Ole Doc Methuselah Part 30

The admiral was pale. Five admirals attended him and they were pale.

Garth was courageous.

"I suppose this means we are doomed," he said, trying to keep his hand away from his throat, which ached frighteningly. "The scout vessels which approached the Star of s.p.a.ce must have been infected in the air. Their captain reported to me here. He must have been the carrier. I ... I have infected the officers who were with me today. They, returning to their ships, have exposed their crews. My own medical officer"-and it was easy to tell how difficult this was for Garth to beg a favor-"has no idea of what this can be. You must do something. You have asked for a case so that you could study symptoms.

You have that case, doctor."

Ole Doc sat on the edge of the desk and swung a boot.

He shrugged. "When you deal with diseases which have not been studied over a full course of sickness, you can form no real judgment. I am sorry, admiral, but there is nothing much which can be done just now."

"They've got full courses on Green Rivers," said Garth.

"Ah, yes," said Ole Doc. "But I am, unfortunately, forbidden-"

Garth was steady and stern. How he hated asking this!

How he despised this pill roller despite the present plight!

"I will release you from that. If you care to risk the sickness, you are free to study it."

Ole Doc handed up an order blank from the desk and Garth wrote upon it.

"If it were not for the sake of my officers and men,"

said Garth, "I would not bother with this. I do not believe

anything can be done. I act only on the recommendation of naval surgeons. Is that clear?"

"Orders again," murmured Ole Doc.

"What?" said Garth.

"In case of sickness, the medical corps, I think, orders the line. Well, I'll see if I know anything. Good day."

They let him out and through the side. Back in his ship, Ole Doc presented the order to the cruiser captain and the Morgue was freed. Five minutes later, at the controls, Ole Doc sent the Morgue knifing through the cloud layers and across the verdant surface of the beautiful planet.

He found the shapely towers of Piedmont with no trouble and in a short while was settled down upon the red earth of the landing field.

Within five minutes the Morgue was likely to be crushed by the mob which pressed to it. There was anxiety and hysteria in the welcome. Women held up their chil- dren to see the ship and hitherto accounted brave men fought remorselessly to get close enough to it to beg succor. Officials and police struggled with the crowd, half to clear it, half to get near the ship themselves. An old woman in the foremost rank, when the area before the port had been cleared, knelt humbly and began to pray in thankfulness.

Ole Doc swung out, stood on the step and looked down on their heads. The babble which met him was almost a physical force. He waited for them to quiet and at last, by patience alone, won their silence.

"People," said Ole Doc, "I can promise you nothing. I will try. While I am here you will help by giving me s.p.a.ce in which to walk and work"-for he had been in such panic areas before-"so that I can help you. I cannot and will not treat an individual. When I have a solution, you will all benefit if that proves possible. Now go to your homes. Your radios will tell you what is taking place."

They did not disperse but they gave him room to walk.

He went across the field and down a tree-lined street under the directions of an army officer who informed him that the Star of s.p.a.ce was landed, partially disabled, at a flying field near the ball park.

Data was poured at him by people who fled along on either side and walked backwards a distance before him.

Most of it was contradictory. But it was plain that in the past few hours a thousand cases had broken out across the face of Green Rivers.

It was a pleasant town upon a pleasant planet. The neat streets were flanked by wide gardens and trees and the heat of Sirius was comfortable. Ole Doc sighed as he realized how he stood between this homely work and a charred planet of debris.

A quack, selling a box of "fever cure" saw Ole Doc coming and ashamedly tried to stand before his sign and hide it. How the man expected to get away with any money he made was a mystery of psychology.

The Star of s.p.a.ce was a desolation. She had jammed into the ground on landing, fracturing her tubes. Bad navigation had dented her with s.p.a.ce dust. Her sealed ports were like sightless eyes in a skull.

Ole Doc stood for a while within twenty feet of her, gazing in pity. And then he cupped his hands. "Star of s.p.a.ce, ahoy."

A lock opened and a gaunt young man in a filthy uniform stood there. "A Soldier of Light," he said in a hushed voice.

A woman was crying on Ole Doc's left, holding a child cradled in her arms and when they saw her the crowd shrank from her for the child had closed eyes and was breathing with difficulty. But Ole Doc did not see her. He advanced on the Star.

The young man tried to say a welcome and could not He dropped his face into his hands and began to sob soundlessly.

Ole Doc pushed on through. He was, after all, a mortal.

Diseases respected no man, not even the U.M.S. It is valiant to go up against ray guns. It took more nerve to walk into that ship.

The stench was like a living wall. There were unburied dead in there. The salons and halls were stained and disarrayed, the furniture broken, the draperies torn down for other uses. A piano stood gleamingly polished amid a chaos of broken gla.s.s. And a young woman, dead, lay with her hair outsplayed across the fragments as though she wore diamonds in her locks.

The young man had followed and Ole Doc turned in the salon. "Bring the other people here."

"They won't a.s.semble."

"Bring them here."

Ole Doc sat down in a deep chair and took out a notebook. After a long while the people began to come, a few at a time, singly or in large groups. They looked at

one another with fear on their faces. Not a few of them were mad.

A girl hurled herself across the salon and dropped to grasp at Ole Doc's knees. She was a beautiful girl, about twenty. But hunger and terror had written large upon her and her hands were shaking.

She cried out something over and over. But Ole Doc was looking at the people who were a.s.sembling there.

Then he dropped his eyes for he was ashamed to look at their misery longer.

He began as orderly as he could and gradually pieced together the tale.

The disease had begun nine days out, with one case, a man from Cobanne in the Holloway System. He had raved and muttered in delirium and when partly con- scious had informed the ship's doctor that he had seen the same sickness in Cobanne, a backs.p.a.ce, ruined remnant of war. He was a young man, about twenty. Twenty-one days out he died, but it was the opinion of the doctor that death was due to a rheumatic heart which the patient had had prior to the disease.

This was news enough, to find a place where a rheumatic heart was considered incurable. And then Ole Doc re- called the disease warfare of the Holloway System and the resultant poverty and abandonment of what had once been rich.

The next case had broken out twelve days after depar- ture and had terminated in death a week later. Ole Doc took down the details and made a scan of nearly forty cases to arrive at a course.

The disease had an incubation period of something up to ten days. Then for a period of one week, more or less, the temperature remained low. Spots came in the mouth- though these had also been noted earlier. The temperature then rose rapidly and often caused death in this period. If it did not, the throat was greatly swollen and spots came out on the forehead and spread down over the body.

Temperature then dropped to around ninety-nine for a day but rose suddenly to one hundred and five or more at which point the patient either died or, as had happened in two cases, began to recover. But death might follow any sudden temperature rise and generally did.

Ole Doc went back to a cabin where a currently stricken woman lay and took some phlegm. He processed it quick- ly and established the disease as a nonfilterable virus.

There were two hundred and twenty well officers, crew and pa.s.sengers remaining on the Star of s.p.a.ce. They were without hope, but their eyes followed Ole Doc whenever he moved across the salon going to patients in other parts of the ship.

The inspection took an hour and Ole Doc went then into the daylight and sat down on the gra.s.s under a tree while Hippocrates shooed people away. After a long time, it looked as if Ole Doc were asleep.

But he was not sleeping. No modern medical text con- tained any mention of such a disease. But that, of course, proved nothing. The U.M.S. texts were blank about it, that he knew. But it seemed, somehow, that he had heard or read something, somewhere about it.