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[Transcriber's Note:
This etext was first published in Amazing Stories, July 1961. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.]
[Illustration]
COMPLETE BOOK-LENGTH NOVEL
PARIAH PLANET
By MURRAY LEINSTER
Illustrated by FINLAY
_When the blue plague appeared on the planet of Dara, fear struck
nearby worlds. The fear led to a hate that threatened the lives of
millions and endangered the Galactic peace._
CHAPTER I
The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange and
the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the Milky
Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an unaccustomed
angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying magnitudes. But
Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to port,
which was good. A breakout at no more than sixty light-hours from
one's destination wasn't bad, in a strange sector of the Galaxy and
after three light-years of journeying blind.
[Illustration]
"Arise and shine, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "Comb your whiskers. Get
set to astonish the natives!"
A sleepy, small, shrill voice said;
"_Chee!_"
Murgatroyd the _tormal_ came crawling out of his small cubbyhole. He
blinked at Calhoun.
"We're due to land shortly," Calhoun observed. "You'll impress the local
inhabitants. I'll be unpopular. According to the records, there's been
no Med Ship inspection here for twelve standard years. And that was
practically no inspection, to judge by the report."
Murgatroyd said;
"_Chee-chee!_"
He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers and
then his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and looked
interestedly at Calhoun. _Tormals_ are companionable small animals. They
are charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deep
satisfaction in imitating the actions of humans, as parrots and mynahs
and parrokets imitate human speech. But _tormals_ have certain useful,
genetically transmitted talents which make them much more valuable than
mere companions or pets.
Calhoun got a light-reading for the banded sun. It could hardly be an
accurate measure of distance, but it was a guide. He said;
"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd!"
Calhoun threw the overdrive switch and the Med Ship flicked back into
that questionable state of being in which velocities of some hundreds of
times that of light are possible. The sensation of going into overdrive
was unpleasant. A moment later, the sensation of coming out was no less
so. Calhoun had experienced it often enough, and still didn't like it.
The sun Weald burned huge and terrible in space. It was close, now. Its
disk covered half a degree of arc.
"Very neat," observed Calhoun. "Weald Three is our port, Murgatroyd. The
plane of the ecliptic would be--Hm...."
He swung the outside electron telescope, picked up a nearby bright
object, enlarged its image to show details, and checked it against the
local star-pilot. He calculated a moment. The distance was too short for
even the briefest of overdrive hops, but it would take time to get there
on solar-system drive.
He thumbed down the communicator-button and spoke into a microphone.
"Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty reporting arrival and asking coordinates for
landing. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection. Our mass is
fifty tons standard. We should arrive at a landing position in something
under four hours. Repeat. Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty ..."
He finished the regular second transmission and made coffee for himself
while he waited for an answer. Murgatroyd wanted a cup of coffee too.
Murgatroyd adored coffee. He held a tiny cup in a furry small paw and
sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.
* * * * *
A voice came out of the communicator;
"_Aesclipus Twenty, repeat your identification!_"
Calhoun went to the control-board.
"Aesclipus Twenty," he said patiently, "is a Med Ship, sent by the
Interstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection on
Weald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first Med
Ship visit in twelve standard years, I believe, which is inexcusable.
But your health authorities will know all about it. Check with them."
The voice said truculently;
"_What was your last port?_"
Calhoun named it. This was not his home sector, but Sector Twelve had
gotten into a very bad situation. Some of its planets had gone unvisited
for as long as twenty years, and twelve between inspections was almost
common-place. Other sectors had been called on to help it catch up.
Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the emergency
he'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be inspected one after
another, instead of reporting back to sector headquarters after each
visit. He'd had minor troubles before with landing-grid operators in
Sector Twelve.
So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one from
which he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the communicator said
sharply;
"_What port before that?_"
Calhoun named the one before the last.
"_Don't drive any closer,_" said the voice harshly, "_or you'll be
destroyed!_"
Calhoun said coldly;
"Now you listen to me, friend! I'm from the Interstellar Medical
Service! You get in touch with planetary health services immediately!
Remind them of the Interstellar Medical Inspection Agreement, signed on
Tralee two hundred and forty standard years ago. Remind them that if
they do not cooperate in medical inspection that I can put your planet
under quarantine and your space commerce will be cut off like that! No
ship will be cleared for Weald from any other planet in the galaxy until
there has been a health inspection! Things have pretty well gone to pot
so far as the Med Service in this sector is concerned, but we're trying
to straighten it out. You have twenty minutes to clear this and then,
I'm coming in. If I'm not landed, a quarantine goes on! Tell your health
authorities that!"
Silence. Calhoun clicked off and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Murgatroyd held out his cup for a refill. Calhoun gave it to him.
"I hate to put on an official hat, Murgatroyd," he said annoyedly, "but
there are some people who won't have any other way."
Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" and sipped at his cup.
* * * * *
Calhoun checked the course of the Med Ship. It bored on through space.
There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings and
rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful musical
notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are carried by
electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave-lengths, are not likely
to be the fabled music of the spheres. He waited.
* * * * *
In fifteen minutes a different voice came from the speaker.
"_Med Ship Aesclipus! Med Ship Aesclipus!_"
Calhoun answered and the voice said anxiously;
"_'Sorry about the challenge, but we have the blueskin problem always
with us. We have to be extremely careful! Will you come in, please?_"
"I'm on my way," said Calhoun.
"_The planetary health authorities,_" said the voice, more anxiously
still, "_are very anxious to be cooperative. We need Med Service help!
We lose a lot of sleep over the blueskins! Could you tell us the name of
the last Med Ship to land here, and its inspector, and when that
inspection was made? We want to look up the record of the event to be
able to assist you in every possible way._"
"He's lying," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, "but he's more scared than
hostile."
He picked up the order-folio on Weald Three. He gave the information
about the last Med Ship visit. He clicked off.
"What?" he asked, "is a blueskin?"
He'd read the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward
through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical inspection
had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier--instead of three--a
Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official conferences with
health officials. There was a report on the birth-rate, the death-rate,
the anomaly-rate, and a breakdown of all reported communicable diseases.
But that was all. There were no special comments and no overall picture.
Presently Calhoun found the word in a Sector dictionary, where words of
only local usage were to be found.
"Blueskin; Colloquial term for a person recovered from a plague which
left large patches of blue pigment irregularly distributed over the
body. Especially, inhabitants of Dara. The condition is said to be
caused by a chronic, non-fatal form of Dara plague and has been said to
be non-infectious, though this is not certain. The etiology of Dara
plague has not fully been worked out. The blueskin condition is
hereditary but not a genetic modification, as markings appear in
non-Mendellian distributions...."
Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sector
directory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solar
systems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously through
indices and cross-references while the ship continued travel onward. He
found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was listed
as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with a
landing-grid and at the time the main notice was written out, a
flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently added
to the entry in some change of editions.
"Since plague, special license from Med Service is required for
landing."
That was all. Absolutely all.
The communicator said suavely;
"_Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty! Come in on vision, please!_"
Calhoun went to the control-board and threw on vision.
"Well, what now?" he demanded.
His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.
"_We have--ah--verified your statements,_" said the third voice from
Weald. "_Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?_"
"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.
"_Quite alone?_" insisted the voice.
"Obviously!" said Calhoun.
"_No other living creature?_" insisted the voice again.
"Of--Oh!" said Calhoun annoyedly. He called over his shoulder.
"Murgatroyd! Come here!"
Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.
"_Very good!_" it said. "_Very, very good! Blueskins do not have_
tormals! _You are Med Service! By all means come in. Your coordinates
will be ..._"
Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
growled to Murgatroyd;
"So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And you're my passport, because
only Med Ships have members of your tribe aboard! What the hell's the
matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they think somebody's trying to get
down on their planet with a load of plague-germs!"
He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have reached
this planet or that, and the supplying of information about such as have
not arrived. Then lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to
repeat the process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man because
two could not stand the close contact without quarreling with each
other. But Med Ships do carry _tormals_, like Murgatroyd, and a _tormal_
and a man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a
highly unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.
Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been
operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct the
results of incompetence in directing Med Service in the twelfth sector.
But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for
somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs to
be done.
The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in point.
Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin-pigmentation from
other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly maintained a
one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is normally an
emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over, wiped out the
need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't been done.
Calhoun fumed to himself.
* * * * *
The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a disk.
The disk had ice-caps and a reasonable proportion of land and water
surface. The Med Ship decelerated, and voices notified observation from
the surface, and the little craft came to a stop some five planetary
diameters out from solidity. The landing-field force-field locked on to
it, and its descent began.
The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the
singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still
lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly a
mile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift them
out to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for everyone.
It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to greet
Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit. There
would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by whatever
title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd would be
petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to impress Calhoun
with the splendid conduct of public health matters on Weald. He would be
told much scandal. He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately
labored to advance the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how
to keep them well, or failing that how to make them well when they got
sick. And in two days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to the
landing-grid, and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days in
overdrive and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again.
It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every human
being he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins and the
idea of blueskins obsessed everyone. Calhoun listened without asking
questions until he had the picture of what blueskins meant to the people
who talked of them. Then he knew there would be no use asking questions
at random. Nobody mentioned ever having seen a blueskin. Nobody
mentioned a specific event in which a blueskin had at any named time
taken part. But everybody was afraid of blueskins. It was a patterned,
an inculcated, a stage-directed fixed idea. And it found expression in
shocked references to the vileness, the depravity, the monstrousness of
the blueskin inhabitants of Dara, from whom Weald must at all costs be
protected.
It did not make sense. So Calhoun listened politely until he found an
undistinguished medical man who wanted some special information about
gene-selection as practised halfway across the galaxy. He invited that
man to the Med Ship, where he supplied the information not hitherto
available. He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe a
man feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly to
know.
"Now," said Calhoun, "tell me something! Why does everybody on this
planet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobody
claims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of hating
them?"
The Wealdian doctor grimaced.
"They've blue patches on their skins. They're different from us. So they
can be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make an
election issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us from
them. They had a plague on Dara, once. They're accused of still having
it ready for export."
"Hm," said Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagion
here, eh? Doesn't anybody"--his tone was sardonic--"doesn't anybody urge
that they be massacred as an act of piety?"
"Yes--s--s--s," admitted the doctor reluctantly. "It's mentioned in
political speeches."
"But how's it rationalized?" demanded Calhoun. "What's the argument to
make pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I'm
assured is the case?"
"In the public schools," said the doctor, "the children are taught that
blueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived three
generations ago! That they hate everybody who isn't a blueskin. That
they are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most of
us will die and the rest become blueskins. That's beyond rationalizing.
It can't be true, but it's not safe to doubt it."
"Bad business," said Calhoun coldly. "That sort of thing usually costs
lives, in the end. It could lead to massacre!"
"Perhaps it has, in a way," said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't like
to think about it." He paused, and said; "Twenty years ago there was a
famine on Dara. There were crop-failures. The situation must have been
very bad. They built a space-ship. They've no use for such things
normally, because no nearby planet will deal with them or let them land.
But they built a space-ship and came here. They went in orbit around
Weald. They asked to trade for shiploads of food. They offered any price
in heavy metals, gold, platinum, iridium, and so on. They talked from
orbit by vision communicators. They could be seen to be blueskins. You
can guess what happened!"
"Tell me," said Calhoun.
"We armed ships in a hurry," admitted the doctor, "We chased their
space-ship back to Dara. We hung in space off the planet. We told them
we'd blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take to
space again. We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched on
visionscreens as it was done."
"But you gave them food?"
"No," said the doctor ashamedly. "They were blueskins."
"How bad was the famine?"
"Who knows? Any number may have starved! And we kept a squadron of armed
ships in their skies for years. To keep them from spreading the plague,
we said. And some of us believed it, probably!"
The doctor's tone was purest irony.
"Lately," he said, "there's been a move for economy in our government.
Simultaneously, we began to have a series of over-abundant crops. The
government had to buy the excess grain to keep the price up. Retired
patrol-ships--built to watch over Dara--were available for
storage-space. We filled them up with grain and sent them out into
orbit. They're there now, hundreds of thousands or millions of tons of
grain!"
"And Dara?"
The Doctor shrugged. He stood up.
"Our hatred of Dara," he said, again ironically, "has produced one
thing. Roughly halfway between here and Dara there's a two-planet solar
system, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to build
an outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed to run
wild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle there. They
did, but nobody wants to move nearer to blueskins! So Orede stayed
uninhabited until a hunting-party shooting wild cattle found an
outcropping of heavy-metal ore. So now there's a mine there. And that's
all. A few hundred men work the mine at fabulous wages. You may be asked
to check on their health. But not Dara's!"
"I see," said Calhoun, frowning.
The doctor moved toward the Med Ship's exit-port.
"I answered your questions," he said grimly. "But if I talked to anyone
else as I've done to you, I'd be lucky only to be driven into exile!"
"I shan't give you away," said Calhoun. He did not smile.
When the doctor had gone, Calhoun said deliberately;
"Murgatroyd, you should be grateful that you're a _tormal_ and not a
man. There's nothing about being a _tormal_ to make you ashamed!"
Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of the
Med Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to the
planet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about the
splendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion of
the planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement. It was a domed city
in the polar regions, where nobody ever had to go outdoors. He was less
than professionally enthusiastic about the moving streets, and much less
approving of the dream-broadcasts which supplied hypnotic,
sleep-inducing rhythms to anybody who chose to listen to them. The price
was that while asleep one would hear high praise of commercial products,
and one might believe them when awake.
But it was not Calhoun's function to criticize when it could be avoided.
Med Service had been badly managed in Sector Twelve. So at the banquet
Calhoun made a brief and diplomatic address in which he temperately
praised what could be praised, and did not mention anything else.
The chief executive followed him. As head of the government he paid some
tribute to the Med Service. But then he reminded his hearers proudly of
the high culture, splendid health, and remarkable prosperity of the
planet since his political party took office. This, he said, was in
spite of the need to be perpetually on guard against the greatest and
most immediate danger to which any world in all the galaxy was exposed.
He referred to the blueskins, of course. He did not need to tell the
people of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was necessary
against that race of depraved and malevolent deviants from the norm of
humanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the torch of all
that humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the lives of its
people against blueskin contagion, but their noble heritage of ideals
against Blueskin pollution.
When he sat down, Calhoun said very politely;
"It looks like some day it should be practical politics to urge the
massacre of all blueskins. Have you thought of that?"
The chief executive said comfortably;
"The idea's been proposed. It's good politics to urge it, but it would
be foolish to carry it out. People vote against blueskins. Wipe them
out, and where'd you be?"
Calhoun ground his teeth, quietly.
* * * * *
There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with a
written note for the chief executive. He read it and passed it to
Calhoun. It was from the Ministry of Health. The space-port reported
that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian
solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signalled its
arrival from the mining-planet Orede. But, having sent off its automatic
signal, the ship lay dead in space. It did not drive toward Weald. It
did not respond to signals. It drifted like a derelict upon no course at
all. It seemed ominous, and since it came from Orede--the planet nearest
to Dara of the blueskins--the health ministry informed the planet's
chief executive.
"It'll be blueskins," said that astute person, firmly. "They're
next-door to Orede. That's who's done this. It wouldn't surprise me if
they'd seeded Orede with their plague, and this ship came from there to
give us warning!"
"There's no evidence for anything of the sort," protested Calhoun. "A
ship simply came out of overdrive and didn't signal further. That's
all."
"We'll see," said the chief executive ominously. "We'll go directly to
the spaceport."
Calhoun retrieved Murgatroyd who had been visiting with the wives of the
higher-up officials. His small paunch distended with cakes and coffee
and such delicacies as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose from
over-feeding and over-petting, but he was glad to see Calhoun. At the
spaceport they discovered the situation remained unchanged.
A ship from Orede had come out of overdrive and lay dead in emptiness.
It did not answer calls. It did not move in space. It floated eerily in
no orbit around anything, going nowhere; doing nothing. And panic was
the consequence.
It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter accounted
for the terror that he could feel building up. The so-far-unexplained
bit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald. There was nobody
awake of all the world's population who did not believe that there was a
new danger in the sky. Nobody doubted that it came from blueskins. The
treatment of the news was precisely calculated to keep alive the hatred
of Weald for the inhabitants of the world Dara.
Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the spaceport
office. A small space-boat, designed to inspect the circling grain-ships
from time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had thrust it swiftly out
most of the way. Now it droned and drove on sturdily toward the
enigmatic ship.
Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials and
news reporters at the space-port. But he listened to the talk about him.
As the investigating small ship drew nearer and nearer to the
deathly-still cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of its
breakout and following silence grew more and more wild. But, singularly,
there was not one suggestion that the mystery might not be the work of
blueskins. Blueskins were scapegoats for all the fears and all the
uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.
Presently the investigating space-boat reached the mystery ship and
circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo-ship dark.
No lights shone anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surges
from even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger-craft
maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported that
microphones detected no motion whatever inside.
"Let a volunteer go aboard," commanded the chief executive. "Have him
report what he finds."
A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name,
from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompous
heroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routine
behavior.
Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketed
himself across the emptiness between the two again-separated ships. He
had opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the outer
airlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported.
The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and
incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. The
ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and
Weald with cargoes of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five
men. There was no cargo in her holds now, though. Instead, there were
men. They packed the ship. They filled the corridors. They had crawled
into every cargo and other space where a man could find room to push
himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity. And it had been
greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off with so
preposterous a load of living creatures.
But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been designed
for a crew of five. It could purify the air for possibly twenty or more.
But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in plain view in the
cargo-ship from Orede. There were many, many times more than her air
apparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have serviced. They couldn't
even have been fed during the journey from Orede to Weald!
But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship came
out of overdrive.
A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship's
log which referred to its take-off. There was no memorandum of the
taking on of such an impossible number of passengers.
"The blueskins did it," said the chief executive of Weald. He was pale.
All about Calhoun men looked sick and shocked and terrified. "It was the
blueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned to
Calhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship ... He'll have to stay
there, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing
contagion ..."
Calhoun raged at him.