"What's going on?" demanded Allison with the impatience of a very
important man indeed. "If the beast's sick, he's sick! I've got to
find--"
Calhoun opened his med kit and went carefully through it until he found
what he needed. He put a pill into Murgatroyd's mouth.
"Swallow it!" he commanded.
Murgatroyd resisted, but the pill went down. Calhoun watched him
sharply. Murgatroyd's digestive system was delicate, but it was
dependable. Anything that might be poisonous, Murgatroyd's stomach
rejected instantly and emphatically.
The pill stayed down.
"Look!" said Allison indignantly. "I've got business to do! In this
attache case I have millions of interstellar credits, in cash, to pay
down on purchases of land and factories. I ought to make some damned
good deals! And I figure that that's as important as anything else you
can think of! It's a damned sight more important than a beast with a
belly-ache!"
Calhoun looked at him coldly.
"Do you own land on Texia?" he asked.
Allison's mouth dropped open. Extreme suspicion and unease appeared
on his face. As a sign of the unease, his hand went to the side coat
pocket in which he'd put a blaster. He didn't pluck it out. Calhoun's
left fist swung around and landed. He took Allison's elaborate pocket
blaster and threw it away among the monotonous rows of olive-green
plants. He returned to absorbed observation of Murgatroyd.
In five minutes the muscular spasms diminished. In ten, Murgatroyd
frisked. But he seemed to think that Calhoun had done something
remarkable. In the warmest of tones he said:
"_Chee!_"
"Very good," said Calhoun. "We'll go ahead. I suspect you'll do as well
as we do--for a while."
The car lifted the few inches the air columns sustained it above the
ground. It went on, still to the eastward. But Calhoun drove more
slowly now.
"Something was giving Murgatroyd rhythmic muscular spasms," he said
coldly. "I gave him medication to stop them. He's more sensitive than
we are, so he reacted to a stimulus we haven't noticed yet. But I
think we'll notice it presently."
Allison seemed to be dazed at the affront given him. It appeared to be
unthinkable that anybody might lay hands on him.
"What the devil has that to do with me?" he demanded angrily. "And what
did you hit me for? You're going to pay for this!"
"Until I do," Calhoun told him, "you'll be quiet. And it does have the
devil to do with you. There was a Med Service gadget once--a tricky
little device to produce contraction of chosen muscles. It was useful
for re-starting stopped hearts without the need of an operation.
It regulated the beat of hearts that were too slow or dangerously
irregular. But some businessman had a bright idea and got a tame
researcher to link that gadget to ground induction currents. I suspect
you know that businessman!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," snapped Allison. But he was
singularly tense.
"I do," said Calhoun unpleasantly. "I made a public health inspection
on Texia a couple of years ago. The whole planet is a single, gigantic,
cattle-raising enterprise. They don't use metal fences--the herds are
too big to be stopped by such things. They don't use cowboys--they cost
money. On Texia they use ground-induction and the Med Service gadget
linked together to serve as cattle fences. They act like fences, though
they're projected through the ground. Cattle become uncomfortable when
they try to cross them. So they draw back. So men control them. They
move them from place to place by changing the cattle fences, which
are currents induced in the ground. The cattle have to keep moving
or be punished by the moving fence. They're even driven into the
slaughterhouse chutes by ground-induction fields! That's the trick
on Texia, where induction fields herd cattle. I think it's the trick
on Maya, where people are herded like cattle and driven out of their
cities so the value of their fields and factories will drop,--so a land
buyer can find bargains!"
"You're insane!" snapped Allison. "I just landed on this planet! You
saw me land! I don't know what happened before I got here! How could I?"
"You might have arranged it," said Calhoun.
* * * * *
Allison assumed an air of offended and superior dignity. Calhoun drove
the car onward at very much less than the head-long pace he'd been
keeping to. Presently he looked down at his hands on the steering
wheel. Now and then the tendons to his fingers seemed to twitch. At
rhythmic intervals, the skin crawled on the back of his hands. He
glanced at Allison. Allison's hands were tightly clenched.
"There's a ground-induction fence in action, all right," said Calhoun
calmly. "You notice? It's a cattle fence and we're running into it. If
we were cattle, now, we'd turn around and move away."
"I don't know what you're talking about!" said Allison.
But his hands stayed clenched. Calhoun slowed the car still more. He
began to feel, all over his body, that every muscle tended to twitch at
the same time. It was a horrible sensation. His heart muscles tended
to contract too, simultaneously with the rest, but one's heart has its
own beat rate. Sometimes the normal beat coincided with the twitch.
Then his heart pounded violently--so violently that it was painful. But
equally often the imposed contraction of the heart muscles came just
after a normal contraction, and then it stayed tightly knotted for half
a second. It missed a beat, and the feeling was agony.
No animal would have pressed forward in the face of such sensations. It
would have turned back long ago. No animal. Not even Man.
Calhoun stopped the car. He looked at Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd was
completely himself. He looked inquiringly at Calhoun. Calhoun nodded to
him, but he spoke--with some difficulty--to Allison.
"We'll see--if this thing--builds up. You know that it's the
Texia--trick. A ground-induction unit set up--here. It drove
people--like cattle. Now we've--run into it.--It's holding people--like
cattle."
He panted. His chest muscles contracted with the rest, so that his
breathing was interfered with. But Murgatroyd, who'd been made uneasy
and uncomfortable before Calhoun noticed anything wrong, was now
bright and frisky. Medication had desensitized his muscles to outside
stimuli. He would be able to take a considerable electric shock without
responding to it.
But he could be killed by one that was strong enough.
A savage anger filled Calhoun. Everything fitted together. Allison
had put his hand convenient to his blaster when Calhoun mentioned
Texia. It meant that Calhoun suspected what Allison knew to be true.
A cattle-fence unit had been set up on Maya, and it was holding--like
cattle--the people it had previously driven--like cattle. Calhoun
could deduce with some precision exactly what had been done. The first
experience of Maya with the cattle fence would have been very mild.
It would have been low-power, causing just enough uneasiness to be
noticed. It would have moved from west to east, slowly, and it would
have reached a certain spot and there faded out. And it would have been
a mystery and an uncomfortable thing, and nobody would understand it
on Maya. In a week it would almost be forgotten. But then there'd come
a stronger disturbance. And it would travel like the first one; down
the length of the peninsula on which the colony lay, but stopping at
the same spot as before, and then fading away to nothingness. And this
also would have seemed mysterious. But nobody would suspect humans of
causing it. There would be theorizing and much questioning, but it
would be considered an unfamiliar natural event.
Probably the third use of the cattle fence would be most disturbing.
This time it would be acutely painful. But it would move into the
cities and through them and past them, and it would go down the
peninsula to where it had stopped and faded on two previous occasions.
The people of Maya would be disturbed and scared. But they considered
that they knew it began to the westward of Maya City, and moved toward
the east at such-and-such a speed, and it went so far and no farther.
And they would organize themselves to apply this carefully worked out
information.
It would not occur to any of them that they had learned how to be
driven like cattle.
* * * * *
Calhoun, of course, could only reason that this must have happened. But
nothing else could have taken place. Perhaps there were more than three
uses of the moving cattle fence to get the people prepared to move past
the known place at which it always faded to nothingness. They might
have been days apart, or weeks apart, or months. There might have been
stronger manifestations followed by weaker ones and then stronger ones
again.
But there was an inductive cattle fence across the highway here.
Calhoun had driven into it. Every two seconds the muscles of his
body tensed. Sometimes his heart missed a beat at the time that his
breathing stopped, and sometimes it pounded violently. It seemed that
the symptoms became more and more unbearable.
He got out his med kit, with hands that spasmodically jerked
uncontrollably. He fumbled out the same medication he'd given
Murgatroyd. He took two of the pellets.
"In reason," he said coldly, "I ought to let you take what this damned
thing would give you. But--here!"
Allison had panicked. The _idea_ of a cattle fence suggested
discomfort, of course, but it did not imply danger. The _experience_
of a cattle fence, designed for huge hoofed beasts instead of men,
was terrifying. Allison gasped. He made convulsive movements. Calhoun
himself moved erratically. For one and a half seconds out of two, he
could control his muscles. For half a second at a time, he could not.
But he poked a pill into Allison's mouth.
"Swallow it!" he commanded. "Swallow!"
The ground-car rested tranquilly on the highway, which here went on for
a mile and then dipped in a gentle incline and then rose once more.
The totally level fields to right and left came to an end here. Native
trees grew, trailing preposterously with long fronds. Brushwood hid
much of the ground. That looked normal. But the lower, ground-covering
vegetation was wilted and rotting.
Allison choked upon the pellet. Calhoun forced a second upon him.
Murgatroyd looked inquisitively at first one and then the other of the
two men. He said:
"_Chee? Chee?_"
Calhoun lay back in his seat, breathing carefully to keep alive. But
he couldn't do anything about his heartbeat. The sun shone brightly,
though now it was low, toward the horizon. There were clouds in the
reddened sky. A gentle breeze blew. Everything, to outward appearance,
was peaceful and tranquil and commonplace upon this small world.
But in the area that human beings had taken over there
were cities which were still and silent and deserted, and
somewhere--somewhere!--the population of the planet waited uneasily for
the latest of a series of increasingly terrifying phenomena to come to
an end. Up to this time the strange, creeping, universal affliction had
begun at one place, and moved slowly to another, and then diminished
and ceased to be. But this was the greatest and worst of the torments.
And it hadn't ended. It hadn't diminished. After three days it
continued at full strength at the place where previously it had stopped
and died away.
The people of Maya were frightened. They couldn't return to their
homes. They couldn't go anywhere. They hadn't prepared for an emergency
to last for days. They hadn't brought supplies of food.
It began to look as if they were going to starve.