"I shall take every measure that seems likely to be useful." Then
Nordenfeld snapped, "Damnation, man! Do you realize that this
chlorophage can wipe out the human race if it really gets loose? Do you
think I'll let sentiment keep me from doing what has to be done?"
He flicked off the vision-phone.
* * * * *
The _Star Queen_ came out of overdrive. Her skipper arranged it to be
done at the time when the largest possible number of her passengers
and crew would be asleep. Those who were awake, of course, felt the
peculiar inaudible sensation which one subjectively translated into
sound. They felt the momentary giddiness which--having no natural
parallel--feels like the sensation of treading on a stair-step that
isn't there, combined with a twisting sensation so it is like a spiral
fall. The passengers who were awake were mostly in the bars, and the
bartenders explained that the ship had shifted overdrive generators and
there was nothing to it.
Those who were asleep started awake, but there was nothing in their
surroundings to cause alarm. Some blinked in the darkness of their
cabins and perhaps turned on the cabin lights, but everything seemed
normal. They turned off the lights again. Some babies cried and had to
be soothed. But there was nothing except wakening to alarm anybody.
Babies went back to sleep and mothers returned to their beds and--such
awakenings being customary--went back to sleep also.
It was natural enough. There were vague and commonplace noises,
together making an indefinite hum. Fans circulated the ship's purified
and reinvigorated air. Service motors turned in remote parts of the
hull. Cooks and bakers moved about in the kitchens. Nobody could tell
by any physical sensation that the _Star Queen_ was not in overdrive,
except in the control room.
There the stars could be seen. They were unthinkably remote. The ship
was light-years from any place where humans lived. She did not drive.
Her skipper had a family on Cassim. He would not land a plague ship
which might destroy them. The executive officer had a small son. If
his return meant that small son's death as well as his own, he would
not return. All through the ship, the officers who had to know the
situation recognized that if chlorophage had gotten into the _Star
Queen_, the ship must not land anywhere. Nobody could survive. Nobody
must attempt it.
So the huge liner hung in the emptiness between the stars, waiting
until it could be known definitely that chlorophage was aboard or that
with absolute certainty it was absent. The question was up to Doctor
Nordenfeld.
He had isolated himself with Kathy in the ship's hospital compartment.
Since the ship was built it had been used once by a grown man who
developed mumps, and once by an adolescent boy who developed a raging
fever which antibiotics stopped. Health measures for space travel were
strict. The hospital compartment had only been used those two times.
* * * * *
On this voyage it had been used to contain an assortment of botanical
specimens from a planet seventy light-years beyond Regulus. They were
on their way to the botanical research laboratory on Cassim. As a
routine precaution they'd been placed in the hospital, which could
be fumigated when they were taken out. Now the doctor had piled them
in one side of the compartment, which he had divided in half with a
transparent plastic sheet. He stayed in that side. Kathy occupied the
other.
She had some flowering plants to look at and admire. They'd come from
the air room and she was delighted with their coloring and beauty.
But Doctor Nordenfeld had put them there as a continuing test for
chlorophage. If Kathy carried that murderous virus on her person, the
flowering plants would die of it--probably even before she did.
It was a scrupulously scientific test for the deadly stuff. Completely
sealed off except for a circulator to freshen the air she breathed,
Kathy was settled with toys and picture books. It was an improvised
but well-designed germproof room. The air for Kathy to breathe was
sterilized before it reached her. The air she had breathed was
sterilized as it left her plastic-sided residence. It should be the
perfection of protection for the ship--if it was not already too late.
The vision-phone buzzed. Doctor Nordenfeld stirred in his chair and
flipped the switch. The _Star Queen's_ skipper looked at him out of the
screen.
"I've cut the overdrive," said the skipper. "The passengers haven't
been told."
"Very sensible," said the doctor.
"When will we know?"
"That we can go on living? When the other possibility is exhausted."
"Then, how will we know?" asked skipper stonily.
Doctor Nordenfeld ticked off the possibilities. He bent down a finger.
"One, her father took great pains. Maybe he did manage an aseptic
transfer from a germ-free room to Altaira. Kathy may not have been
exposed to the chlorophage. If she hasn't, no bleached spots will show
up on the air-room foliage or among the flowering plants in the room
with her. Nobody in the crew or among the passengers will die."
He bent down a second finger. "It is probably more likely that white
spots will appear on the plants in the air room _and_ here, and people
will start to die. That will mean Kathy brought contagion here the
instant she arrived, and almost certainly that Altaira will become like
Kamerun--uninhabited. In such a case we are finished."
* * * * *
He bent down a third finger. "Not so likely, but preferable, white
spots may appear on the foliage inside the plastic with Kathy, but not
in the ship's air room. In that case she was exposed, but the virus was
incubating when she came on board, and only developed and spread after
she was isolated. Possibly, in such a case, we can save the passengers
and crew, but the ship will probably have to be melted down in space.
It would be tricky, but it might be done."