Pariah Planet Part 19

The suave voice fairly curdled.

"_As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground here!_"

"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium melts at 1150 centigrade, and tungsten at 3370 and iridium at 2350. You could load such things and melt them down in s.p.a.ce and then tow them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful materials!"

The suave voice said infuriatedly;

"_I'll report this! You'll suffer for this!_"

Calhoun said pleasantly;

"I'm sure that what I say is being recorded, so that I'll add that it's perfectly practical for Wealdians to land on Dara, take whatever property they think wise,--to pay for damage done by blueskins, of course--and get back to Wealdian ships with absolutely no danger of carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the recording's clear."

He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not use the word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of bringing back infection. He gave exact details. Then he said;

"My radar says you've four ships converging on me to blast me out of s.p.a.ce. I sign off."

The Med Ship disappeared from normal s.p.a.ce, and entered that improbably stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and in which physical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the speed of light in overdrive-stressed s.p.a.ce had not been measured yet. It was too high. For another, a ship could travel very many times 186000 miles per second in overdrive.

The Med Ship did just that. There was n.o.body but Calhoun and Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence,--there were only the small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice, but which it would have been intolerable to have stop.

Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the ship, with never so much as one yard of s.p.a.ce between himself and someone else. One need not be sn.o.bbish to wish to be alone sometimes!

Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully.

"I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of grain reaching them. Maybe--just possibly--they'll listen to me and act sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not with ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with bombs!"

Driving direct, without pausing for practisings, the Med Ship could arrive at Dara in little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward to relaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an adequate meal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then, presently, he sat down wrily to a double meal of Darian famine-rations, which were far from appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on board.

He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went elsewhere. On Weald, obviously, there would be purest panic. The vanishing of the grain fleet wouldn't be charged against twenty-four men. A Darian fleet would be suspected, and with the suspicion terror, and with terror a governmental crisis. Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft that could take to s.p.a.ce, and the agitated improvisation of a s.p.a.ce-fleet.

But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine Calhoun's instructions for equipment by which armed men could be landed on a plague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again. Military and governmental officials would come to the eminently sane conclusion that while Calhoun could not well take active measures against blueskins, as a sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would be on the side of law and order and propriety and justice,--in short, of Weald. So they ordered sample anti-contagion suits made according to Calhoun's directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.

On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed back to it, grain was distributed lavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal ration almost doubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the relief was great. There was considerable grat.i.tude felt for Calhoun, which as usual included a lively antic.i.p.ation of further favors to come. Maril was interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to discuss him, and she did his reputation no harm. That was not all that happened on Dara ...

There was something else. Very curious thing, too. There was a curious spread of mild symptoms which n.o.body could exactly call a disease. It lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran a temperature which peaked at 30.9 centigrade, and drank more water than usual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all about it. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are rarely recorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was the case here.

Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain-ships would arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time they would make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle-herds, and bring back incredible quant.i.ties of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almost everybody would get to taste meat again, which would be most gratifying.

Then, the industries of Dara would labor at government-required tasks.

An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into bombs--a concession by Calhoun--and plastic factories make an astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there would be some guns and minor items....

Perhaps somebody could have found out any of these items in advance, but it was unlikely that anybody did. n.o.body but Calhoun, however, would ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that that was the way things would work out. He could see a promising total result. In fact, in the Med ship hurtling through s.p.a.ce, on the fourth day of his journey he thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of all those happenings when they were put together.

He landed on Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted her with enthusiasm.

"Something unusual has happened," said Maril, very much subdued. "I told you that--sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and then neither they nor their children ever have blueskin markings again."

"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember."

"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said they only took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but then they could be pa.s.sed on from mother to child. Until--sometimes--they died out."

Calhoun blinked.

"Yes...."

"Korvan," said Maril very carefully, "Has worked out an idea that that's what happens to the blueskin markings on--us Darians. He thinks that people almost dead of the plague could get the--virus, and if they recovered from the plague pa.s.s the virus on and--be blueskins."

"Interesting," said Calhoun, noncommittally.

"And when we went to Weald," said Maril very carefully indeed, "you were working with some culture-material. You wrote quite a lot about it in the ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? And Murgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" She moistened her lips. "You said that if infection pa.s.sed between us, something would be very infectious indeed?"

"What are you driving at?"

Maril continued slowly. "Th--thousands of people are having their pigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And--Korvan has found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they felt feverish and very thirsty--and then felt all right again. You tried out something that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too, in the ship.

Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that--is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are always trivial epidemics that n.o.body notices. Korvan's found evidence of one that's making 'blueskin' no longer a word with any meaning."

"Remarkable!" said Calhoun.

"Did you--do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic that--wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?"

Calhoun said in feigned astonishment;

"How can you think such a thing, Maril?"

"Because I was there," said Maril. She said somehow desperately; "I know you did it! But the question is--are you going to tell? When people find they're not blueskins any longer--when there's no such thing as a blueskin any longer--will you tell them why?"

"Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan--."

"He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself. He's found the proof. He's--very proud. I'd have to tell him the truth if you were going to tell. And he'd be ashamed and--angry."

Calhoun considered, staring at her.

"How it happened doesn't matter," he said at last. "The idea of anybody doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't get about.

So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover what's happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened, but not why."

She read his face carefully.

"You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it was that way."

She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded and went away.

An hour later the Wealdian s.p.a.ce-fleet was reported, ma.s.sed in s.p.a.ce and driving for Dara.