V.

“... Truth is the accord of an idea with a thing. Very often an

individual fails to discover the truth about some matter because he

neglects to become informed about something. But even more often,

the truth is never found out because somebody refuses to entertain

an idea....”

_Manual, Interstellar Medical Service._ Pp. 101-2.

On the first day, Calhoun went grimly to the _creches_ that had been

set up by the first-arrived young colonists when ships began to

discharge really young children at the landing-grid in Canopolis. The

_creches_ were not too much like orphanages, of course, but the younger

generation of Phaedra had been put in a very rough situation by the

adults. If the time of the imminent solar explosion had been known,

the matter could have been better handled. Actually, the explosion had

been delayed--to date--for nearly five years from the discovery that

it must occur. If that much leeway could have been predicted, older

men and many machines would have been sent at first. But the bursting

could not be computed. It was a matter of probability. Such-and-such

unrhythmic variables must inevitably coincide sooner or later. When

they did--final and ultimate catastrophe. The sun would flare terribly

and destroy all life in its solar system. It could be calculated that

the odds were even that the explosion would happen within one year,

two to one within two, and five to one within three. The odds were

enormous against Phaedra surviving as long as it had. The people of the

mother-world had had a highly improbable break.

But in cold common sense they’d done the sensible thing. They’d tried

to save those of their children who could take care of themselves

first, and added others as they dared. But the burden on the young

colonists had been monstrous. Even adults would have tended to grow

warped with such pressure to mine, build, plough, and sow, as was put

upon the youngsters. There had never been more than barely enough of

food--and more mouths were always on the way. There had never been

extra shelter, and younger and ever younger cargoes were constantly

arriving, each needing more of shelter and of care than the ones

before. And there was the world of adults still to be provided for.

Calhoun met the girls who had devoted themselves to the quasi-orphaned

children. They bore themselves with rather touching airs of authority

among the smaller children. But they were capable of ferocity, on

occasion. They had the need, sometimes, not to defend their charges but

themselves against the clumsily romantic advances of loutish teen-agers

who considered themselves fascinating.

They had done very well.

The small children were exactly what Calhoun had anticipated--in every

way. The small boy Calhoun had seen first was an extreme case, but the

results of play by proxy were visible everywhere. Calhoun constrainedly

inspected one after another of the children shelters. He was anxiously

watched by the sober young faces of the nurses. But they giggled when

Murgatroyd tried to go through Calhoun’s actions of taking temperatures

and the like. He had to be stopped when he attempted to take a

throat-swabbing which Calhoun had said was pure routine.

After the fourth such inspection he said to Elsa:

“I don’t need to see any more. What’s happened to the boys the same age

as these girl nurses--the thirteen and fourteen and fifteen-year-olds?”

Elsa said uncomfortably:

“They’re mostly off in the wilds. They hunt and fish and pioneer. They

don’t care about girls. Some of them grow things.... I don’t think

there’d be enough food if they didn’t, even though we’re not getting

anybody new to feed.”

Calhoun nodded. In all the cities of the galaxy, small children of both

sexes were to be seen everywhere, and girls of the early teen-ages,

and adults. But the boys’ age-group he’d mentioned always made itself

invisible. It congregated in groups away from the public eye, and

engaged in adventurous games and quite futile explorations. It was

socially quite self-sufficient everywhere.

“Your husband,” said Calhoun, carefully impassive, “had better try to

gather in some of them. As I remember it, they’re capable of a rather

admirable romantic idea of duty--for a while. We’re going to need some

romanticists presently.”

Elsa had faith in Calhoun now, because he seemed concerned about the

children. She said unhappily:

“Do you really think the ... old people will attack? I’ve grown older

since I’ve been here. Those of us who came first are almost like the

people on Phaedra--some ways. The younger people are inclined to be

suspicious of us because we ... try to guide them.”

“If you’re confiding that you think there may be two sides to this

war,” Calhoun told her, “you are quite right. But see what your husband

can do about gathering some of the hunting-and-fishing members of the

community. I’ve got to get back to my ship.”

* * * * *

He got himself driven back to the landing-grid. Walker did not drive

him, but another of the now-suspect men of twenty-five or so, from

the shelter village of the first-landed colonists. He was one of

those who’d worked with Walker from the beginning and with him had

been most embittered. Now he found himself almost a member of an older

generation. He was still bitter against the people of Phaedra, but--

“This whole business is a mess!” he said darkly as he drove through

the nearly deserted city toward the landing-grid. “We’ve got to figure

out a way to organize things that’ll be better than the old way. But

no organization at all is no good, either! We’ve got some tough young

characters who like it this way, but they’ve got to be tamed down!”

Calhoun had his own unsettling suspicions. There have always been

splendid ideas of social systems which will make earthly paradises for

their inhabitants. Here, by happen-chance, there had come to be a world

inhabited only by the young. He tried to put aside, for the moment,

what he was unhappily sure he’d find out back at the ship. He tried to

think about this seemingly perfect opportunity for a new and better

organization of human lives.

But he couldn’t believe in it. Culture-instinct theory is pretty

well worked out. The Med Service considered it proven that the basic

pattern of human societies is instinctual rather than evolved by trial

and error. The individual human being passes through a series of

instinct-patterns which fit him at different times to perform different

functions in a social organization which can vary but never change its

kind. It has to make use of the successive functions its members are

driven by instinct to perform. If it does not use its members, or give

scope to their instincts, it cannot survive. The more lethal attempts

at novel societies tried not only to make all their members alike, but

tried to make them all alike at all ages. Which could not work.

Calhoun thought unhappily of the tests he meant to make in the Med

ship. As the ground-car swerved into the great open center of the grid,

he said:

“My job is doing Med Service. I can’t advise you how to plan a new

world. If I could, I wouldn’t. But whoever does have authority here had

better think about some very immediate troubles.”

“We’ll fight if Phaedra attacks!” said the driver darkly. “They’ll

never get to ground alive, and if they do--they’ll wish they hadn’t!”

“I wasn’t thinking of Phaedra,” said Calhoun.

* * * * *

The car stopped close by the Med ship. He got out. There had been

attempts to enter the ship in his absence. The gang which occupied the

control building and in theory protected Canis III against attack from

the sky had tried to satisfy their curiosity about the little ship.

They’d even used torches on the metal. But they hadn’t gotten in.

Calhoun did. Murgatroyd chattered shrilly when he was put down. He

scampered relievedly about the cabin, plainly rejoicing at being once

more in familiar surroundings. Calhoun paid no attention. He closed

and dogged the air-lock door. He switched on the spacephone and said

shortly:

“Med Ship _Esclipus Twenty_ calling Phaedrian fleet! Med Ship _Esclipus

Twenty_ calling--”

The loud-speaker fairly deafened him as somebody yelled into another

spacephone mike in the grid-control building.

“_Hey! You in the ship! Stop that! No talking with the enemy!_”

Calhoun turned down the incoming volume and said patiently:

“Med Ship _Esclipus Twenty_ calling fleet from Phaedra. Come in, fleet

from Phaedra! Med Ship _Esclipus Twenty_ calling--”

There was a chorus of yellings from the nearby building. The motley,

swaggering, self-appointed landing-grid guard had tried to break into

the ship out of curiosity, but they were vastly indignant when Calhoun

did something of which they disapproved. They made it impossible for

him to have heard a reply from the space fleet presumably overhead.

But after a moment someone in the control house evidently elbowed the

others aside and shouted:

“_You! Keep that up and we’ll smash you! We’ve got the grid to do it

with, too!_”

Calhoun said curtly:

“Med ship to Control. I’ve something to tell you. Suppose you listen.

But not on spacephone. Have your best grid technician come outside and

then I shall tell him by speaker.”

He snapped off the spacephone and watched. The control building fairly

erupted indignant youths. After a moment he saw the gangling one

who’d grinned so proudly when the Med ship was landed with absolute

perfection. The others shouted and scowled at the ship.

Calhoun threw on the outside speaker--normally used for communication

with a ground crew before lifting.

“I’m set,” said Calhoun coldly, “for overdrive travel. My Duhanne cells

are charged to the limit. If you try to form a force-field around this

ship, I’ll dump half a dozen overdrive charges into it in one jolt that

will blow every coil you’ve got! And then how’ll you fight the ships

from Phaedra? I’m going to talk to them on spacephone. Listen in if you

like. Monitor it. But don’t try to bother me!”

He threw on the spacephone again and patiently resumed his calling:

“Med ship _Esclipus Twenty_ calling fleet from Phaedra! Med ship

calling fleet from Phaedra--”

He saw violent argument outside the grid’s control building. Some

of the young figures raged. But the youth who’d handled the grid so

professionally raged at them. Calhoun hadn’t made an idle threat. A

grid-field could be blown out. A grid could be made useless by one of

the ships it handled. When a ship like Calhoun’s went into overdrive,

it put out something like four ounces of pure energy to form a

field in which it could travel past the speed of light. In terms of

horsepower or kilowatt hours, so much force would be meaningless. It

was too big. It was a quantity of energy whose mass was close to four

ounces. When the ship broke out of overdrive, that power was largely

returned to storage. The loss was negligible, compared to the total.

But, turned loose into a grid’s force-field, even three or four such

charges would work havoc with the grid’s equipment.

* * * * *

Calhoun got an answer from emptiness just as the members of the group

by the control building shouted each other down and went inside to

listen with bitter unease and suspicion to his talk with the enemy.

“_Phaedra fleet calling_,” said a growling voice in the spacephone

speaker. “_What do you want?_”

“To exercise my authority as a Med Service officer,” said Calhoun

heavily. “I warn you that I now declare this planet under quarantine.

All contact with it from space is forbidden until health hazards here

are under control. You will inform all other spacecraft and any other

spaceport you may contact of this quarantine. Message ends.”

Silence. A long silence. The growling voice rasped:

“_What’s that? Repeat it!_”

Calhoun repeated it. He switched off the phone and unpacked the

throat-swabbings he’d made at the four children’s shelters in turn.

He opened up his laboratory equipment. He put a dilution of one

throat-swabbing into a culture slide that allowed living organisms to

be examined as they multiplied. He began to check his highly specific

suspicions. Presently he was testing them with minute traces of various

antibodies. He made rough but reasonably certain identifications. His

expression grew very, very sober. He took another swab sample and put

it through the same process. A third, and fourth, and fifth, and tenth.

He looked very grim.

It was sunset outside when there was a hammering on the ship’s hull. He

switched on a microphone and speaker.

“What do you want?” he asked flatly.

The angry voice of young Walker came from the gathering darkness. The

screens showed a dozen or more inhabitants of Canis III milling angrily

about him. Some were of the young-warrior age. They engaged in bitter

argument. But the younger Walker, and four or five with him, faced the

ship with ominous quietness.

“_What’s this nonsense about quarantine?_” demanded Walker harshly,

from outside. “_Not that we’ve space-commerce to lose, but what does it

mean?_”

“It means,” Calhoun told him, “that your brave new world rates as a

slum. You’ve kept kids quiet with psych circuits, and they haven’t

eaten properly and haven’t exercised at all. They’re weak from

malnutrition and feeble from not doing their own playing. They’re like

slum children used to be in past ages. Here on Canis you’re about ready

to wipe yourselves out. You may have done it.”

“_You’re crazy!_” snapped Walker. But he was upset.

“In the four shelters I visited,” Calhoun said drearily, “I spotted

four cases of early diphtheria, two of typhoid, three of scarlet

fever and measles, and samples of nearly any other disease you care

to name. The kids have been developing those diseases out of weakness

and from the reservoir of infections we humans always carry with us.

They’d reached the contagious stage before I saw them--but all the kids

are kept so quiet that nobody noticed that they were sick. They’ve

certainly spread to each other and their nurses, and therefore out into

your general population, all the infections needed for a first-rate

multiple epidemic. And you’ve no doctors, no antibiotics--not even

injectors to administer shots with if you had them.”

“_You’re crazy!_” cried young Walker. “_Crazy! Isn’t this a Phaedra

trick to make us give in?_”

“Phaedra’s trick,” said Calhoun more drearily than before, “is an atom

bomb they’re going to drop into this landing-grid--I suspect quarantine

or no quarantine--in just two days more. Considering the total

situation, I don’t think that matters.”