The Martian Way and other Stories Part 19

In the background, Mark Annuncio's pointed nose fairly quivered with the intensity of his curiosity. He turned to Sheffield, who was at his side, and whispered, "Ghosts? No authentic case of seeing-"

Sheffield touched Mark's thin shoulder lightly. "Only a way of speaking, Mark. But don't feel badly that he doesn't mean it literally. You're watching the birth of a superst.i.tion, and that's something, isn't it?"

FOURTEEN.

A semi-sullen Captain Follenbee sought out Cimon the evening after Fawkes' second return and said in his harumphy way, "Never do, Dr. Cimon. My men are unsettled. Very unsettled."

The port shields were open. Lagrange I was six hours gone, and Lagrange II's ruddy light, deepened to crimson in setting, flushed the Captain's face and tinged his short gray hair with red.

Cimon, whose att.i.tude toward the crew in general and the Captain in particular was one of controlled impatience, said, "What is the trouble, Captain?"

"Been here two weeks, Earth time. Still no one leaves without suits. Always irradiate before you come back. Anything wrong with the air?"

"Not as far as we know."

"Why not breathe it then?"

"Captain, that's for me to decide."

The flush on the Captain's face became a real one. He said, "My papers say I don't have to stay if ship's safety is endangered. A frightened and mutinous crew is something I don't want"

"Can't you handle your own men?"

"Within reason."

"Well, what really bothers them? This is a new planet and we're being cautious. Can't they understand that?"

"Two weeks and still cautious. They think we're hiding something. And we are. You know that. Besides, surface leave is necessary. Crew's got to have it. Even if it's just on a bare rock a mile across. Gets them out of the ship. Away from the routine. Can't deny them that."

"Give me till tomorrow," said Cimon contemptuously.

FIFTEEN.

The scientists gathered in the observatory the next day.

Cimon said, "Vernadsky tells me the data on air is still negative, and Rodriguez has discovered no air-borne pathogenic organism of any type."

There was a general air of dubiety over the last statement.

Novee said, "The settlement died of disease. I'll swear to that."

"Maybe so," said Rodriguez at once, "but can you explain how? It's impossible. I tell you that and I tell you. See here. Almost all Earth-type planets give birth to life and that life is always protein in nature and always either cellular or virus in organization. But that's all. There the resemblance ends.

"You laymen think it's all the same; Earth or any planet. Germs are germs and viruses are viruses. I tell you you don't understand the infinite possibilities for variation in the protein molecule. Even on Earth, every species has its own diseases. Some may spread over several species but there isn't one single pathogenic life form of any type on Earth that can attack all other species.

"You think that a virus or a bacterium developing independently for a billion yeans on another planet with different amino acids, different enzyme systems, a different scheme of metabolism altogether is just going to happen to find h.o.m.o sapiens succulent like a lollipop. I tell you it is childishness."

Novee, his physician's soul badly pierced at having been lumped under the phrase, "You laymen," was not disposed to let it go that easily, "h.o.m.o sapiens brings its own germs with it wherever it goes, Rod. Who's to say the virus of the common cold didn't mutate under some planetary influence into something that was suddenly deadly? Or influenza. Things like have happened even on Earth. The 2755 para-meas-"

"I know all about the 2755 para-measles epidemic," said Rodriguez, "and the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the Black Death, too. But when has it happened lately? Granted the settlement was a matter of a century and more ago-still that wasn't exactly pre-atomic times, either. They included doctors. They had supplies of antibiotics and for s.p.a.ce' sake, they knew the techniques of antibody induction. They're simple enough. And there was the medical relief expedition, too."

Novee patted his round abdomen and said stubbornly, "The symptoms were those of a respiratory infection; dyspnea-"

"I know the list, but I tell you it wasn't a germ disease that got them. It couldn't be."

"What was it, then?"

"That's outside my professional competence. Talking from inside, I tell you it wasn't infection. Even mutant infection. It couldn't be. It mathematically couldn't be." He leaned heavily on the adverb.

There was a stir among his listeners as Mark Annuncio shoved his thin body forward into the s.p.a.ce immediately before Rodriguez.

For the first time, he spoke at one of these gatherings.

"Mathematically?" he asked eagerly.

Sheffield followed after, his long body all elbows and knees as he made a path. He murmured "Sorry" half a dozen times.

Rodriguez, in an advanced stage of exasperation, thrust out his lower lip and said, "What do you want?"

Mark flinched. Less eagerly, he said, "You said you knew it wasn't infection mathematically. I was wondering how-mathematics..." He ran down.

Rodriguez said, "I have stated my professional opinion." He said it formally, stiltedly, then turned away. No man questioned another's professional opinion unless he was of the same specialty. Otherwise the implication, clearly enough, was that the specialist's experience and knowledge was sufficiently dubious to be brought into question by an outsider. Mark knew this, but then he was of the Mnemonic Service.

He tapped Rodriguez's shoulder, while the others standing about listened in stunned fascination, and said, "I know it's your professional opinion, but still I'd like to have it explained."

He didn't mean to sound peremptory. He was just stating a fact.

Rodriguez whirled. "You'd like to have it explained? Who the eternal Universe are you to ask me questions?"

Mark was startled at the other's vehemence, but Sheffield had reached him now, and he gained courage. With it, anger.

He disregarded Sheffield's quick whisper and said shrilly, "I'm Mark Annuncio of Mnemonic Service and I've asked you a question. I want your statement explained."

"It won't be explained. Sheffield, take this young nut out of here and tuck him into bed, will you? And keep him away from me after this. d.a.m.n young jacka.s.s." The last was a clearly heard aside.

Sheffield took Mark's wrist but it was wrenched out of his grasp. The young Mnemonic screamed, "You stupid non-compos. You-you moron. You forgettery on two feet. Sieve-mind. Let me go, Dr. Sheffield-You're no expert. You don't remember anything you've learned, and you haven't learned much in the first place. You're not a specialist; none of you-"

"For s.p.a.ce' sake," cried Cimon, "take the young idiot out of here, Sheffield."

Sheffield, his long cheeks burning, stooped and lifted Mark bodily into the air. Holding him close, he made his way out of the room.

Tears squeezed out of Mark's eyes, and just outside the door, he managed to speak with difficulty. "Let me down. I want to hear-I want to hear what they say."

Sheffield said, "Don't go back in. Please, Mark."

"I won't. Don't worry. But-"

He didn't finish the but.

SIXTEEN.

Inside the observatory room, Cimon, looking haggard, said, "All right. All right. Let's get back to the point. Come on, now. Quiet! I'm accepting Rodriguez' viewpoint. It's good enough for me and I don't suppose there's anyone else here who questions Rodriguez' professional opinion."

("Better not," muttered Rodriguez, his dark eyes hot with sustained fury.) Cimon went on. "And since there's nothing to fear as far as infection is concerned, I'm telling Captain Follenbee that the crew may take surface leave without special protection against the atmosphere. Apparently the lack of surface leave is bad for morale. Are there any objections?"

There weren't any.

Cimon said, "I see no reason also why we can't pa.s.s on to the next stage of the investigation. I propose that we set up camp at the site of the original settlement. I appoint a committee of five to trek out there. Fawkes, since he can handle the coaster; Novee and Rodriguez to handle the biological data; Vernadsky and myself to take care of the chemistry and physics.

"The rest of you will, naturally, be apprised of all pertinent data in your own specialties, and will be expected to help in suggesting lines of attack, et cetera. Eventually, we may all be out there, but for the while only this small group. And until further notice, communication between ourselves and the main group on ship will be by radio only, since if the trouble, whatever it is, turns out to be localized at settlement site, five men are enough to lose."

Novee said, "The settlement lived on Junior several years before dying out. Over a year anyway. It could be a long time before we are certain we're safe."

"We," said Cimon, "are not a settlement. We are a group of specialists who are looking for trouble. Well find it if it's there to find, and when we do find it, we'll beat it. And it won't take us a couple of years, either. Now, are there any objections?"

There were none, and the meeting broke up.

SEVENTEEN.

Mark Annuncio sat on his bunk, hands clasped about his knee, chin sunken and touching his chest. He was dry-eyed now, but his voice was heady with frustration.

"They're not taking me," he said. "They won't let me go with them."

Sheffield was in the chair opposite the boy, bathed in an agony of perplexity. He said, "They may take you later on."

"No," said Mark fiercely, "they won't. They hate me. Besides, I want to go now. I've never been on another planet before. There's so much to see and find out. They've got no right to hold me back if I want to go."

Sheffield shook his head. Mnemonics were so firmly trained into this belief that they must collect facts and that no one or nothing could or ought to stop them. Perhaps when they returned, he might recommend a certain degree of counterindoctrination. After all, Mnemonics had to live in the real world occasionally. More and more with each generation, perhaps, as they grew to play an increasing role in the Galaxy.

He tried an experiment. He said, "It may be dangerous, you know."

"I don't care. I've got to know. I've got to find out about this planet. Dr. Sheffield, you go to Dr. Cimon and tell him I'm going along."

"Now, Mark."

"If you don't, I will." He raised his small body from the bed in earnest of leaving that moment.

"Look, you're excited."

Mark's fists clenched. "It's not fair, Dr. Sheffield. I found this planet. It's my planet."

Sheffield's conscience hit him badly. What Mark said was true in a way. No one, except Mark, knew that better than Sheffield. And no one, again except Mark, knew the history of Junior better than Sheffield.

It was only in the last twenty years that, faced with the rising tide of population pressure in the older planets and the recession of the Galactic frontier from those same older planets, the Confederation of Worlds began exploring the Galaxy systematically. Before that, human expansion went on hit or miss. Men and women in search of new land and a better life followed rumor as to the existence of habitable planets or sent out amateur groups to find something promising.

A hundred ten years before, one such group found Junior. They didn't report their find officially because they didn't want a crowd of land speculators, promotion men, exploiters and general riffraff following. In the next months, some of the unattached men arranged to have women brought in, so the settlement must have flourished for a while.

It was a year later, when some had died and most or all the rest were sick and dying, that they beamed a cry of help to Pretoria, the nearest inhabited planet. The Pretorian government was in some sort of crisis at the time and relayed the message to the Sector government at Altmark. Pretoria then felt justified in forgetting the matter.

The Altmark government, acting in reflex fashion, sent out a medical ship to Junior. It dropped anti-sera and various other supplies. The ship did not land because the medical officer diagnosed the matter from a distance as influenza and minimized the danger. The medical supplies, his report said, would handle the matter perfectly. It was quite possible that the crew of the ship, fearing contagion, had prevented a landing, but nothing in the official report indicated that.

There was a final report from Junior three months later to the effect that only ten people were left alive and that they were dying. They begged for help. This report was forwarded to Earth itself along with the previous medical report. The Central government, however, was a maze in which reports regularly were forgotten unless someone had sufficient personal interest, and influence, to keep them alive. No one had much interest in a far-off, unknown planet with ten dying men and women on it.

Filed and forgotten-and for a century, no human foot was felt on Junior.

Then, with the new furor over Galactic exploration, hundreds of ships began darting through the empty vastness, probing here and there. Reports trickled in, then flooded in. Some came from Hidosheki Mikoyama, who pa.s.sed through the Hercules cl.u.s.ter twice (dying in a crash landing the second time, with his tight and despairing voice coming over the subether in a final message: "Surface coming up fast now; ship walls frictioning into red he-" and no more.) Last year the acc.u.mulation of reports, grown past any reasonable human handling, was fed into the overworked Washington computer on a priority so high that there was only a five-month wait. The operators checked out the data for planetary habitability and lo, Abou ben Junior led all the rest.

Sheffield remembered the wild hoorah over it. The stellar system was enthusiastically proclaimed to the Galaxy and the name Junior was thought up by a bright young man in the Bureau of Outer Provinces who felt the need for personal friendliness between man and world. Junior's virtues were magnified. Its fertility, its climate ("a New England perpetual spring"), and most of all, its vast future, were put across without any feeling of need for discretion. "For the next million years," propagandists declared, "Junior will grow richer. While other planets age, Junior will grow younger as the ice recedes and fresh soil is exposed. Always a new frontier; always untapped resources."

For a million years!

It was the Bureau's masterpiece. It was to be the tremendously successful start of a program of government-sponsored colonization. It was to be the beginning, at long last, of the scientific exploitation of the Galaxy for the good of humanity.

And then came Mark Annuncio, who heard much of all this and was as thrilled at the prospect as any Joe Earthman, but who one day thought of something he had seen while sniffing idly through the "dead matter" files of the Bureau of Outer Provinces. He had seen a medical report about a colony on a planet of a system whose description and position in s.p.a.ce tallied with that of the Lagrange group.

Sheffield remembered the day Mark came to him with that news.

He also remembered the face of the Secretary for the Outer Provinces when the news was pa.s.sed on to him. He saw the Secretary's square jaw slowly go slack and a look of infinite trouble come into his eyes.

The government was committed! It was going to ship millions of people to Junior. It was going to grant farmland and subsidize the first seed supplies, farm machinery, factories. Junior was going to be a paradise for numerous voters and a promise of more paradise for a myriad others.

If Junior turned out to be a killer planet for some reason or other, it would mean political suicide for all government figures concerned in the project. That meant some pretty big men, not least the Secretary for the Outer Provinces.

After days of checking and indecision, the Secretary had said to Sheffield, "It looks as though we've got to find out what happened and weave it into the propaganda somehow. Don't you think we could neutralize it that way?"