PLAGUE!
In the control room the interstellar radio and teletype-translator were
silent. The red light on the call board was still blinking; Tiger turned
it off with a snap. "Here's the message that just came in, as near as I
can make out," he said, "and if you can make sense of it, you're way
ahead of me."
The message was a single word, teletyped in the center of a blue
dispatch sheet:
GREETINGS
"This is all?" Jack said.
"That's every bit of it. They repeated it half a dozen times, just like
that."
"_Who_ repeated it?" Dal asked. "Where are the identification symbols?"
"There weren't any," said Tiger. "Our own computer designated 31 Brucker
from the direction and intensity of the signal. The question is, what do
we do?"
The message stared up at them cryptically. Dal shook his head. "Doesn't
give us much to go on, that's certain. Even the location could be wrong
if the signal came in on an odd frequency or from a long distance. Let's
beam back at the same direction and intensity and see what happens."
Tiger took the earphones and speaker, and turned the signal beam to
coincide with the direction of the incoming message.
"We have your contact. Can you hear me? Who are you and what do you
want?"
There was a long delay and they thought the contact was lost. Then a
voice came whispering through the static. "Where is your ship now? Are
you near to us?"
"We need your co-ordinates in order to tell," Tiger said. "Who are you?"
Again a long pause and a howl of static. Then: "If you are far away it
will be too late. We have no time left, we are dying...."
Abruptly the voice message broke off and co-ordinates began coming
through between bursts of static. Tiger scribbled them down, piecing
them together through several repetitions. "Check these out fast," he
told Jack. "This sounds like real trouble." He tossed Dal another pair
of earphones and turned back to the speaker. "Are you a contract
planet?" he signaled. "Do we have a survey on you?"
There was a much longer pause. Then the voice came back, "No, we have no
contract. We are all dying, but if you must have a contract to come...."
"Not at all," Tiger sent back. "We're coming. Keep your frequency open.
We will contact again when we are closer."
He tossed down the earphones and looked excitedly at Dal. "Did you hear
that? A planet calling for help, with no Hospital Earth contract!"
"They sound desperate," Dal said. "We'd better go there, contract or no
contract."
"Of course we'll go there, you idiot. See if Jack has those co-ordinates
charted, and start digging up information on them, everything you can
find. We need all of the dope we can get and we need it fast. This is
our golden chance to seal a contract with a new planet."
All three of the doctors fell to work trying to identify the mysterious
caller. Dal began searching the information file for data on 31 Brucker,
punching all the reference tags he could think of, as well as the
galactic co-ordinates of the planet. He could hardly control his fingers
as the tapes with possible references began plopping down into the
slots. Tiger was right; this was almost too good to be true. When a
planet without a medical service contract called a GPP Ship for help,
there was always hope that a brand new contract might be signed if the
call was successful. And no greater honor could come to a patrol craft
crew than to be the originators of a new contract for Hospital Earth.
But there were problems in dealing with uncontacted planets. Many star
systems had never been explored by ships of the Confederation. Many
races, like Earthmen at the time their star-drive was discovered, had no
inkling of the existence of a Galactic Confederation of worlds. There
might be no information whatever about the special anatomical and
physiological characteristics of the inhabitants of an uncontacted
planet, and often a patrol crew faced insurmountable difficulties,
coming in blind to solve a medical problem.
Dal had his information gathered first--a disappointingly small amount
indeed. Among the billions of notes on file in the _Lancet_'s data bank,
there were only two scraps of data available on the 31 Brucker system.
"Is this all you could find?" Tiger said, staring at the information
slips.
"There's just nothing else there," Dal said. "This one is a description
and classification of the star, and it doesn't sound like the one who
wrote it had even been near it."
"He hadn't," Tiger said. "This is a routine radio-telescopic survey
report. The star is a red giant. Big and cold, with three--possibly
four--planets inside the outer envelope of the star itself, and only one
outside it. Nothing about satellites. None of the planets thought to be
habitable by man. What's the other item?"
"An exploratory report on the outer planet, done eight hundred years
ago. Says it's an Earth-type planet, and not much else. Gives reference
to the full report in the Confederation files. Not a word about an
intelligent race living there."
"Well, maybe Jack's got a bit more for us," Tiger said. "If the place
has been explored, there must be _some_ information about the
inhabitants."
But Jack also came up with a blank. Central Records on Hospital Earth
sent back a physical description of a tiny outer planet of the star,
with a thin oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, very little water, and enough
methane mixed in to make the atmosphere deadly to Earthmen.
"Then there's never been a medical service contract?" Tiger asked.
"Contract!" Jack said. "It doesn't even say there are any people there.
Not a word about any kind of life form."
"Well, that's ridiculous," Dal said. "If we're getting messages from
there, somebody must be sending them. But if a Confederation ship
explored there, there's a way to find out. How soon can we convert to
star-drive?"
"As soon as we can get strapped down," Tiger said.
"Then send our reconversion co-ordinates to the Confederation
headquarters on Garv II and request the Confederation records on the
place."
Jack stared at him. "You mean just ask to see Confederation records? We
can't do that, they'd skin us alive. Those records are closed to
everyone except full members of the Confederation."
"Tell them it's an emergency," Dal said. "If they want to be legal about
it, give them my Confederation serial number. Garv II is a member of the
Confederation, and I'm a native-born citizen."
Tiger got the request off while Jack and Dal strapped down for the
conversion to Koenig drive. Five minutes later Tiger joined them,
grinning from ear to ear. "Didn't even have to pull rank," he said.
"When they started to argue, I just told them it was an emergency, and
if they didn't let us see any records they had, we would file their
refusal against claims that might come up later. They quit arguing.
We'll have the records as soon as we reconvert."
* * * * *
The star that they were seeking was a long distance from the current
location of the _Lancet_. The ship was in Koenig drive for hours before
it reconverted, and even Dal was beginning to feel the first pangs of
drive-sickness before they felt the customary jolting vibration of the
change to normal space, and saw bright stars again in the viewscreen.
The star called 31 Brucker was close then. It was indeed a red giant;
long tenuous plumes of gas spread out for hundreds of millions of miles
on all sides of its glowing red core. This mammoth star did not look so
cold now, as they stared at it in the viewscreen, yet among the family
of stars it was a cold, dying giant with only a few moments of life left
on the astronomical time scale. From the _Lancet_'s position, no
planets at all were visible to the naked eye, but with the telescope
Jack soon found two inside the star's envelope of gas and one tiny one
outside. They would have to be searched for, and the one that they were
hoping to reach located before centering and landing maneuvers could be
begun.
Already the radio was chattering with two powerful signals coming in.
One came from the Galactic Confederation headquarters on Garv II; the
other was a good clear signal from very close range, unquestionably
beamed to them from the planet in distress.
They watched as the Confederation report came clacking off the teletype,
and they stared at it unbelieving.
"It just doesn't make sense," Jack said. "There _must_ be intelligent
creatures down there. They're sending radio signals."
"Then why a report like this?" Tiger said. "This was filed by a routine
exploratory ship that came here eight hundred years ago. You can't tell
me that any intelligent race could develop from scratch in less than
eight centuries' time."
Dal picked up the report and read it again. "This red giant star," he
read, "was studied in the usual fashion. It was found to have seven
planets, all but one lying within the tenuous outer gas envelope of the
star itself. The seventh planet has an atmosphere of its own, and
travels an orbit well outside the star surface. This planet was selected
for landing and exploration."
Following this was a long, detailed and exceedingly dull description of
the step-by-step procedure followed by a Confederation exploratory ship
making a first landing on a barren planet. There was a description of
the atmosphere, the soil surface, the land masses and major water
bodies. Physically, the planet was a desert, hot and dry, and barren of
vegetation excepting in two or three areas of jungle along the equator.
"The planet is inhabited by numerous small unintelligent animal species
which seem well-adapted to the semi-arid conditions. Of higher animals
and mammals only two species were discovered, and of these the most
highly developed was an erect biped with an integrated central nervous
system and the intelligence level of a Garvian _drachma_."
"How small is that?" Jack said.
"Idiot-level," Dal said glumly. "I.Q. of about 20 on the human scale. I
guess the explorers weren't much impressed; they didn't even put the
planet down for a routine colonization survey."
"Well, _something_ has happened down there since then. Idiots can't
build interstellar radios." Jack turned to Tiger. "Are you getting
them?"
Tiger nodded. A voice was coming over the speaker, hesitant and
apologetic, using the common tongue of the Galactic Confederation. "How
soon can you come?" the voice was asking clearly, still with the sound
of great reticence. "There is not much time."
"But who are you?" Tiger asked. "What's wrong down there?"
"We are sick, dying, thousands of us. But if you have other work that is
more pressing, we would not want to delay you--"
Jack shook his head, frowning. "I don't get this," he said. "What are
they afraid of?"
Tiger spoke into the microphone again. "We will be glad to help, but we
need information about you. You have our position--can you send up a
spokesman to tell us your problem?"
A long pause, and then the voice came back wearily. "It will be done.
Stand by to receive him."
Tiger snapped off the radio receiver and looked up triumphantly at the
others. "Now we're getting somewhere. If the people down there can send
a ship out with a spokesman to tell us about their troubles, we've got a
chance to sew up a contract, and that could mean a Star for every one of
us."
"Yes, but who are they?" Dal said. "And where were they when the
Confederation ship was here?"
"I don't know," Jack said, "but I'll bet you both that we have quite a
time finding out."
"Why?" Tiger said. "What do you mean?"
"I mean we'd better be very careful here," Jack said darkly. "I don't
know about you, but I think this whole business has a very strange
smell."
* * * * *
There was nothing strange about the Bruckian ship when it finally came
into view. It was a standard design, surface-launching interplanetary
craft, with separated segments on either side suggesting atomic engines.
They saw the side jets flare as the ship maneuvered to come in alongside
the _Lancet_.
Grapplers were thrown out to bind the emissary ship to the _Lancet_'s
hull, and Jack threw the switches to open the entrance lock and
decontamination chambers. They had taken pains to describe the interior
atmosphere of the patrol ship and warn the spokesman to keep himself in
a sealed pressure suit. On the intercom viewscreens they saw the small
suited figure cross from his ship into the _Lancet_'s lock, and watched
as the sprays of formalin washed down the outside of the suit.
Moments later the creature stepped out of the decontamination chamber.
He was small and humanoid, with tiny fragile bones and pale, hairless
skin. He stood no more than four feet high. More than anything else, he
looked like a very intelligent monkey with a diminutive space suit
fitting his fragile body. When he spoke the words came through the
translator in English; but Dal recognized the flowing syllables of the
universal language of the Galactic Confederation.
"How do you know the common tongue?" he said. "There is no record of
your people in our Confederation, yet you use our own universal
language."
The Bruckian nodded. "We know the language well. My people dread outside
contact--it is a racial characteristic--but we hear the Confederation
broadcasts and have learned to understand the common tongue." The
space-suited stranger looked at the doctors one by one. "We also know of
the good works of the ships from Hospital Earth, and now we appeal to
you."
"Why?" Jack said. "You gave us no information, nothing to go on."
"There was no time," the creature said. "Death is stalking our land, and
the people are falling at their plows. Thousands of us are dying, tens
of thousands. Even I am infected and soon will be dead. Unless you can
find a way to help us quickly, it will be too late, and my people will
be wiped from the face of the planet."
Jack looked grimly at Tiger and Dal. "Well," he said, "I guess that
answers our question, all right. It looks as if we have a plague planet
on our hands, whether we like it or not."