The young man took a reef in his nerve. He stood forward.
Ole Doc made him open his mouth and poured in a deadly dose. Then he played a new electrode over the fourth officer. Within five minutes the first symptom of the disease had appeared. In ten, the man’s temperature was beginning to rise.
Ole Doc grabbed a needle full of the contents of the first barrel. He gave the fourth officer a nonpiercing shot. Five minutes later the temperature was down and the man was well!
Ole Doc tried his antitoxin on five people and tried to give them the disease. It would not settle in them. They were immune!
“I want,” said Ole Doc, “volunteers to write these instructions down, let me check what they have written and rush gallons of both these medicines to every part of this planet. You, you’re the space-radio superintendent, aren’t you? Take what I dictate here for warning to all systems and to provide them with the cure and prevention. Hippocrates, give me that mike.”
Ole Doc said into the speaker, “UMS to Garth. Prevention and cure established. Star of Space survivors will not be carriers. You may disperse your fleet. Your doctors will be furnished with information by the general dispatch.”
He turned to a local doctor, a young man who, for some thirty-five minutes, had been standing there with his mouth open. “You see the procedure, sir. I would advise you to get in and treat the patients in that poor ship. If you need my further help, particularly with those who have become insane, I shall be at hand. I think,” he added, “that there are trout in that stream.”
Hippocrates carried the equipment back, an elephant load of it, and restored it to its proper places in the Morgue. Ole Doc, when he had got free of people trying to kiss his hands, push money on him and lift and carry him in triumph, climbed into the Morgue and stretched out his feet under his desk. He made a series of interesting notes.
It is sometimes unwise to remove a disease entirely from the Universe. It is almost impossible to eradicate one completely from all quarters of the Universe, particularly as some are borne by animals unbeknownst to men.
The human being as a race carries a certain residual immunity to many violent diseases so that these are, in time, ineffective against a group with which they have associated but, reaching a new group, pass quickly to destructive lengths.
Diseases known to us commonly now would be fatal should we outgrow that immunity. In such a way are the penicillin-like panaceas destructive at long last.
I would advise—
A deferential footfall sounded at the office doorway. Ole Doc looked up, preoccupied, to find Galactic Admiral Garth.
“Doctor,” said Garth uncomfortably, “are you busy just now? I can come back but—”
“No, no,” said Ole Doc. “Come in and sit down. Have a drink?”
Garth shuffled his feet and sank gingerly into his chair. Plainly he was a victim of awe and he had a problem. “That was magnificent. I . . . I’ve been wrong about doctors, sir. I have been very wrong about the Universal Medical Society. I said some hard words—”
“No, no,” said Ole Doc. “Come, have a drink.”
“Well, the fact is,” said Garth, “my doctors tell me that what my admirals and myself have . . . well . . . it doesn’t fit the description. I don’t mean your diagnosis is wrong—”
“Admiral,” said Ole Doc, “I think I know what the trouble is.” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a package which he gave to the admiral. “Take one every four hours. Drink lots of water. Tell your other men to do the same and keep to their quarters. Anybody else comes down, have your doctors give them this.” And he wrote a quick prescription in a hand nobody but a pharmacist could read and gave it to Garth. Deciphered, it said “Aspirin.”
“You’re sure—” And Garth blew his nose.
“Of course I’m sure!” said Ole Doc. “Now how about—”
But Garth was uncomfortable around all this greatness and he managed to get away, still giving his feeble thanks, still with awe in his eyes.
Suddenly Hippocrates appeared, an accusative gleam in his eyes, antennae waving with wrath. “What you give him? What you do with this out of place in the operating room?”
“Oh, by the way, Hippocrates,” said Ole Doc, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it gingerly over. “Boil that when you wash. It’s slightly septic.”
“You did something! You gave somebody some disease! What you doing with—”
“Hippocrates, that bottle you keep stabbing at me is just common-cold virus catalyzed to work in two or three hours. It’s very weak. It wouldn’t kill anyone. I merely put some on my handkerchief—”
Hippocrates suddenly stopped and grinned. “Aha! The admiral had the sniffles. Well, serve him right for kill all those innocent people. But sometime you get in trouble. You wait.” He started to march off and then, impelled by a recalled curiosity, came back.
“What was the matter with all those people?”
“Too well cared for by doctors,” said Ole Doc.
“How?”
“Hit by a disease which they hadn’t contacted for a long, long time—say five hundred years.”
“What disease?” demanded Hippocrates. “Not one that you spread?”
“No, no, heaven forbid!” laughed Ole Doc. “It has a perfectly good name but it hasn’t been around for so long that—”
“What name?”
“Common measles,” said Ole Doc.
A Sound Investment
The self-righteous Hippocrates was just returning from a visit to the Alpheca when the first blast hit him.
It was, however, not a very serious blast. The entire force of it emanated from the larynx of Ole Doc Methuselah, Soldier of Light and member extraordinary of the Universal Medical Society.
But if it came from a larynx, it was a much revered organ and one which, on occasion, had made monarchs jump and thrones totter.
“Where are my old cuffs?” howled Ole Doc.
This was a trifle unnerving to the little four-armed slave, particularly since during the entire afternoon on the Alpheca Hippocrates had been telling stewards and cooks, in the course of lying and bragging, what a very wonderful master Ole Doc was.
“You multi-finned monkey! If you’ve thrown out those cuffs I’ll . . . I’ll throw enough water on you to make a plaster demon of you! Tie into those cabinets and locate them! On the double!”
Hippocrates hurriedly began to make pieces of paper and bits of correspondence fly out of the file case in a most realistic fashion. He was innately neat, Hippocrates. He kept things in order. And like most neat people he kept things in order in very much his own way.
The items in question he knew very well. Ole Doc Methuselah possessed a horrible habit of writing on the cuffs of his golden shirts whenever he thought of a calculation of great intricacy and these cuffs Hippocrates tore off and filed. Now for some three hundred and twenty years he had been tearing off cuffs and filing cuffs and never once had Ole Doc so much as whispered that he ever wanted to look at an old one or consult the data so compiled, working always from a magnificent memory. And these particular items had piled up, got moldy, spilled over and been crammed back a thousand times without ever once serving a purpose.
Hippocrates, two weeks ago, had burned the entire lot.
“Look for them, you gypsum idiot!” roared Ole Doc.
“Yes, master! I’m looking, master. I’m looking everyplace, master!” And the filing cases and the office became a snowfall of disturbed papers, old orders, report copies, pictures of actresses, and autographed intimate shots of empresses and queens. “I’m looking, master!”
Nervously Hippocrates wondered how long he could keep up this pretense. He had a phonograph-recordwise mind which, while wonderful in copying past situations, was not very good at inventing new ones. “They can’t be very far, master. Where did you lose them?”
Ole Doc snapped up his head out of a liquor cabinet currently in search and glared hard enough to drill holes in plate. “Where did I l
ose them? Where did I lose them? If I knew that—”
“Just which cuff did you want?” said Hippocrates, antennae waving hopefully.
“The sonic notes, you featherbrained fop! The sonic notes I made two years ago last Marzo. The equations! I wrote them on my cuff and I tore it off and I distinctly recall giving it—” Ole Doc looked at the wreck of the file case in sudden understanding.
“Hippocrates, what have you done with those cuffs?”
“Me? Why, master! I—”
“Don’t lie to me! What have you done with them?”
Hippocrates shrank away from Ole Doc, demonstrating the force of mind over gypsum, for Hippocrates, weighing five hundred kilos in his meter of height, could bend inch iron plates with any one of his four hands. “I didn’t mean any harm. I . . . I was housecleaning. This ship, the poor Morgue, the poor, poor Morgue! It isn’t as if she was human. And she all cluttered up with junk, junk, junk and I—” He gulped and plunged. “I burned them!” He shut his eyes convulsively and kept them shut.
The deck plates of the UMS portable hospital, however, did not open and engorge him and the planet on which they were resting did not fall in halves. After several seconds of terrible tension, Hippocrates risked opening his eyes. Instantly he went down on his knees.
Ole Doc was slumped in a chair, his head in his hands, a reasonable facsimile of intense despair.
“Don’t sell me,” begged Hippocrates. “Don’t sell me, master. I won’t ever burn anything again. I’ll let the whole place fill up with anything you want to bring aboard. Anything! Even women, master. Even women!!”
Ole Doc didn’t look up and Hippocrates wandered in his gaze, finally rising and tottering to his galley. He looked at it as one who sees home for the last time. A phrase rose out of Tales of the Early Space Pioneers of a man saying goodbye to his trusty griffin, and Hippocrates, sniffling dangerously—because it might soften his upper lip—said, “Goodbye, old pal. Many the day we’ve fit through thick and thin, agin horrible and disastrous odds, battlin’ our way to glory. And now we got to part—”
His eyes caught on a bottle of ink and he took a long swig of it. Instantly he felt better. His spirits rose up to a point where he felt he might make a final appeal.
“Why,” he said to his master, “you want cuff?”
Ole Doc dropped the dispatch he had been clutching, and Hippocrates retrieved it.
OLE DOC METHUSELAH
MORGUE
HUB CITY
GALAXY16
WILHELM GIOTINI YESTERDAY ENDOWED UNIVERSAL MEDICAL SOCIETY WITH ALL REVENUE FROM HIS LANDS IN FOMALHAUT SYSTEM. PROCEED AND SECURE. FOMALHAUT ADVISED YOUR FULL AUTHORITY TO ACCEPT PROVISIONS OF GIOTINI WILL.
THORPE
ADJUTANT
CENTER
Appended to this was a second dispatch:
DISTRESS OPERATIONAL PRIORITY
ANY SOLDIER OF LIGHT ANYWHERE
FOMALHAUT FULL QUARANTINE. UNIDENTIFIED DISEASE BEG AID AND ASSISTANCE.
LEBEL
GENERALISSIMO
COMMANDING
And yet a third message:
OLE DOC METHUSELAH
MORGUE
HUB CITY
GALAXY 16
YOUR INFORMATION, WILHELM GIOTINI EXPIRED EARTHDAY UT OF MIND CONGESTION, FOLLOWING ATTACK BY ASSASSIN USING SONIC WEAPON. AS REQUESTED, BODY PRESERVED PENDING YOUR ARRIVAL FOMALHAUT.
LEBEL
GENERALISSIMO
COMMANDING
Hippocrates finished reading and memorizing—these were the same to him—and was about to comment when he found Ole Doc was not there. The next instant the automatic locks clanged shut on the hatches, the alarm said quietly, “Steady all. Take off,” and the Morgue stood on her tail and went away from there, leaving Hippocrates in a very sorry mess of torn papers and photographs, still clutching the dispatches.
It was not a very cheerful voyage. In the first place, Ole Doc stressed to three Gs above the ship’s gravitic cancelators and put the sturdy old vessel into an advance twice over what her force field fenders could be expected to tolerate in case of space dust. All this made food hard to prepare, bent instruments and gauges in the operating room, pulled down a whole closet full of clothing by breaking the hold-up bar, and generally spoiled space travel for the little slave.
Not one word during the next two weeks did Ole Doc breathe to Hippocrates and that, when only two beings are aboard, is something of a strain on anybody’s nerves.
However, the Universal Medical Society had long since made provisions against space-neurasthenia by providing large libraries in natural and micro form to every one of its vessels and seeing that the books were regularly shifted. A new batch had come at Hub City and Hippocrates was able to indulge himself somewhat by reading large, thick tomes about machinery, his penchant.
He learned all about the new electronic drives for small machinery, went avidly through the latest ten-place log table—finding eighteen errors—studied a thousand-page report on medical force fields, finished up two novels about pirates and reviewed the latest encyclopedia of medicine, which was only fifteen volumes at a thousand words shorthand per page. Thus he survived the tedium of Coventry in which he found himself and was able to look upon the planet Gasperand of Fomalhaut with some slight interest when it came spiraling up, green and pearl and gold, to meet them.
Hippocrates got out his blasters, recalled the legal import of their visit and packed a law encyclopedia on wills in the medical kit, and was waiting at the lock when Ole Doc landed.
Ole Doc came up, belted and caped, and reached out his hand for the kit. Hippocrates instinctively withdrew it.
“I will carry it,” said Hippocrates, put out.
“Henceforward,” said Ole Doc, “you won’t have to carry anything.” He pulled from his belt a big legal document, complete with UMS seals, and thrust it at Hippocrates. “You are free.”
Hippocrates looked dazedly at the paper and read “Manumitting Declaration” across its head. He backed up again.
“Take it!” said Ole Doc. “You are perfectly and completely free. You know very well that the UMS does not approve of slaves. Ten thousand dollars is pinned to this document. I think that—”
“You can’t free me!” cried Hippocrates. “I won’t have it! You don’t dare! The last dozen-dozen times you tried to do it—”
“This time I am serious,” said Ole Doc. “Take this! It makes you a full citizen of the Confederated Galaxies, gives you the right to own property—”
“You can’t do this to me!” said Hippocrates. His mind was not very long on imagination and it was being ransacked just now for a good, telling excuse. “I . . . I have to be restored to my home planet. There is nothing here for me to eat—”
“Those alibis won’t do,” said Ole Doc. “Slavery is frowned upon. You were never bought to serve me in the first place and you know it. I purchased you for observation of metabolism only. You’ve tricked me. I don’t care how many times I have threatened to do it and failed. This time I really mean it!”
He took the kit, threw the manumission on the table and stepped through the air lock.
Hippocrates looked disconsolately after his Soldier of Light. A deep sigh came from his gypsum depths. His antennae wilted slowly. He turned despondently to wander toward his quarters, conscious of how empty were his footsteps in this hollow and deserted ship.
Ole Doc paused for an instant at the lock as a swimmer might do before he plunges into a cold pool. The port was thronged by more than a reception committee for him. Several passenger tramps stood on their rusty tails engorging long queues of refugee passengers and even at this distance it was plain that those who wanted to leave this place were frightened. The lines pushed and hauled and now and then some hysterical individual went howling up to the front to beg for immediate embarkation. The place was well beyond panic.
Beside the Morgue stood a car and a military group which, with several civilians, made a compact crowd o
f welcome for the Soldier of Light. In the front was a generalissimo.
Lebel was a big fellow with a big mustache and a big black mane. He had a big staff that wore big medals and waiting for him was a big bullet-ray-germ-proof car.
“Friend!” said Lebel. “Come with me! We need you! Panic engulfs us! There are twenty-five thousand dead. Everyone is deserting the system! We are in terrible condition! In a few days no one will remain in all Fomalhaut!”
Ole Doc was almost swept up and kissed before he recalled the customs in this part of the Galaxy. He twisted expertly away to shake an offered hand. Generally he didn’t shake hands but it was better than getting buried in a mustache. The crowd was surging toward him, cheering and pleading. Lebel took Ole Doc by the hand and got him into the refuge of the car. It was a usual sort of reception. The UMS was so very old, so very feared and respected, and its members so seldom seen in the flesh that welcoming parties were sometimes the most dangerous portion of the work.
“We have a disease!” said Lebel. “You must cure it! Ah, what a disease. A terrible thing! People die.”
If he expected a Soldier of Light to instantly vibrate with interest, he did not know his people. Ole Doc, approaching his thousandth birthday, had probably killed more germs than there were planets in the Universe, and he hoped to live to kill at least as many more. He leaned back, folded his cape across his knees and looked at the scenery.
“It came on suddenly. First we thought it was something new. Then we thought we had seen it before. Then we didn’t know. The doctors all gave it up and we almost deserted everything when somebody thought of the Soldiers of Light. ‘Lebel!’ I said. ‘It is my duty to contact the Soldiers of Light.’ So I did. It is terrible.”
Ole Doc restrained a yawn. “I was coming here anyway. Your Wilhelm Giotini left the revenue of this system to the UMS.”
“So I heard. But I thought that would mean a lawyer coming.”
“We don’t have any lawyers,” said Ole Doc, easing his holstered blaster around into sight.
Ole Doc Methuselah Page 17
