THE INCREDIBLE PEOPLE
Slowly and patiently they drew the story from the emissary from the
seventh planet of 31 Brucker.
The small, monkey-like creature was painfully shy; he required constant
reassurance that the doctors did not mind being called, that they wanted
to help, and that a contract was not necessary in an emergency. Even at
that the spokesman was reluctant to give details about the plague and
about his stricken people. Every bit of information had to be extracted
with patient questioning.
By tacit consent the doctors did not even mention the strange fact that
this very planet had been explored by a Confederation ship eight hundred
years before and no sign of intelligent life had been found. The little
creature before them seemed ready to turn and bolt at the first hint of
attack or accusation. But bit by bit, a picture of the current situation
on the planet developed.
Whoever they were and wherever they had been when the Confederation ship
had landed, there was unquestionably an intelligent race now inhabiting
this lonely planet in the outer reaches of the solar system of 31
Brucker. There was no doubt of their advancement; a few well-selected
questions revealed that they had control of atomic power, a working
understanding of the nature and properties of contra-terrene matter, and
a workable star drive operating on the same basic principle as Earth's
Koenig drive but which the Bruckians had never really used because of
their shyness and fear of contact with other races. They also had an
excellent understanding, thanks to their eavesdropping on Confederation
interstellar radio chatter, of the existence and functions of the
Galactic Confederation of worlds, and of Hospital Earth's work as
physician to the galaxy.
But about Bruckian anatomy, physiology or biochemistry, the little
emissary would tell them nothing. He seemed genuinely frightened when
they pressed him about the physical make-up of his people, as though
their questions were somehow scraping a raw nerve. He insisted that his
people knew nothing about the nature of the plague that had stricken
them, and the doctors could not budge him an inch from his stand.
But a plague had certainly struck.
It had begun six months before, striking great masses of the people. It
had walked the streets of the cities and the hills and valleys of the
countryside. First three out of ten had been stricken, then four, then
five. The course of the disease, once started, was invariably the same:
first illness, weakness, loss of energy and interest, then gradually a
fading away of intelligent responses, leaving thousands of creatures
walking blank-faced and idiot-like about the streets and countryside.
Ultimately even the ability to take food was lost, and after an interval
of a week or so, death invariably ensued.
Finally the doctors retired to the control room for a puzzled
conference. "It's got to be an organism of some sort that's doing it,"
Dal said. "There couldn't be an illness like this that wasn't caused by
some kind of a parasitic germ or virus."
"But how do we know?" Jack said. "We know nothing about these people
except what we can see. We're going to have to do a complete biochemical
and medical survey before we can hope to do anything."
"But we aren't equipped for a real survey," Tiger protested.
"We've got to do it anyway," Jack said. "If we can just learn enough to
be sure it's an infectious illness, we might stand a chance of finding a
drug that will cure it. Or at least a way to immunize the ones that
aren't infected yet. If this is a virus infection, we might only need to
find an antibody for inoculation to stop it in its tracks. But first we
need a good look at the planet and some more of the people--both
infected and healthy ones. We'd better make arrangements as fast as we
can."
An hour later they had reached an agreement with the Bruckian emissary.
The _Lancet_ would be permitted to land on the planet's surface as soon
as the doctors were satisfied that it was safe. For the time being the
initial landings would be made in the patrol ship's lifeboats, with the
_Lancet_ in orbit a thousand miles above the surface. Unquestionably the
first job was diagnosis, discovering the exact nature of the illness and
studying the afflicted people. This responsibility rested squarely on
Jack's shoulders; he was the diagnostician, and Dal and Tiger willingly
yielded to him in organizing the program.
It was decided that Jack and Tiger would visit the planet's surface at
once, while Dal stayed on the ship and set up the reagents and
examining techniques that would be needed to measure the basic physical
and biochemical characteristics of the Bruckians.
Yet in all the excitement of planning, Dal could not throw off the
lingering shadow of doubt in his mind, some instinctive voice of caution
that seemed to say _watch out, be careful, go slowly! This may not be
what it seems to be; you may be walking into a trap...._
But it was only a faint voice, and easy to thrust aside as the planning
went ahead full speed.
* * * * *
It did not take very long for the crew of the _Lancet_ to realize that
there was something very odd indeed about the small, self-effacing
inhabitants of 31 Brucker VII.
In fact, "odd" was not really quite the proper word for these creatures
at all. No one knew better than the doctors of Hospital Earth that
oddness was the rule among the various members of the galactic
civilization. All sorts and varieties of life-forms had been discovered,
described and studied, each with its singular differences, each with
certain similarities, and each quite "odd" in reference to any of the
others.
In Dal this awareness of the oddness and difference of other races was
particularly acute. He knew that to Tiger and Jack he himself seemed
odd, both anatomically and in other ways. His fine gray fur and his
four-fingered hands set him apart from them--he would never be mistaken
for an Earthman, even in the densest fog. But these were comprehensible
differences. His close attachment to Fuzzy was something else, and still
seemed beyond their ability to understand.
He had spent one whole evening patiently trying to make Jack understand
just how his attachment to the little pink creature was more than just
the fondness of a man for his dog.
"Well, what would you call it, then?"
"Symbiosis is probably the best word for it," Dal had replied. "Two
life-forms live together, and each one helps the other--that's all
symbiosis is. Together each one is better off than either one would be
alone. We all of us live in symbiosis with the bacteria in our digestive
tracts, don't we? We provide them with a place to live and grow, and
they help us digest our food. It's a kind of a partnership--and Fuzzy
and I are partners in the same sort of way."
Jack had argued, and then lost his temper, and finally grudgingly agreed
that he supposed he would have to tolerate it even if it didn't make
sense to him.
But the creatures on 31 Brucker VII were "odd" far beyond the reasonable
limits of oddness--so far beyond it that the doctors could not believe
the things that their eyes and their instruments were telling them.
When Tiger and Jack came back to the _Lancet_ after their first trip to
the planet's surface, they were visibly shaken. Geographically, they had
found it just as it had been described in the exploratory reports--a
barren, desert land with only a few large islands of vegetation in the
equatorial regions.
"But the people!" Jack said. "They don't fit into _any_ kind of pattern.
They've got houses--at least I guess you'd call them houses--but every
one of them is like every other one, and they're all crammed together in
tight little bunches, with nothing for miles in between. They've got an
advanced technology, a good communications system, manufacturing
techniques and everything, but they just don't use them."
"It's more than that," Tiger said. "They don't seem to _want_ to use
them."
"Well, it doesn't add up, to me," Jack said. "There are thousands of
towns and cities down there, all of them miles apart, and yet they had
to go dig an old rusty jet scooter out of storage and get the motor
rebuilt just specially to take us from one place to another. I know
things can get disorganized with a plague in the land, but this plague
just hasn't been going on that long."
"What about the sickness?" Dal asked. "Is it as bad as it sounded?"
"Worse, if anything," Tiger said gloomily. "They're dying by the
thousands, and I hope we got those suits of ours decontaminated, because
I don't want any part of this disease."
Graphically, he described the conditions they had found among the
stricken people. There was no question that a plague was stalking the
land. In the rutted mud roads of the villages and towns the dead were
piled in gutters, and in all of the cities a deathly stillness hung over
the streets. Those who had not yet succumbed to the illness were nursing
and feeding the sick ones, but these unaffected ones were growing
scarcer and scarcer. The whole living population seemed resigned to
hopelessness, hardly noticing the strangers from the patrol ship.
But worst of all were those in the final stages of the disease,
wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws
slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off
from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said.
"I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me or hear me."
"But don't they have _any_ knowledge of antisepsis or isolation?" Dal
asked.
Tiger shook his head. "Not that we could see. They don't know what's
causing this sickness. They think that it's some kind of curse, and
they never dreamed that it might be kept from spreading."
Already Tiger and Jack had taken the first routine steps to deal with
the sickness. They gave orders to move the unaffected people in every
town and village into isolated barracks and stockades. For half a day
Tiger tried to explain ways to prevent the spread of a bacteria or
virus-borne disease. The people had stared at him as if he were talking
gibberish; finally he gave up trying to explain, and just laid down
rules which the people were instructed to follow. Together they had
collected standard testing specimens of body fluids and tissue from both
healthy and afflicted Bruckians, and come back to the _Lancet_ for a
breather.
Now all three doctors began work on the specimens. Cultures were
inoculated with specimens from respiratory tract, blood and tissue taken
from both sick and well. Half a dozen fatal cases were brought to the
ship under specially controlled conditions for autopsy examination, to
reveal both the normal anatomical characteristics of this strange race
of people and the damage the disease was doing. Down on the surface
Tiger had already inoculated a dozen of the healthy ones with various
radioactive isotopes to help outline the normal metabolism and
biochemistry of the people. After a short sleep period on the _Lancet_,
he went back down alone to follow up on these, leaving Dal and Jack to
carry on the survey work in the ship's lab.
It was a gargantuan task that faced them. They knew that in any race of
creatures they could not hope to recognize the abnormal unless they knew
what the normal was. That was the sole reason for the extensive
biomedical surveys that were done on new contract planets. Under normal
conditions, a survey crew with specialists in physiology, biochemistry,
anatomy, radiology, pharmacology and pathology might spend months or
even years on a new planet gathering base-line information. But here
there was neither time nor facilities for such a study. Even in the
twenty-four hours since the patrol ship arrived, the number of dead had
increased alarmingly.
Alone on the ship, Dal and Jack found themselves working as a well
organized team. There was no time here for argument or duplicated
efforts; everything the two doctors did was closely co-ordinated. Jack
seemed to have forgotten his previous antagonism completely. There was a
crisis here, and more work than three men could possibly do in the time
available. "You handle anatomy and pathology," Jack told Dal at the
beginning. "You can get the picture five times as fast as I can, and
your pathology slides are better than most commercial ones. I can do the
best job on the cultures, once I get the growth media all set up."
Bit by bit they divided the labor, checking in with Tiger by radio on
the results of the isotopes studies he was running on the planet's
surface. Bit by bit the data was collected, and Earthman and Garvian
worked more closely than ever before as the task that faced them
appeared more and more formidable.
But the results of their tests made no sense whatever. Tiger returned to
the ship after forty-eight hours with circles under his eyes, looking as
though he had been trampled in a crowd. "No sleep, that's all," he said
breathlessly as he crawled out of his decontaminated pressure suit. "No
time for it. I swear I ran those tests a dozen times and I still didn't
get any answers that made sense."
"The results you were sending up sounded plenty strange," Jack said.
"What was the trouble?"
"I don't know," Tiger said, "but if we're looking for a biological
pattern here, we haven't found it yet as far as I can see."
"No, we certainly haven't," Dal exploded. "I thought I was doing
something wrong somehow, because these blood chemistries I've been doing
have been ridiculous. I can't even find a normal level for blood sugar,
and as for the enzyme systems...." He tossed a sheaf of notes down on
the counter in disgust. "I don't see how these people could even be
alive, with a botched-up metabolism like this! I've never heard of
anything like it."
"What kind of pathology did you find?" Tiger wanted to know.
"Nothing," Dal said. "Nothing at all. I did autopsies on the six that
you brought up here and made slides of every different kind of tissue I
could find. The anatomy is perfectly clear cut, no objections there.
These people are very similar to Earth-type monkeys in structure, with
heart and lungs and vocal cords and all. But I can't find any reason why
they should be dying. Any luck with the cultures?"
Jack shook his head glumly. "No growth on any of the plates. At first I
thought I had something going, but if I did, it died, and I can't find
any sign of it in the filtrates."
"But we've got to have _something_ to work on," Tiger said desperately.
"Look, there are some things that always measure out the same in _any_
intelligent creature no matter where he comes from. That's the whole
basis of galactic medicine. Creatures may develop and adapt in different
ways, but the basic biochemical reactions are the same."
"Not here, they aren't," Dal said. "Take a look at these tests!"
They carried the heap of notes they had collected out into the control
room and began sifting and organizing the data, just as a survey team
would do, trying to match it with the pattern of a thousand other
living creatures that had previously been studied. Hours passed, and
they were farther from an answer than when they began.
Because this data did not fit a pattern. It was _different_. No two
individuals showed the same reactions. In every test the results were
either flatly impossible or completely the opposite of what was
expected.
Carefully they retraced their steps, trying to pinpoint what could be
going wrong.
"There's _got_ to be a laboratory error," Dal said wearily. "We must
have slipped up somewhere."
"But I don't see where," Jack said. "Let's see those culture tubes
again. And put on a pot of coffee. I can't even think straight any
more."
Of the three of them, Jack was beginning to show the strain the most.
This was his special field, the place where he was supposed to excel,
and nothing was happening. Reports coming up from the planet were
discouraging; the isolation techniques they had tried to institute did
not seem to be working, and the spread of the plague was accelerating.
The communiqués from the Bruckians were taking on a note of desperation.
Jack watched each report with growing apprehension. He moved restlessly
from lab to control room, checking and rechecking things, trying to find
some sign of order in the chaos.
"Try to get some sleep," Dal urged him. "A couple of hours will freshen
you up a hundred per cent."
"I can't, I've already tried it," Jack said.
"Go ahead. Tiger and I can keep working on these things for a while."
"No, no, it's not that," Jack said. "Without a diagnosis, we can't do a
thing. Until we have that, our hands are tied, and we aren't even
getting close to it. We don't even know whether this is a bacteria, or a
virus, or what. Maybe the Bruckians are right. Maybe it's a curse."
"I don't think the Black Service of Pathology would buy that for a
diagnosis," Tiger said sourly.
"The Black Service would choke on it--but what other answer do we have?
You two have been doing all you can, but diagnosis is _my_ job. I'm
supposed to be good at it, but the more we dig into this, the farther
away we seem to get."
"Do you want to call for help?" Tiger said.
Jack shook his head helplessly. "I'm beginning to think we should have
called for help a long time ago," he said. "We're into this over our
heads now and we're still going down. At the rate those people are dying
down there, we don't have time to call for help now." He stared at the
piles of notes on the desk and his face was very white. "I don't know, I
just don't know," he said. "The diagnosis on this thing should have been
duck soup. I thought it was going to be a real feather in my cap, just
walking in and nailing it down in a few hours. Well, I'm whipped. I
don't know what to do. If either of you can think of an answer, it's all
yours, and I'll admit it to Black Doctor Tanner himself."
* * * * *
It was bitter medicine for Blue Doctor Jack Alvarez to swallow, but that
fact gave no pleasure to Dal or Tiger now. They were as baffled as Jack
was, and would have welcomed help from anyone who could offer it.
And, ironically, the first glimpse of the truth came from the direction
they least expected.
From the very beginning Fuzzy had been watching the proceedings from his
perch on the swinging platform in the control room. If he sensed that
Dal Timgar was ignoring him and leaving him to his own devices much of
the time, he showed no sign of resentment. The tiny creature seemed to
realize that something important was consuming his master's energy and
attention, and contented himself with an affectionate pat now and then
as Dal went through the control room. Everyone assumed without much
thought that Fuzzy was merely being tolerant of the situation. It was
not until they had finally given up in desperation and Tiger was trying
to contact a Hospital Ship for help, that Dal stared up at his little
pink friend with a puzzled frown.
Tiger put the transmitter down for a moment. "What's wrong?" he said to
Dal. "You look as though you just bit into a rotten apple."
"I just remembered that I haven't fed him for twenty-four hours," Dal
said.
"Who? Fuzzy?" Tiger shrugged. "He could see you were busy."
Dal shook his head. "That wouldn't make any difference to Fuzzy. When he
gets hungry, he gets hungry, and he's pretty self-centered. It wouldn't
matter what I was doing, he should have been screaming for food hours
ago."
Dal walked over to the platform and peered down at his pink friend in
alarm. He took him up and rested him on his shoulder, a move that
invariably sent Fuzzy into raptures of delight. Now the little creature
just sat there, trembling and rubbing half-heartedly against Dal's neck.
Dal held him out at arm's length. "Fuzzy, _what's the matter with you?_"
"Do you think something's wrong with him?" Jack said, looking up
suddenly. "Looks like he's having trouble keeping his eyes open."
"His color isn't right, either," Tiger said. "He looks kind of blue."
Quite suddenly the little black eyes closed and Fuzzy began to tremble
violently. He drew himself up into a tight pink globule as the fuzz-like
hair disappeared from view.
Something was unmistakably wrong. As he held the shivering creature, Dal
was suddenly aware that something had been nibbling at the back of his
mind for hours. Not a clear-cut thought, merely an impression of pain
and anguish and sickness, and now as he looked at Fuzzy the impression
grew so strong it almost made him cry out.
Abruptly, Dal knew what he had to do. Where the thought came from he
didn't know, but it was crystal clear in his mind. "Jack, where is our
biggest virus filter?" he asked quietly.
Jack stared at him. "Virus filter? I just took it out of the autoclave
an hour ago."
"Get it," Dal said, "and the suction machine too. _Quickly!_"
Jack went down the corridor like a shot, and reappeared a moment later
with the big porcelain virus filter and the suction tubing attached to
it. Swiftly Dal dumped the limp little creature in his hand into the top
of the filter jar, poured in some sterile saline, and started the
suction.
Tiger and Jack watched him in amazement. "What are you doing?" Tiger
said.
"Filtering him," Dal said. "He's infected. He must have been exposed to
the plague somehow, maybe when our little Bruckian visitor came on board
the other day. And if it's a virus that's causing this plague, the virus
filter ought to hold it back and still let Fuzzy's molecular structure
through."
They watched and sure enough a bluish-pink fluid began moving down
through the porcelain filter, and dripping through the funnel into the
beaker below. Each drop coalesced in the beaker as it fell until Fuzzy's
whole body had been sucked through the filter and into the jar below. He
was still not quite his normal pink color, but as the filter went dry,
a pair of frightened shoe-button eyes appeared and he poked up a pair of
ears. Presently the fuzz began appearing on his body again.
And on the top of the filter lay a faint gray film. "Don't touch it!"
Dal said. "That's real poison." He slipped on a mask and gloves, and
scraped a bit of the film from the filter with a spatula. "I think we
have it," he said. "The virus that's causing the plague on this
planet."