During the banquet, Murgatroyd had been visiting with the wives of the
higher-up officials. They had enough of their husbands normally,
without listening to their official speeches. Murgatroyd was brought,
his small paunch distended with cakes and coffee and such delicacies
as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose from overfeeding and
overpetting, but he was glad to see Calhoun.
Calhoun held the little creature in his arms as the official groundcar
raced through traffic with screaming sirens claiming the right of way.
It reached the spaceport, where enormous metal girders formed a
monster frame of metal lace against a star-filled sky. The chief
executive strode magnificently into the spaceport offices. There was
no news; 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, 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
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 spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling
grain ships from time to 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 spaceport. But he listened to the talk about
him. As the investigating small ship drew 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 no single suggestion that the mystery might
not be the work of blueskins. Blueskins were scape-goats for all the
fears and all the uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.
Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery ship and
circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo ship
dark. No lights 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. "Let 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 cargos 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 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 would 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
taken care of. 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 takeoff. 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.
* * * * *
2
There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald
spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular
because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,
where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to react
explosively when the word _blueskin_ was uttered in their hearing, and
its adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness entered
their minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formed
and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.
The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was
safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship
he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been
doomed but for Calhoun.
The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship he
might have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of the
plague still existed, and _if_ the men in the ship had caught it (but
they certainly hadn't died of it), and _if_ there had been blueskins
on Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and _if_
blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the moment
pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Weald
if he were allowed to return.
Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to its
airlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. The
combination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,
after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and
air from the ship let into the lock.
If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,
and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outside
by a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd fling
after it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.
Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'd
persuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.
There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had been
unpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy
those people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as
a pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not only
the ship from Orede but other incidents which they interpreted as
crimes against Weald.
They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn
out fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for an
anti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusion
bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, no
fish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of the
blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.
One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that
no other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar Medical
Service. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it by
broadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which a
planet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.
He did.
So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'd
curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft until
Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was
not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.
He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,
"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"
He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Then
there was silence.
The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a preposterous number
of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely solid, absolutely
firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as if it were buried
deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no sign
of anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is only
utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make one's eardrums
crack.
But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and
there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.
The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and
meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all
of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.
Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical
affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a
civilization can be destroyed more surely and more terribly than by
any imaginable war or plague germs. A plague kills off those who are
susceptible to it, leaving immunes to build up a world again. But
immunes are the first to be killed when a mass neurosis sweeps a
population.
Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another.
And when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo spaceship
which could not furnish them with air to breathe, and took off and
went into overdrive before the air could fail.... Orede called for no
less of worry.
"I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."
_Coffee_ was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized. Ordinarily
he stirred immediately on hearing it, and watched the coffeemaker with
bright, interested eyes. He'd even tried to imitate Calhoun's motions
with it, once, and had scorched his paws in the attempt. But this time
he did not move.
Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tail
coiled reflectively about a chair leg. He watched the door of the Med
Ship's sleeping cabin.
"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "I mentioned coffee!"
"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd.
But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lower
in the other cabin, and the look of things was different than the
control compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a
man was able to be alone for weeks on end--alone save for his
_tormal_--without becoming ship-happy.
There were other carefully thought out items in the ship with the same
purpose. But none of them should cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly and
fascinatedly at the sleeping cabin door. Not when coffee was in the
making!
Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion that
occurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to be
impartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely with
Weald in its enmity to blueskins.
And the people of Weald had refused to help Dara in a time of famine,
and had blockaded that pariah world for years afterward. And they had
other reasons for hating the people they'd treated badly. It was
entirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to consider that Calhoun
must be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Weald abhorred.
In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on the
Med Ship to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of any
report favorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such a
stowaway would be in the sleeping cabin now, waiting for Calhoun to
walk in unsuspiciously, only to be shot dead.
So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where it
would be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large one
for himself, and then a second large one.
He tapped on the sleeping cabin door, standing aside lest a
blaster-bolt come through it.
"Coffee's ready," he said sardonically. "Come out and join us."
There was a long pause. Calhoun rapped again.
"You've a seat at the captain's table," he said more sardonically
still. "It's not polite to keep me waiting!"
He listened, alert for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperate
attempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared to
shoot quite ruthlessly, because he was on duty and the Med Service did
not approve of the extermination of populations, however justified
another population might consider it.
But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls whose
sound made Calhoun start. The door of the cabin slid slowly aside. A
girl appeared in the opening, desperately white and desperately
composed.
"H-how did you know I was there?" she asked shakily. She moistened her
lips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enter
the room!"
Calhoun said grimly, "I've sources of information. Murgatroyd told me
this time. May I present him? Murgatroyd, our passenger. Shake hands."
Murgatroyd moved forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny,
furry paw. She did not move. She stared at Calhoun.
"Better shake hands," said Calhoun, as grimly as before. "It might
relax the tension a little. And do you want to tell me your story? You
have one ready, I'm sure."
The girl swallowed. Murgatroyd shook hands gravely. He said,
"_Chee-chee!_" in the shrillest of trebles and went back to his former
position.
"The story?" said Calhoun insistently.
"There--there isn't any," said the girl unsteadily. "Just that I--I
need to get to Orede, and you're going there. There's no other way to
go, now."
"To the contrary," said Calhoun. "There'll undoubtedly be a fleet
heading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'm
afraid that as a story yours isn't good enough. Try another."
She shivered a little.
"I'm running away...."
"Ah!" said Calhoun. "In that case I'll take you back."
"No!" she said fiercely. "I'll--I'll die first! I'll wreck this ship
first!"
Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But it
shook visibly as she tried to aim it.
"I'll shoot out the controls!"
Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate of
the situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now he
had to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disable
the ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't use
energy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girl
threatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was not
actually an assassin at all.
"I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'd
get deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air
and food to give out."
Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter the
conversation:
"_Chee-chee-chee!_"
"A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and
have a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,
since that's where you say you want to go."
"I have a sweetheart there...."
Calhoun shook his head.
"No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packed
itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But not
all. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what
men weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your
sweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or
saccho, and do you take cream?"
She trembled a little, but she took the cup.
"I don't understand."
"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether he
spoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go around
trying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we even
try to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practise
it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you make
such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
Especially since we're going there anyhow."
"You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.
"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
more believable presently. When did you eat last?"
"Yesterday."
"Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Or
would you permit me to ready a snack?"
"I--I'll do it," she said.
She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how
to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from
storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at
dialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food for
oneself, in one's own chosen manner--again an item to help make
solitude not unendurable.
Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory,
looking up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no
reason to inform himself about it before. Now he read with every
appearance of absorption.
The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable
interest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable.
Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the micro-film reels
which contained more information. He was specifically after the Med
Service history of all the planets in this sector. He went through the
filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.
But Sector Twelve had not been run well. There was no adequate account
of a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an
inhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit,
and was over before another Med Ship came by.
There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after the
fact. There should have been a collection of infectious material and a
reasonably complete identification and study of the agent. It hadn't
been made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it
slipped by. Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector,
resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and its
consequences.
He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man has
resources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself during
overdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of those
resources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of the
stowaway. But Murgatroyd watched her with charmed attention.