As it happened, the timing was critical, though Calhoun hadn't
realized it. There were moving lights on the highway to the city at
the moment Calhoun and the grid operator went into the Med Ship and
closed the air-lock door behind them. The lights drew nearer. They
raced. Then ground cars came rushing through the gate of the spaceport
and flung themselves toward the wholly peaceful little Med Ship where
it stood seeming to yearn toward the sky. In seconds they had it
ringed about, and armed men were trying to get inside. But Med Ships
land on very many planets, with very many degrees of respect for the
Interstellar Medical Service. On some worlds there is great integrity
displayed by spaceport personnel and visitors. On others there is
pilfering, or worse. So Med Ships are not easily broken into.
They spent long minutes fumbling unskillfully at the outer air-lock
door. Then they gave it up. Two car loads of men went over to the
control building, which now was dark and silent. Its door was not
locked. They went in.
There was consternation. The interior of the control building reeked
of antiseptic spray--the spray used when a para was discovered. In
some cases, the spray a para used when he discovered himself. But it
was not reassuring to the men just arrived from Government Center.
Instead of certifying to their safety, it told of horrifying danger.
Because despite a broadcast by the planetary president, terror of
paras was too well-established to be cured by an official statement.
The men who'd entered the building stumbled out and stammered of what
they'd smelled inside the building. Their companions drew back,
frightened by even so indirect a contact with supposed contagion. They
stayed outside, while a man who hadn't entered used the police-car
communicator to report to the headquarters of the planetary police.
The attempt to enter the ship was known inside, of course. But Calhoun
paid no attention. He emptied the pockets of the garments he'd worn
into the city. There were the usual trivia a man carries with him. But
there was also a blaster--set for lower-power bolts--and a small
thick-glass phial of a singular grayish fluid, and a plastic
container.
He was changing to other clothing when he heard the muttering report,
picked up by a ship-receiver tuned to planetary police wave length. It
reported affrightedly that the Med Ship could not be entered, and the
grid's control building was dark and empty and sprayed as if to
destroy contagion. The operator was gone.
Another voice snapped orders in reply. The highest authority had given
instructions that the Med Ship man now somewhere in the capital city
must be captured, and his escape from the planet must be prevented at
all costs. So if the ship itself could not be entered and disabled,
get the grid working and throw it away. Throw it out to space! Whether
there was contagion in the control building or not, the ship must be
made unusable to the Med Ship man!
"They think well of me," said Calhoun. "I hope I'm as dangerous as Dr.
Lett now believes." Then he said crisply: "You say you're a para. I
want the symptoms: how you feel and where. Then I want to know your
last contact with scavengers."
* * * * *
The intentions of the police outside could be ignored. It wouldn't
matter if the Med Ship were heaved out to space and abandoned. He was
in it. But it couldn't happen. The grid operator had brought away
certain essential small parts of the grid control system. Of course
the ship could be blown up. But he'd have warning of that. He was safe
except for one thing. He'd been exposed to whatever it was that made a
man a para. The condition would develop. But he did have a thick-glass
container of grayish fluid, and he had a plastic biological-specimen
container. One came from Dr. Lett's safest pocket. It would be
vaccine. The other came from the culture oven in the doctor's
laboratory.
The thick-glass phial was simply that. Calhoun removed the cover from
the other. It contained small and horrible squirming organisms,
writhing in what was probably a nutrient fluid to which they could
reduce human refuse. They swarm jerkily in it so that the liquid
seemed to seethe. It smelled. Like skunk.
The grid operator clenched his hands.
"Put it away!" he commanded fiercely. "Out of sight! Away!"
Calhoun nodded. He locked it in a small chest. As he put down the
cover he said in an indescribable tone:
"It doesn't smell as bad to me as it did."
But his hands were steady as he drew a sample of a few drops from the
vaccine bottle. He lowered a wall panel and behind it there was a
minute but astonishingly complete biological laboratory. It was
designed for microanalysis--the quantitative and qualitative analysis
of tiny quantities of matter. He swung out a miniaturized Challis
fractionator. He inserted half a droplet of the supposed vaccine and
plugged in the fractionator's power cable. It began to hum.
The grid operator ground his teeth.
"This is a fractionator," said Calhoun. "It spins a biological sample
through a chromatograph gele."
The small device hummed more shrilly. The sound rose in pitch until it
was a whine, and then a whistle, and then went up above the highest
pitch to which human ears are sensitive. Murgatroyd scratched at his
ears and complained:
"_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
"It won't be long," Calhoun assured him. He looked once at the grid
operator and then looked away. There was sweat on the man's forehead.
Calhoun said casually: "The substance that makes the vaccine do what
it does do is in the vaccine, obviously. So the fractionator is
separating the different substances that are mixed together." He
added, "It doesn't look much like chromatography, but the principle's
the same. It's an old, old trick!"
It was, of course. That different dissolved substances can be
separated by their different rates of diffusion through wetted powders
and geles had been known since the early twentieth century, but was
largely forgotten because not often needed. But the Med Service did
not abandon processes solely because they were not new.
Calhoun took another droplet of the vaccine and put it between two
plates of glass, to spread out. He separated them and put them in a
vacuum drier.
"I'm not going to try an analysis," he observed. "It would be silly to
try to do anything so complicated if I only need to identify
something. Which I hope is all I do need!"
He brought out an extremely small vacuum device. He cleaned the
garments he'd just removed, drawing every particle of dust from them.
The dust appeared in a transparent tube which was part of the machine.
"I was sprayed with something I suspect the worst of," he added. "The
spray left dust behind. I _think_ it made sure that anybody who left
Government Center would surely be a para. It's another reason for
haste."
The grid operator ground his teeth again. He did not really hear
Calhoun. He was deep in a private hell of shame and horror.
The inside of the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun
worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to
knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or
contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the
imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the
unspeakable because he could not help himself, but he was mad with
rage and shame over what he had become. Calhoun could become like
that--
* * * * *
The loud-speaker tuned to outside frequencies muttered again. Calhoun
turned up its volume.
"_Calling Headquarters_!" panted a voice. "_There's a mob of paras
forming in the streets in the Mooreton quarter! They're raging! They
heard the President's speech and they swear they'll kill him! They
won't stand for a cure! Everybody's got to turn para! They won't have
normals on the planet! Everybody's got to turn para or be killed!_"
The grid operator looked up at the speaker. The ultimate of bitterness
appeared on his face. He saw Calhoun's eyes on him and said savagely:
"That's where I belong!"
Murgatroyd headed straight for his cubbyhole and crawled into it.
Calhoun got out a microscope. He examined the dried glass plates from
the vacuum drier. The fractionator turned itself off and he focused on
and studied the slide it yielded. He inspected a sample of the dust
he'd gotten from the garments that had been sprayed at the south gate.
The dust contained common dust particles and pollen particles and
thread particles and all sorts of microscopic debris. But throughout
all the sample he saw certain infinitely tiny crystals. They were too
small to be seen separately by the naked eye, but they had a definite
crystalline form. And the kind of crystals a substance makes are not
too specific about what the substance is, but they tell a great deal
about what it cannot be. In the fractionator slide he could get more
information--the rate-of-diffusion of a substance in solution ruled
out all but a certain number of compounds that it could be. The two
items together gave a definite clue.
Another voice from the speaker:
"_Headquarters! Paras are massing by the north gate! They act ugly!
They're trying to force their way into Government Center! We'll have
to start shooting if we're to stop them! What are our orders?_"
The grid operator said dully:
"They'll wreck everything. I don't want to live because I'm a para,
but I haven't acted like one yet. Not yet! But they have! So they
don't want to be cured! They'd never forget what they've done. They'd
be ashamed!"
Calhoun punched keys on a very small computer. He'd gotten an
index-of-refraction reading on crystals too small to be seen except
through a microscope. That information, plus specific gravity, plus
crystalline form, plus rate of diffusion in a fractionator, went to
the stores of information in the computer's memory banks somewhere
between the ship's living quarters and its outer skin.
A voice boomed from another speaker, tuned to public-broadcast
frequency:
"_My fellow-citizens, I appeal to you to be calm! I beg you to be
patient! Practice the self-control that citizens owe to themselves and
their world, I appeal to you...._"
Outside in the starlight the Med Ship rested peacefully on the ground.
Around and above it the grid rose like geometric fantasy to veil most
of the starry sky. Here in the starlight the ground-car communicators
gave out the same voice. The same message. The President of Tallien
Three made a speech. Earlier, he'd made another. Earlier still he'd
taken orders from the man who was already absolute master of the
population of this planet.
Police stood uneasy guard about the Med Ship because they could not
enter it. Some of their number who had entered the control building
now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside
again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It
seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in the
landing grid's upper levels.
At the horizon there was a faint glow. Street lights still burned in
the planet's capitol city, but though buildings rose against the sky
no lights burned in them. It was not wise for anybody to burn lights
that could be seen outside their dwellings. There were police, to be
sure. But they were all in Government Center, marshaled there to try
to hold a perimeter formed by bricked-up apartment buildings. But most
of the city was dark and terribly empty save for mobs of all sizes but
all raging. Nine-tenths of the city was at the mercy of the paras.
Families darkened their homes and, terrified, hid in corners and in
closets, listening for outcries or the thunderous tramping of madmen
at their doors.
In the Med Ship the loud-speaker went on:
"_I have told you,_" said the rounded tones of the Planetary
President--but his voice shook, "_I have told you that Dr. Lett has
perfected and is making a vaccine which will protect every citizen and
cure every para. You must believe me, my fellow-citizens. You must
believe me! To paras, I promise that their fellows who were not
afflicted with the same condition will forget! I promise that no one
will remember what... what has been done in delirium! What has taken
place--and there have been tragedies--will be blotted out. Only be
patient now! Only...._"
* * * * *
Calhoun went over his glass slides again while the computer stood
motionless, apparently without life. But he had called for it to find,
in its memory banks, an organic compound of such-and-such a
crystalline form, such-and-such a diffusion rate, such-and-such a
specific gravity, and such-an-such a refractive index. Men no longer
considered that there was any effective limit to the number of organic
compounds that were possible. The old guess at half a million
different substances was long exceeded. It took time even for a
computer to search all its microfilmed memories for a compound such as
Calhoun had described.
He paced restlessly while the computer consulted its memory with faint
whirrings of cooling blowers, and occasional chucklings as memory
cubes full of exceedingly complex stereomolecules of recorded
information were searched.
"Maybe," Calhoun said, "this isn't so much a new disease as a
modification of a very old one. The very ancient Hate Disease--for the
most important symptom of this particular malady is the hate it's
stirred up. I've seen a number of sick planets--but the hate index on
this one earns it a record score." He paused for a moment as the
computer did an extra-special burping chuckle, and slipped in an
entire new case of memory cubes. "Hm-m-m ... if what we're looking for
is a vaccine against hate we'd really have something.
"But I'm afraid not. That's too happy an outcome. We'll just call this
Hate Disease, Tallien Three strain. It's standard practice," Calhoun
continued, "to consider that everything that can happen, does.
Specifically, that any compound that can possibly exist, sooner or
later must be formed in nature. We're looking for a particular one. It
must have been formed naturally at some time or another, but never
before has it appeared in quantity enough to threaten a civilization.
Why?"
Murgatroyd licked his right-hand whiskers. He whimpered a little--and
Murgatroyd was a very cheerful small animal, possessed of exuberant
health and a fine zest in simply being alive. Exposed to contagion, it
was the admirable talent of his kind to react instantly and violently,
producing antibodies so promptly that no conceivable disease could
develop. _Tormals_ were cherished and respected members of the
Interstellar Medical Service because they could produce within hours
antibodies for any possible infection, and the synthesis of such
antibodies could be begun and any possible plague defeated. But
Murgatroyd was not happy now.
"It's been known for a long time," said Calhoun impatiently, "that no
form exists alone. Every living creature exists in an environment, in
association with all the other living creatures around it. But this is
true of compounds, too! Anything that is part of an environment is
essential to that environment. So even organic compounds are as much
parts of a planetary life system as ... say ... rabbits on a Terran
type world. If there are no predators, rabbits will multiply until
they starve."
Murgatroyd said, "_Chee!_" as if complaining to himself.
"Rats," said Calhoun somehow angrily, "have been known to do that on a
derelict ship. There was a man named Malthus who said we humans would
some day do the same thing. But we haven't. We've take over a galaxy.
If we ever crowd this, there are more galaxies for us to colonize,
forever! But there have been cases of rats and rabbits multiplying
past endurance. Here we've got an organic molecule that has multiplied
out of all reason! It's normal for it to exist, but in a normal
environment it's held in check by other molecules which in some sense
feed on it; which control the population of this kind of molecule as
rabbits or rats are controlled in a larger environment. But the check
on this molecule isn't working, here!"
* * * * *
The booming voice of the Planetary President went on and on and on.
Memoranda of events taking place were handed to him, and he read them
and argued with the paras who had tried to rush the north gate of
Government Center, to make its inhabitants paras like themselves. But
the Planetary President tried to make oratory a weapon against
madness.
Calhoun grimaced at the voice. He said fretfully:
"There's a molecule which has to exist because it can. It's a part of
a normal environment, but it doesn't normally produce paras. Now it
does! Why? What is the compound or the condition that controls its
abundance? Why is it missing here? What is lacking? What?"
The police-frequency speaker suddenly rattled, as if someone shouted
into a microphone.
"_All police cars! Paras have broken through a building wall on the
west side! They're pouring into the Center! All cars rush! Set
blasters at full power and use them! Drive them back or kill them!_"
The grid operator turned angry, bitter eyes upon Calhoun.
"The paras--we paras!--don't want to be cured!" he said fiercely. "Who'd
want to be normal again and remember when he ate scavengers? I haven't
yet, but--who'd be able to talk to a man he knew had devoured ...
devoured--" The grid operator swallowed. "We paras want everybody to be
like us, so we can endure being what we are! We can't take it any other
way--except by dying!"
He stood up. He reached for the blaster Calhoun had put aside when he
changed from the clothes he'd worn in the city.
"...And I'll take it that way!"
Calhoun whirled. His fist snapped out. The grid operator reeled out.
The blaster dropped from his hand. Murgatroyd cried out shrilly, from
his cubbyhole. He hated violence, did Murgatroyd.
Calhoun stood over the operator, raging:
"It's not that bad yet! You haven't yawned once! You can stand the
need for monstrousness for a long while yet! And I need you!"
He turned away. The President's voice boomed. It cut off abruptly.
Another voice took its place. And this was the bland and unctuous
voice of Dr. Lett.
"_My friends! I am Dr. Lett! I have been entrusted with all the powers
of the government because I, and I alone, have all the power over the
cause of the para condition. From this moment I am the government! To
paras--you need not be cured unless you choose. There will be places
and free supplies for you to enjoy the deep satisfactions known only
to you! To nonparas--you will be protected from becoming paras except
by your own choice. In return, you will obey! The price of protection
is obedience. The penalty for disobedience will be loss of protection.
But those from whom protection is withdrawn will not be supplied with
their necessities! Paras, you will remember this! Nonparas, do not
forget it_!" His voice changed. "_Now I give an order! To the police
and to nonparas: You will no longer resist paras! To paras: You will
enter Government Center quietly and peacefully. You will not molest
the nonparas you come upon. I begin at once the organization of a new
social system in which paras and nonparas must co-operate. There must
be obedience to the utmost--_"
* * * * *
The grid operator cursed as he rose from the floor. Calhoun did not
notice. The computer had finally delivered a strip of paper on which
was the answer he had demanded. And it was of no use. Calhoun said
tonelessly:
"Turn that off, will you?"
While the grid operator obeyed, Calhoun read and reread the strip of
tape. He had lacked something of good color before, but as he reread,
he grew paler and paler. Murgatroyd got down restlessly from his
cubbyhole. He sniffed. He went toward the small locked chest in which
Calhoun had put away the plastic container of living scavengers. He
put his nose to the crack of that chest's cover.
"_Chee!_" he said confidently. He looked at Calhoun. Calhoun did not
notice.
"This," said Calhoun, completely white, "This is bad! It's ... it's an
answer, but it would take time to work it out, and we haven't got the
time! And to make it and to distribute it--"
The grid operator growled. Dr. Lett's broadcast had verified
everything Calhoun said. Dr. Lett was now the government of Tallien
Three. There was nobody who could dare oppose him. He could make
anybody into a para, and then deny that para his unspeakable
necessities. He could turn anybody on the planet into a madman with
ferocious and intolerable appetites, and then deny them their
satisfaction. The people of Tallien Three were the slaves of Dr. Lett.
The grid operator said in a deadly voice:
"Maybe I can get to him and kill him before--"
Calhoun shook his head. Then he saw Murgatroyd sniffing at the chest
now holding the container of live scavengers. Open, it had had a faint
but utterly disgusting odor. Locked up, Calhoun could not smell it.
But Murgatroyd could. He sniffed. He said impatiently to Calhoun:
"_Chee! Chee-chee!_"
Calhoun stared. His lips tightened. It was the function of the
_tormal_ members of the Med Service to react to any infection more
swiftly than humans could do, and to develop antibodies which
destroyed that infection and could be synthesized to cure it in
humans. But Murgatroyd was immune only to infections. To toxins. He
was not immune to an appetite-causing molecule demanding more of
itself on penalty of madness. Murgatroyd had no more inherent
resistance than a man.
"_Chee-chee!_" he chattered urgently. "_Chee-chee-chee!_"
"It's got him," said Calhoun. He felt sickened. "It'll have me.
Because I can't synthesize anything as complex as the computer says is
needed to control the molecular population that makes paras!"
Murgatroyd chattered again. He was indignant. He wanted something and
Calhoun didn't give it to him. He could not understand so preposterous
a happening. He reached up and tugged at Calhoun's trouser-leg.
Calhoun picked him up and tossed him the width of the control room.
He'd done it often, in play, but this was somehow different.
Murgatroyd stared incredulously at Calhoun.
"To break it down," said Calhoun bitterly, "I need aromatic olefines
and some acetone, and acetic-acid radicals and methyl submolecular
groups. To destroy it absolutely I need available unsaturated
hydrocarbons--they'll be gases! And it has to be kept from reforming
as it's broken up, and I may need twenty different organic radicals
available at the same time! It's a month's work for a dozen competent
men just to find out how to make it, and I'd have to make it in
quantity for millions of people and persuade them of its necessity
against all the authority of the government and the hatred of the
paras, and then distribute it--"
* * * * *
[Illustration]
Murgatroyd was upset. He wanted something that Calhoun wouldn't give
him. Calhoun had shown impatience--almost an unheard-of thing!
Murgatroyd squirmed unhappily. He still wanted the thing in the chest.
But if he did something ingratiating....
He saw the blaster, lying on the floor. Calhoun often petted him when,
imitating, he picked up something that had been dropped. Murgatroyd
went over to the blaster. He looked back at Calhoun. Calhoun paced
irritably up and down. The grid operator stood with clenched hands,
contemplating the intolerable and the monstrous.
Murgatroyd picked up the blaster. He trotted over to Calhoun. He
plucked at the man's trouser-leg again. He held the blaster in the
only way his tiny paw could manage it. A dark, sharp-nailed finger
rested on the trigger.
"_Chee-chee!_" said Murgatroyd.
He offered the blaster. Calhoun jumped when he saw it in Murgatroyd's
paw. The blaster jerked, and Murgatroyd's paw tightened to hold it. He
pulled the trigger. A blaster-bolt crashed out of the barrel. It was a
miniature bolt of ball-lightning. It went into the floor, vaporizing
the surface and carbonizing the multi-ply wood layer beneath it. The
Med Ship suddenly reeked of wood smoke and surfacer. Murgatroyd fled
in panic to his cubbyhole and cowered in its farthest corner.
But there was a singular silence in the Med Ship. Calhoun's expression
was startled; amazed. He was speechless for long seconds. Then he said
blankly:
"Damnation! How much of a fool can a man make of himself when he works
at it? Do you smell that?" He shot the question at the grid operator.
"Do you smell that? It's wood smoke! Did you know it?"
Murgatroyd listened fearfully, blinking.
"Wood smoke!" said Calhoun between his teeth. "And I didn't see it!
Men have had fires for two million years and electricity for half a
thousand. For two million years there was no man or woman or child who
went a full day without breathing in some wood smoke! And I didn't
realize that it was so normal a part of human environment that it was
a necessary one!"
There was a crash. Calhoun had smashed a chair. It was an oddity
because it was make of wood. Calhoun had owned it because it was odd.
Now he smashed it to splinters and piled them up and flung
blaster-bolt after blaster-bolt into the heap. The air inside the Med
Ship grew pungent; stinging; strangling. Murgatroyd sneezed. Calhoun
coughed. The grid operator seemed about to choke. But in the white fog
Calhoun cried exultantly:
"Aromatic olefines! Acetone! Acetic acid radicals and methyl
submolecular groups! And smoke has unsaturated hydrocarbon gases. This
is the stuff our ancestors have breathed in tiny quantities for a
hundred thousand generations! Of course it was essential to them! And
to us! It was a part of their environment, so they had to have a use
for it! And it controlled the population of certain molecules...."
The air system gradually cleared away the smoke, but the Med Ship
still reeked of wood-smoke smells.
"Let's check on this thing!" snapped Calhoun. "Murgatroyd!"
* * * * *
Murgatroyd came timidly to the door of his cubbyhole. He blinked
imploringly at Calhoun. At a repeated command he came unhappily to his
master. Calhoun petted him. Then he opened the chest in which a
container held living scavengers which writhed and swam and seemed to
seethe. He took out that container. He took off the lid.
Murgatroyd backed away. His expression was ludicrous. There was no
question but that his nose was grievously offended. Calhoun turned to
the grid operator. He extended the sample of scavengers. The grid man
clenched his teeth and took it. Then his face worked. He thrust it
back into Calhoun's hand.
"It's--horrible!" he said thickly. "Horrible!" Then his jaw dropped.
"I'm not a para! Not ... a para--" Then he said fiercely. "We've got
to get this thing started! We've got to start curing paras--"
"Who," said Calhoun, "will be ashamed of what they remember. We can't
get co-operation form them! And we can't get co-operation from the
government! The men who were the government are paras and they've
given their authority to Dr. Lett. You don't think he'll abdicate, do
you? Especially when it's realized that he was the man who developed
the strain of scavengers that secrete this modified butyl mercaptan
that turns men into paras!"
Calhoun grinned almost hysterically.
"Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he found himself the first para and
was completely astonished. But he couldn't be alone in what he knew
was--degradation. He wanted others with him in that ghastly state. He
got them. Then he didn't want anybody not to be like himself.... We
can't get help from him!"
Exultantly, he flipped switches to show on vision screens what went on
in the world outside the ship. He turned on all the receivers that
could pick up sounds and broadcasts. Voices came in:
"_There's fighting everywhere! Normals won't accept paras among them!
Paras won't leave normals alone.... They touch them; breathe on
them--and laugh! There's fighting--_" The notion that the para state
was contagious was still cherished by paras. It was to be preferred to
the notion that they were possessed by devils. But there were some who
gloried in the more dramatic opinion. There were screamings on the
air, suddenly, and a man's voice panting: "_Send police here fast! The
paras have gone wild. They're--_"
Calhoun seated himself at the control desk. He threw switches there.
He momentarily touched a button. There was a slight shock and the
beginning of a roar outside. It cut off. Calhoun looked at the vision
plates showing outside. There was swirling smoke and steam. There were
men running in headlong flight, leaving their ground cars behind them.
"A slight touch of emergency rocket," said Calhoun. "They've run away.
Now we end the plague on Tallien Three."
The grid operator was still dazed by the continued absence of any
indication that he might ever become a para. He said unsteadily:
"Sure! Sure! But how?"
"Wood smoke," said Calhoun. "Emergency rockets. Roofs! There's been no
wood smoke in the air on this planet because there are no forest fires
and people don't burn fuel. They use electricity. So we start the
largest production of wood smoke that we find convenient, and the
population of a certain modified butyl mercaptan molecule will be
reduced. Down to a normal level. Immediately!"
The emergency rocket bellowed thunderously and the little Med Ship
rose.
* * * * *
There have been, of course, emergency measures against contagion all
through human history. There was a king of France, on Earth, who had
all the lepers in his kingdom killed. There have been ships and houses
burned to drive out plague, and quarantines which simply interfered
with human beings were countless. Calhoun's measure on Tallien was
somewhat more dramatic than most, but it had good justification.
He set fire to the planet's capital city. The little Med Ship swept
over the darkened buildings. Her emergency rockets made thin pencils
of flame two hundred feet long. She touched off roofs to the east, and
Calhoun rose to see which way the wind blew. He descended and touched
here and there....
Thick, seemingly suffocating masses of wood smoke flowed over the
city. They were not actually strangling, but they created panic. There
was fighting in Government Center, but it stopped when the mysterious
stuff--not one man in a hundred had ever seen burning wood or smelled
its smoke--the fighting stopped and all men fled when a choking,
reeking blanket rolled over the city and lay there.
It wasn't a great fire, considering everything. Less than ten per cent
of the city burned, but ninety-odd per cent of the paras in it ceased
to be paras. More, they had suddenly regained an invincible aversion
to the smell of butyl mercaptan--even a modified butyl mercaptan--and
it was promptly discovered that no normal who had smelled wood smoke
became a para. So all the towns and even individual farmhouses would
hereafter make sure that there was pungent wood smoke to be smelled
from time to time by everybody.
But Calhoun did not wait for such pleasant news. He could not look for
gratitude. He'd burned part of the city. He'd forced paras to stop
being paras and become ashamed. And those who hadn't become paras
wanted desperately to forget the whole matter as soon as possible.
They couldn't, but gratitude to Calhoun would remind them. He took
appropriate action.
With the grid operator landed again, and after the grid was operable
once more and had sent the Med Ship a good five planetary diameters
into space--some few hours after the ship was in overdrive
again--Calhoun and Murgatroyd had coffee together. Murgatroyd
zestfully licked his emptied tiny mug, to get the last least taste of
the beverage. He said happily, "_Chee!_" He wanted more.
"Coffee," said Calhoun severely, "has become a habit with you,
Murgatroyd! If this abnormal appetite develops too far, you might
start yawning at me, which would imply that your desire for it was
uncontrollable. A yawn caused by what is called a yen has been known
to make a man dislocate his jaw. You might do that. You wouldn't like
it!"
Murgatroyd did not reply.
"You don't believe it, eh?" said Calhoun. Then he said: "Murgatroyd,
I'm going to spend odd moments all the rest of my life wondering about
what happens to Dr. Lett! They'll kill him, somehow. But I suspect
they'll be quite gentle with him. There's no way to imagine a
punishment that would really fit! Isn't that more interesting than
coffee?"
"_Chee! Chee! Chee!_" said Murgatroyd insistently.
"It wasn't wise to stay and try to make an ordinary public-health
inspection. We'll send somebody else when things are back to normal."
"_Chee!!!_" said Murgatroyd loudly.
"Oh, all right!" said Calhoun. "If you're going to be emotional about
it, pass you cup!"
He reached out his hand, Murgatroyd put his tiny mug in it. Calhoun
refilled it. Murgatroyd sipped zestfully.
The Med Ship _Esclipus Twenty_ went on in overdrive, back toward
sector headquarters of the Interstellar Medical Service.
* * * * *