc. He's on the floor of his cabin. He's ... I...."
"Speak up, man!" Caffrey yelled.
Skolnik's voice pulled itself back from shivering pieces and went
on, "Doc's lying on the floor ... and his voice is awful ... and the
muscles in his face and arms and all over him are jumping and ... oh,
Captain...."
"Go on," Caffrey said savagely. "Go on!"
"... and he's screaming, Captain, and we can't stop him...."
Caffrey was out in the hall before the last syllable was uttered.
The bulkheads spanged open as he kicked them. His feet slap-slapped
frantically and when he was two sections away and one deck above Doc's
quarters, he heard the screaming.
It rose and shrilled and howled and made him more afraid than he had
ever been in his life.
The carefully acquired veneer of toughness shredded away like cheap
cotton candy that was eaten at a Terran carnival and dissolved to
nothing in the mouth.
The eighteen crewmen of the ship were in the hall, milling and twisting
their caps in their hands. Skolnik stood with his back to the wall. He
had vomited on the floor and now he was crying. Caffrey was sicker when
he smelled the bitterness, but he shoved at the crewmen.
They stumbled against one another like dumb animals. Their faces
belonged to little boys on dark nights when they walked home alone.
They seemed to resist Caffrey's efforts, and he clubbed at them, the
breath tearing in and out of his chest. Finally, he stood with his
hands on the edge of the cabin door.
* * * * *
His hands had been sweating, but now he felt, actually felt, the wave
of cold sweep through his fingers, up his arms.
Doc was on the floor, like Skolnik had said.
His scream made an endless mad tune above the engine rumble. His body
was lifted from the floor, jerked, twisted, thrown back down again like
some fantastic, jiggling marionette on strings.
[Illustration: _Doc was on the floor. His screams made an endless, mad
tune above the engine rumble._]
"Doc," Caffrey called, "Doc, listen, it's me, Cap."
The screaming slobbered into nothing. Doc's hands clutched at the iron
frame of his bunk. They held there while the rest of his body was
convulsed and pulled into insane contortions.
"Infected," Doc said, forming his words into a shriek. "I got it from
the child ... we're all infected ... all ... we'll infect Mars ...
spread ... spread ... _spread_...." The last word went up and up like
the ship's takeoff siren. Doc struggled to hold onto the bed but his
body went jerking away across the floor.
Dillman peered over Caffrey's shoulder. The big man spoke very softly.
"Go back to my cabin. Get my gun. Hurry."
Dillman hesitated, then ran. Caffrey stood fascinated watching the
devil's dance of the diseased man. Finally, something cool and hard was
placed in his hand. The scream tore at his eardrums.
Quickly he looked at the ceiling. He pushed the gun forward. He pulled
the trigger several times. The shots roared and blended with the engine
thunder. When the noise was gone, Caffrey realized that the screaming
had stopped. He dropped the gun.
He turned around and closed the door of the cabin and locked it without
once looking at Doc. Skolnik still sobbed over against the wall.
Rapidly, Caffrey explained what had happened in the android hold. The
men stood around, not looking at one another. They breathed loudly and
the blue lights in the ceiling watched them, emotionless.