CHAPTER 8
PLAGUE!
In the control room the interstellar radio and teletype-translator weresilent. The red light on the call board was still blinking; Tiger turnedit off with a snap. "Here's the message that just came in, as near as Ican make out," he said, "and if you can make sense of it, you're wayahead of me."
The message was a single word, teletyped in the center of a bluedispatch sheet:
GREETINGS
"This is all?" Jack said.
"That's every bit of it. They repeated it half a dozen times, just likethat."
"_Who_ repeated it?" Dal asked. "Where are the identification symbols?"
"There weren't any," said Tiger. "Our own computer designated 31 Bruckerfrom the direction and intensity of the signal. The question is, what dowe do?"
The message stared up at them cryptically. Dal shook his head. "Doesn'tgive us much to go on, that's certain. Even the location could be wrongif the signal came in on an odd frequency or from a long distance. Let'sbeam back at the same direction and intensity and see what happens."
Tiger took the earphones and speaker, and turned the signal beam tocoincide with the direction of the incoming message.
"We have your contact. Can you hear me? Who are you and what do youwant?"
There was a long delay and they thought the contact was lost. Then avoice came whispering through the static. "Where is your ship now? Areyou near to us?"
"We need your co-ordinates in order to tell," Tiger said. "Who are you?"
Again a long pause and a howl of static. Then: "If you are far away itwill be too late. We have no time left, we are dying...."
Abruptly the voice message broke off and co-ordinates began comingthrough between bursts of static. Tiger scribbled them down, piecingthem together through several repetitions. "Check these out fast," hetold Jack. "This sounds like real trouble." He tossed Dal another pairof earphones and turned back to the speaker. "Are you a contractplanet?" he signaled. "Do we have a survey on you?"
There was a much longer pause. Then the voice came back, "No, we have nocontract. We are all dying, but if you must have a contract to come...."
"Not at all," Tiger sent back. "We're coming. Keep your frequency open.We will contact again when we are closer."
He tossed down the earphones and looked excitedly at Dal. "Did you hearthat? A planet calling for help, with no Hospital Earth contract!"
"They sound desperate," Dal said. "We'd better go there, contract or nocontract."
"Of course we'll go there, you idiot. See if Jack has those co-ordinatescharted, and start digging up information on them, everything you canfind. We need all of the dope we can get and we need it fast. This isour golden chance to seal a contract with a new planet."
All three of the doctors fell to work trying to identify the mysteriouscaller. Dal began searching the information file for data on 31 Brucker,punching all the reference tags he could think of, as well as thegalactic co-ordinates of the planet. He could hardly control his fingersas the tapes with possible references began plopping down into theslots. Tiger was right; this was almost too good to be true. When aplanet without a medical service contract called a GPP Ship for help,there was always hope that a brand new contract might be signed if thecall was successful. And no greater honor could come to a patrol craftcrew than to be the originators of a new contract for Hospital Earth.
But there were problems in dealing with uncontacted planets. Many starsystems had never been explored by ships of the Confederation. Manyraces, like Earthmen at the time their star-drive was discovered, had noinkling of the existence of a Galactic Confederation of worlds. Theremight be no information whatever about the special anatomical andphysiological characteristics of the inhabitants of an uncontactedplanet, and often a patrol crew faced insurmountable difficulties,coming in blind to solve a medical problem.
Dal had his information gathered first--a disappointingly small amountindeed. Among the billions of notes on file in the _Lancet_'s data bank,there were only two scraps of data available on the 31 Brucker system.
"Is this all you could find?" Tiger said, staring at the informationslips.
"There's just nothing else there," Dal said. "This one is a descriptionand classification of the star, and it doesn't sound like the one whowrote it had even been near it."
"He hadn't," Tiger said. "This is a routine radio-telescopic surveyreport. The star is a red giant. Big and cold, with three--possiblyfour--planets inside the outer envelope of the star itself, and only oneoutside it. Nothing about satellites. None of the planets thought to behabitable by man. What's the other item?"
"An exploratory report on the outer planet, done eight hundred yearsago. Says it's an Earth-type planet, and not much else. Gives referenceto the full report in the Confederation files. Not a word about anintelligent race living there."
"Well, maybe Jack's got a bit more for us," Tiger said. "If the placehas been explored, there must be _some_ information about theinhabitants."
But Jack also came up with a blank. Central Records on Hospital Earthsent back a physical description of a tiny outer planet of the star,with a thin oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, very little water, and enoughmethane mixed in to make the atmosphere deadly to Earthmen.
"Then there's never been a medical service contract?" Tiger asked.
"Contract!" Jack said. "It doesn't even say there are any people there.Not a word about any kind of life form."
"Well, that's ridiculous," Dal said. "If we're getting messages fromthere, somebody must be sending them. But if a Confederation shipexplored there, there's a way to find out. How soon can we convert tostar-drive?"
"As soon as we can get strapped down," Tiger said.
"Then send our reconversion co-ordinates to the Confederationheadquarters on Garv II and request the Confederation records on theplace."
Jack stared at him. "You mean just ask to see Confederation records? Wecan't do that, they'd skin us alive. Those records are closed toeveryone except full members of the Confederation."
"Tell them it's an emergency," Dal said. "If they want to be legal aboutit, give them my Confederation serial number. Garv II is a member of theConfederation, and I'm a native-born citizen."
Tiger got the request off while Jack and Dal strapped down for theconversion to Koenig drive. Five minutes later Tiger joined them,grinning from ear to ear. "Didn't even have to pull rank," he said."When they started to argue, I just told them it was an emergency, andif they didn't let us see any records they had, we would file theirrefusal against claims that might come up later. They quit arguing.We'll have the records as soon as we reconvert."
* * * * *
The star that they were seeking was a long distance from the currentlocation of the _Lancet_. The ship was in Koenig drive for hours beforeit reconverted, and even Dal was beginning to feel the first pangs ofdrive-sickness before they felt the customary jolting vibration of thechange to normal space, and saw bright stars again in the viewscreen.
The star called 31 Brucker was close then. It was indeed a red giant;long tenuous plumes of gas spread out for hundreds of millions of mileson all sides of its glowing red core. This mammoth star did not look socold now, as they stared at it in the viewscreen, yet among the familyof stars it was a cold, dying giant with only a few moments of life lefton the astronomical time scale. From the _Lancet_'s position, noplanets at all were visible to the naked eye, but with the telescopeJack soon found two inside the star's envelope of gas and one tiny oneoutside. They would have to be searched for, and the one that they werehoping to reach located before centering and landing maneuvers could bebegun.
Already the radio was chattering with two powerful signals coming in.One came from the Galactic Confederation headquarters on Garv II; theother was a good clear signal from very close range, unquestionablybeamed to them from the planet in distress.
They watched as the Confederation report came clacking off the teletype,and they star
ed at it unbelieving.
"It just doesn't make sense," Jack said. "There _must_ be intelligentcreatures down there. They're sending radio signals."
"Then why a report like this?" Tiger said. "This was filed by a routineexploratory ship that came here eight hundred years ago. You can't tellme that any intelligent race could develop from scratch in less thaneight centuries' time."
Dal picked up the report and read it again. "This red giant star," heread, "was studied in the usual fashion. It was found to have sevenplanets, all but one lying within the tenuous outer gas envelope of thestar itself. The seventh planet has an atmosphere of its own, andtravels an orbit well outside the star surface. This planet was selectedfor landing and exploration."
Following this was a long, detailed and exceedingly dull description ofthe step-by-step procedure followed by a Confederation exploratory shipmaking a first landing on a barren planet. There was a description ofthe atmosphere, the soil surface, the land masses and major waterbodies. Physically, the planet was a desert, hot and dry, and barren ofvegetation excepting in two or three areas of jungle along the equator."The planet is inhabited by numerous small unintelligent animal specieswhich seem well-adapted to the semi-arid conditions. Of higher animalsand mammals only two species were discovered, and of these the mosthighly developed was an erect biped with an integrated central nervoussystem and the intelligence level of a Garvian _drachma_."
"How small is that?" Jack said.
"Idiot-level," Dal said glumly. "I.Q. of about 20 on the human scale. Iguess the explorers weren't much impressed; they didn't even put theplanet down for a routine colonization survey."
"Well, _something_ has happened down there since then. Idiots can'tbuild interstellar radios." Jack turned to Tiger. "Are you gettingthem?"
Tiger nodded. A voice was coming over the speaker, hesitant andapologetic, using the common tongue of the Galactic Confederation. "Howsoon can you come?" the voice was asking clearly, still with the soundof great reticence. "There is not much time."
"But who are you?" Tiger asked. "What's wrong down there?"
"We are sick, dying, thousands of us. But if you have other work that ismore pressing, we would not want to delay you--"
Jack shook his head, frowning. "I don't get this," he said. "What arethey afraid of?"
Tiger spoke into the microphone again. "We will be glad to help, but weneed information about you. You have our position--can you send up aspokesman to tell us your problem?"
A long pause, and then the voice came back wearily. "It will be done.Stand by to receive him."
Tiger snapped off the radio receiver and looked up triumphantly at theothers. "Now we're getting somewhere. If the people down there can senda ship out with a spokesman to tell us about their troubles, we've got achance to sew up a contract, and that could mean a Star for every one ofus."
"Yes, but who are they?" Dal said. "And where were they when theConfederation ship was here?"
"I don't know," Jack said, "but I'll bet you both that we have quite atime finding out."
"Why?" Tiger said. "What do you mean?"
"I mean we'd better be very careful here," Jack said darkly. "I don'tknow about you, but I think this whole business has a very strangesmell."
* * * * *
There was nothing strange about the Bruckian ship when it finally cameinto view. It was a standard design, surface-launching interplanetarycraft, with separated segments on either side suggesting atomic engines.They saw the side jets flare as the ship maneuvered to come in alongsidethe _Lancet_.
Grapplers were thrown out to bind the emissary ship to the _Lancet_'shull, and Jack threw the switches to open the entrance lock anddecontamination chambers. They had taken pains to describe the interioratmosphere of the patrol ship and warn the spokesman to keep himself ina sealed pressure suit. On the intercom viewscreens they saw the smallsuited figure cross from his ship into the _Lancet_'s lock, and watchedas the sprays of formalin washed down the outside of the suit.
Moments later the creature stepped out of the decontamination chamber.He was small and humanoid, with tiny fragile bones and pale, hairlessskin. He stood no more than four feet high. More than anything else, helooked like a very intelligent monkey with a diminutive space suitfitting his fragile body. When he spoke the words came through thetranslator in English; but Dal recognized the flowing syllables of theuniversal language of the Galactic Confederation.
"How do you know the common tongue?" he said. "There is no record ofyour people in our Confederation, yet you use our own universallanguage."
The Bruckian nodded. "We know the language well. My people dread outsidecontact--it is a racial characteristic--but we hear the Confederationbroadcasts and have learned to understand the common tongue." Thespace-suited stranger looked at the doctors one by one. "We also know ofthe good works of the ships from Hospital Earth, and now we appeal toyou."
"Why?" Jack said. "You gave us no information, nothing to go on."
"There was no time," the creature said. "Death is stalking our land, andthe people are falling at their plows. Thousands of us are dying, tensof thousands. Even I am infected and soon will be dead. Unless you canfind a way to help us quickly, it will be too late, and my people willbe wiped from the face of the planet."
Jack looked grimly at Tiger and Dal. "Well," he said, "I guess thatanswers our question, all right. It looks as if we have a plague planeton our hands, whether we like it or not."
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