Calhoun drove through vacant ways. It was somehow nerve-racking. He
felt as if someone should pop out and say "Boo!" at any instant. He
discovered an elevated highway and a ramp leading up to it. At a
cloverleaf he drove eastward, watching sharply for any sign of life.
There was none.
He was nearly out of the city when he felt the chest impact of a sonic
boom, and then heard a trailing away growling sound which seemed to
come from farther away as it died out. It was the result of something
traveling faster than sound, so that the noise it made far away had to
catch up with the sound it emitted nearby.
He stared up. He saw a parachute blossom as a bare speck against the
blue. Then he heard the even deeper-toned roaring of a supersonic craft
climbing skyward. It could be a spaceliner's lifeboat, descended into
atmosphere and going out again.
It was. It had left a parachute behind, and now went back to space to
rendezvous with its parent ship.
"That," said Calhoun impatiently, "will be the _Candida's_ passenger.
He was insistent enough."
He scowled. The _Candida's_ voice had said its passenger demanded to
be landed for business reasons. And Calhoun had a prejudice against
some kinds of business men who would think their own affairs more
important than anything else. Two standard years before, he'd made a
planetary health inspection on Texia II, in another galactic sector. It
was a llano planet and a single giant business enterprise. Illimitable
prairies had been sown with an Earth-type grass which destroyed
the native ground-cover--the reverse of the ground-cover situation
here--and the entire planet was a monstrous range for beef cattle.
Dotted about were gigantic slaughterhouses, and cattle in masses of
tens of thousands were shifted here and there by ground-induction
fields which acted as fences. Ultimately the cattle were driven by
these same induction fences to the slaughter houses and actually into
the chutes where their throats were slit. Every imaginable fraction of
a credit of profit was extracted from their carcasses, and Calhoun had
found it appalling.
He was not sentimental about cattle, but the complete cold-bloodedness
of the entire operation sickened him. The same cold-bloodedness was
practised toward the human employees who ran the place. Their living
quarters were sub-marginal. The air stank of cattle murder. Men worked
for the Texia Company or they did not work. If they did not work
they did not eat. If they worked and ate,--Calhoun could see nothing
satisfying in being alive on a world like that! His report to Med
Service had been biting. He'd been prejudiced against businessmen ever
since.
* * * * *
But a parachute descended, blowing away from the city. It would land
not too far from the highway he followed. And it didn't occur to
Calhoun not to help the unknown chutist. He saw a small figure dangling
below the chute. He slowed the ground-car as he estimated where the
parachute would land.
He was off the twelve-lane highway and on a feeder road when the chute
was a hundred feet high. He was racing across a field of olive-green
plants that went all the way to the horizon when the parachute actually
touched ground. There was a considerable wind. The man in the harness
bounced. He didn't know how to spill the air. The chute dragged him.
Calhoun sped ahead, swerved and ran into the chute. He stopped the car
and the chute stopped with it. He got out.
The man lay in a hopeless tangle of cordage. He thrust unskilfully at
it. When Calhoun came up he said suspiciously:
"Have you a knife?"
Calhoun offered a knife, politely opening its blade. The man slashed
at the cords and freed himself. There was an attache case lashed to
his chute harness. He cut at those cords. The attache case not only
came clear, but opened. It dumped out an incredible mass of brand new,
tightly packed interstellar credit certificates. Calhoun could see that
the denominations were one thousand and ten thousand credits. The man
from the chute reached under his armpit and drew out a blaster.
It was not a service weapon. It was elaborate, practically a toy. With
a dour glance at Calhoun he put it in a side pocket and gathered up
the scattered money. It was an enormous sum, but he packed it back. He
stood up.
"My name is Allison," he said in an authoritative voice. "Arthur
Allison. I'm much obliged. Now I'll ask you to take me to Maya City."
"No," said Calhoun politely. "I just left there. It's deserted. I'm not
going back. There's nobody there."
"But I've important bus--" The other man stared. "It's deserted? But
that's impossible!"
"Quite," agreed Calhoun, "but it's true. It's abandoned. Uninhabited.
Everybody's left it. There's no one there at all."
The man who called himself Allison blinked unbelievingly. He swore.
Then he raged profanely.
But he was not bewildered by the news. Which, upon consideration, was
itself almost bewildering. But then his eyes grew shrewd. He looked
about him.
"My name is Allison," he repeated, as if there were some sort of magic
in the word. "Arthur Allison. No matter what's happened, I've some
business to do here. Where have the people gone? I need to find them."
"I need to find them too," said Calhoun. "I'll take you with me, if you
like."
"You've heard of me." It was a statement, confidently made.
"Never," said Calhoun politely. "If you're not hurt, suppose you get in
the car? I'm as anxious as you are to find out what's happened. I'm Med
Service."
* * * * *
Allison moved toward the car.
"Med Service, eh? I don't think much of the Med Service! You people
try to meddle in things that are none of your business!"
Calhoun did not answer. The muddy man, clutching the attache case
tightly, waded through the olive-green plants to the car and climbed
in. Murgatroyd said cordially, "_Chee-chee!_" but Allison viewed him
with distaste.
"What's this?"
"He's Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "He's a _tormal_. He's Med service
personnel."
"I don't like beasts," said Allison coldly.
"He's much more important to me than you are," said Calhoun, "if the
matter should come to a test."
Allison stared at him as if expecting him to cringe. Calhoun did not.
Allison showed every sign of being an important man who expected his
importance to be recognized and catered to. When Calhoun stirred
impatiently he got into the car and growled a little. Calhoun took
his place. The ground-car hummed. It rose on the six columns of air
which took the place of wheels and slid across the field of dark-green
plants, leaving the parachute deflated across a number of rows, and a
trail of crushed-down plants where it had moved.
It reached the highway again. Calhoun ran the car up on the highway's
shoulder, and then suddenly checked. He'd noticed something.
He stopped the car and got out. Where the ploughed field ended, and
before the coated surface of the highway began, there was a space where
on another world one would expect to see green grass.
On this planet grass did not grow; but there would normally be some
sort of self-planted vegetation where there was soil and sunshine and
moisture. There had been such vegetation here, but now there was only a
thin, repellent mass of slimy and decaying foliage. Calhoun bent down
to it.
It had a sour, faintly astringent smell of decay. These were the
ground-cover plants of Maya of which Calhoun had read. They had motile
stems, leaves and flowers, and they had cannibalistic tendencies. They
were the local weeds which made it impossible to grow grain for human
use upon this world.
And they were dead.
Calhoun straightened up and returned to the car. Plants like this were
wilted at the base of the spaceport building, and on another place
where there should have been sward. Calhoun had seen a large dead
member of the genus in a florist's, that had been growing in a cage
before it died. There was a singular coincidence here: humans ran away
from something, and something caused the death of a particular genus
of cannibal weeds.
It did not exactly add up to anything in particular, and certainly
wasn't evidence for anything at all. But Calhoun drove on in a vaguely
puzzled mood. The germ of a guess was forming in his mind. He couldn't
pretend to himself that it was likely, but it was surely no more
unlikely than most of a million human beings abandoning their homes at
a moment's notice.