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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..24aced5 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50774 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50774) diff --git a/old/50774-h.zip b/old/50774-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 740ddab..0000000 --- a/old/50774-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/50774-h/50774-h.htm b/old/50774-h/50774-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 6931f94..0000000 --- a/old/50774-h/50774-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2001 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Contagion, by Katherine Maclean. - </title> - - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1, .ph2, .ph3, .ph4 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: xx-large; margin: .67em auto; } -.ph2 { font-size: x-large; margin: .75em auto; } -.ph3 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } -.ph4 { font-size: medium; margin: 1.12em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Contagion, by Katherine MacLean - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Contagion - -Author: Katherine MacLean - -Release Date: December 27, 2015 [EBook #50774] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTAGION *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>CONTAGION</h1> - -<p>By KATHERINE MacLEAN</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="500" height="367" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph3">Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a<br /> -thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food,<br /> -perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The -forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a -wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf -shadows.</p> - -<p>The hunt party of the <i>Explorer</i> filed along the narrow trail, guns -ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries -of strange birds.</p> - -<p>A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had -been fired.</p> - -<p>"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her -voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the -forest.</p> - -<p>"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice -in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton -standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked -like a duck."</p> - -<p>"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into -sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the -bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said -soberly.</p> - -<p>"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, -June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still -love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and -touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely -visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a -greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship <i>Explorer</i> -towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of -the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and -clouds, and they longed to be outside.</p> - -<p>But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, -for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be -like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to -be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies -had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships -which had touched on some plague planet.</p> - -<p>The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight -spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.</p> - -<p>The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the -alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the -copper and purple shadows.</p> - -<p>They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker -browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her -someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole -in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.</p> - -<p>This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, -humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller -than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood -breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung -a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.</p> - -<p>They lowered their guns.</p> - -<p>"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he -reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be -heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"</p> - -<p>The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest -sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of -evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be -wearing a three day growth of red stubble.</p> - -<p>Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to -Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."</p> - -<p>"English?" gasped June.</p> - -<p>"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to -you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass -twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the -tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles -of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already -settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not -on the map."</p> - -<p>"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We -have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."</p> - -<p>Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name -is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and -George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."</p> - -<p>"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually. -"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos -before."</p> - -<p>The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June -could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded -steel.</p> - -<p>"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.</p> - -<p>He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only -one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city -planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with -the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked -startlingly.</p> - -<p>"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.</p> - -<p>"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the -faces of the group. "So varied."</p> - -<p>They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.</p> - -<p>"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting -different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague -wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to -insult them.</p> - -<p>"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.</p> - -<p>June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the -intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."</p> - -<p>She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What -should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"</p> - -<p>He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."</p> - -<p>June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own -description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, -like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly -humorous blue eyes.</p> - -<p>"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and -me?"</p> - -<p>Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin. -"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think -that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit -so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I -suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside -down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air -is breathable."</p> - -<p>"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."</p> - -<p>Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the -wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take -off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. -Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.</p> - -<p>"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two -years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead -families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all -related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way -people can look."</p> - -<p><i>Plague.</i> "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.</p> - -<p>"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting -sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to -do about it."</p> - -<p>"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for -some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.</p> - -<p>Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all -the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, -and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship -were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone -and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace -them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife -and bow.</p> - -<p>"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Any other diseases?"</p> - -<p>"Not a one."</p> - -<p>Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching -awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on -the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to -the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing -now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting -sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.</p> - -<p>The polished silver and black column of the <i>Explorer</i> seemed to rise -higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry -blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the -trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.</p> - -<p>"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.</p> - -<p>"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time -beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board -and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it -brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. -Plenty good enough."</p> - -<p>The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that -he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never -experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.</p> - -<p>Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet -of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.</p> - -<p>"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people -still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe -you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be -no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."</p> - -<p>Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and -hypodermics.</p> - -<p>"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.</p> - -<p>"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, -and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the -tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a -stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being -smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.</p> - -<p>"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid -samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the -arm."</p> - -<p>Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed -and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine -nerve surgeon on Earth.</p> - -<p>High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship -and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, -it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from -their earphones:</p> - -<p>"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He -banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could -see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.</p> - -<p>Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and -pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew -away over the odd-colored forest.</p> - -<p>"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got -through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max -dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles -without exposing them to air.</p> - -<p>"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still -carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't -show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to -wipe out a planet."</p> - -<p>"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able -to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."</p> - -<p>"Starting with me?" Pat asked.</p> - -<p>"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on -board."</p> - -<p>"More needles?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."</p> - -<p>"Rough?"</p> - -<p>"It isn't easy."</p> - -<p>A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit -decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in -glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and -compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.</p> - -<p>In the <i>Explorer</i>, stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, -was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes -so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused -chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing -could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to -the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.</p> - -<p>But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had -been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human -treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and -interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding -against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.</p> - -<p>Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and -around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall -by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered -to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given -solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic -blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being -directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized -and injected with various immunizing solutions.</p> - -<p>Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme -dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were -dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.</p> - -<p>All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of -allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped -off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a -wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....</p> - -<p>"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.</p> - -<p>Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he -asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally -get something to eat?"</p> - -<p>"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, -using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"</p> - -<p>The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled -chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go -jump in the lake?"</p> - -<p>"Are you hungry?"</p> - -<p>"No food since yesterday."</p> - -<p>"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and -hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which -made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.</p> - -<p>They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing -hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of -Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of -antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system -would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human -blood cells, and fight back against them violently.</p> - -<p>One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, -so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human -cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.</p> - -<p>"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.</p> - -<p>"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.</p> - -<p>On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a -viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the -horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther -away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green -where there were fields.</p> - -<p>Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been -there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like -Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to -let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that -patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through -it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and -began circling lazily.</p> - -<p>"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway -colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living -here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."</p> - -<p>"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with -excitement.</p> - -<p>"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be -out in twenty minutes."</p> - -<p>"May I go see him?"</p> - -<p>"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets -out. Tell him we sent you."</p> - -<p>"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a -fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half -of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, -the sound of unfamiliar voices.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich -subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria -was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship -had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had -the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound -absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each -table where people leisurely ate and talked.</p> - -<p>They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June -could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of -conversation.</p> - -<p>"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. -He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."</p> - -<p>The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three -heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in -the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose -tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four -different desserts, and assorted beverages.</p> - -<p>Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a -table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are -saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, -for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"</p> - -<p>Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the -shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."</p> - -<p>"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out -and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have -you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.</p> - -<p>A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly -talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, -alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even -larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward -their table.</p> - -<p>"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled -woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you <i>really</i> swim across a -river to come here?"</p> - -<p>Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all -directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with -us. Let me help choose your tray."</p> - -<p>Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist -and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting -wild animals with a bow and arrow.</p> - -<p>"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."</p> - -<p>June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and -escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be -claiming the hero of the hour.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost -voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He -ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked -around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said -nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.</p> - -<p>"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we -will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and -cocktail bars that used to be inside."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to -the music, and tried to locate its source.</p> - -<p>"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.</p> - -<p>They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a -day.</p> - -<p>Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, -and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave -of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about -crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm -animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth -seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.</p> - -<p>There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and -drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think -of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed -that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center -of interest.</p> - -<p>Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.</p> - -<p>June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions -more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his -jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, -eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most -chimingly of all.</p> - -<p>June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a -man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment -more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening -to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked -almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had -forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly -aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's -end of the table.</p> - -<p>"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting -another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he -added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.</p> - -<p>"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat -Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man -she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. -They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their -lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet -the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of -guilt.</p> - -<p>Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the -mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a -question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like -you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He -glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of -this. It sounds medical to me."</p> - -<p>Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy. -"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."</p> - -<p>Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You -hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of -those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."</p> - -<p>"Why?" Len was aggrieved.</p> - -<p>"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different -amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the -carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until -you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then -you'd starve to death on a full stomach."</p> - -<p>Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, -but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one -side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.</p> - -<p>"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people -had no doctors."</p> - -<p>"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of -the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality -and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle -of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the -face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided -that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did -it all right.'"</p> - -<p>"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.</p> - -<p>"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the -explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to -Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and -hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells -have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, -hunting, eating and reproducing alone.</p> - -<p>Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. -He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand -generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien -indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the -cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.</p> - -<p>"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution -in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where -they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he -had taken them from."</p> - -<p>"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.</p> - -<p>"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about -it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering -ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his -neck at the age of eighty."</p> - -<p>"A character," Max said.</p> - -<p>Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers -didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It -worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were -still eating out of hydroponics tanks."</p> - -<p>"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank -culture expert. There's a job for you."</p> - -<p>"Uh-<i>uh</i>!" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. -Human cell control—right up your alley."</p> - -<p>"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be -able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it -just for the taste."</p> - -<p>Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test -hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry -the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were -injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We -can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they -object?"</p> - -<p>"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for -safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."</p> - -<p>The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the -hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle -with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before -returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on -the hour or run the risk of disease.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a -mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their -mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." -They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over -to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.</p> - -<p>Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; -the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he -entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a -hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three -were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but -recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive -and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the -attack.</p> - -<p>June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. -They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to -dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose -of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was -hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.</p> - -<p>"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. -Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. -Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some -temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.</p> - -<p>June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her -field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with -laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, -then abruptly lightened.</p> - -<p>Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous -Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. -It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon -and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous -vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero -out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.</p> - -<p>She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join -them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual -lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.</p> - -<p>"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they -passed he lightly touched her arm.</p> - -<p>"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, -and knew that he had heard.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>That night she had a nightmare. She was running down a long corridor -looking for Max, but every man she came to was a big bronze man with -red hair and bright blue eyes who grinned at her.</p> - -<p>The pink hamster! She woke suddenly, feeling as if alarm bells had been -ringing, and listened carefully, but there was no sound. She had had a -nightmare, she told herself, but alarm bells were still ringing in her -unconscious. Something was wrong.</p> - -<p>Lying still and trying to preserve the images, she groped for a -meaning, but the mood faded under the cold touch of reason. Damn -intuitive thinking! A pink hamster! Why did the unconscious have to be -so vague? She fell asleep again and forgot.</p> - -<p>They had lunch with Pat Mead that day, and after it was over Pat -delayed June with a hand on her shoulder and looked down at her for a -moment. "I want you, June," he said and then turned away, answering the -hails of a party at another table as if he had not spoken. She stood -shaken, and then walked to the door where Max waited.</p> - -<p>She was particularly affectionate with Max the rest of the day, and it -pleased him. He would not have been if he had known why. She tried to -forget Pat's blunt statement.</p> - -<p>June was in the laboratory with Max, watching the growth of a small -tank culture of the alien protoplasm from a Minos weed, and listening -to Len Marlow pour out his troubles.</p> - -<p>"And Elsie tags around after that big goof all day, listening to his -stories. And then she tells me I'm just jealous, I'm imagining things!" -He passed his hand across his eyes. "I came away from Earth to be with -Elsie.... I'm getting a headache. Look, can't you persuade Pat to cut -it out, June? You and Max are his friends."</p> - -<p>"Here, have an aspirin," June said. "We'll see what we can do."</p> - -<p>"Thanks." Len picked up his tank culture and went out, not at all -cheered.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Max sat brooding over the dials and meters at his end of the -laboratory, apparently sunk in thought. When Len had gone, he spoke -almost harshly.</p> - -<p>"Why encourage the guy? Why let him hope?"</p> - -<p>"Found out anything about the differences in protoplasm?" she evaded.</p> - -<p>"Why let him kid himself? What chance has he got against that hunk of -muscle and smooth talk?"</p> - -<p>"But Pat isn't after Elsie," she protested.</p> - -<p>"Every scatter-brained woman on this ship is trailing after Pat with -her tongue hanging out. Brant St. Clair is in the bar right now. -He doesn't say what he is drinking about, but do you think Pat is -resisting all these women crowding down on him?"</p> - -<p>"There are other things besides looks and charm," she said, grimly -trying to concentrate on a slide under her binocular microscope.</p> - -<p>"Yeah, and whatever they are, Pat has them, too. Who's more competent -to support a woman and a family on a frontier planet than a handsome -bruiser who was born here?"</p> - -<p>"I meant," June spun around on her stool with unexpected passion, -"there is old friendship, and there's fondness, and memories, and -loyalty!" She was half shouting.</p> - -<p>"They're not worth much on the second-hand market," Max said. He was -sitting slumped on his lab stool, looking dully at his dials. "Now -<i>I'm</i> getting a headache!" He smiled ruefully. "No kidding, a real -headache. And over other people's troubles yet!"</p> - -<p>Other people's troubles.... She got up and wandered out into the long -curving halls. "I want you June," Pat's voice repeated in her mind. -Why did the man have to be so overpoweringly attractive, so glaring a -contrast to Max? Why couldn't the universe manage to run on without -generating troublesome love triangles?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She walked up the curving ramps to the dining hall where they had eaten -and drunk and talked yesterday. It was empty except for one couple -talking forehead to forehead over cold coffee.</p> - -<p>She turned and wandered down the long easy spiral of corridor to -the pharmacy and dispensary. It was empty. George was probably in -the test lab next door, where he could hear if he was wanted. The -automatic vendor of harmless euphorics, stimulants and opiates stood -in the corner, brightly decorated in pastel abstract designs, with its -automatic tabulator graph glowing above it.</p> - -<p>Max had a headache, she remembered. She recorded her thumbprint in the -machine and pushed the plunger for a box of aspirins, trying to focus -her attention on the problem of adapting the people of the ship to -the planet Minos. An aquarium tank with a faint solution of histamine -would be enough to convert a piece of human skin into a community of -voracious active phagocytes individually seeking something to devour, -but could they eat enough to live away from the rich sustaining plasma -of human blood?</p> - -<p>After the aspirins, she pushed another plunger for something for -herself. Then she stood looking at it, a small box with three pills in -her hand—Theobromine, a heart strengthener and a confidence-giving -euphoric all in one, something to steady shaky nerves. She had used it -before only in emergency. She extended a hand and looked at it. It was -trembling. Damn triangles!</p> - -<p>While she was looking at her hand there was a click from the automatic -drug vendor. It summed the morning use of each drug in the vendors -throughout the ship, and recorded it in a neat addition to the end of -each graph line. For a moment she could not find the green line for -anodynes and the red line for stimulants, and then she saw that they -went almost straight up.</p> - -<p>There were too many being used—far too many to be explained by -jealousy or psychosomatic peevishness. This was an epidemic, and only -one disease was possible!</p> - -<p>The disinfecting of Pat had not succeeded. Nucleocat Cureall, killer of -all infections, had not cured! Pat had brought melting sickness into -the ship with him!</p> - -<p>Who had it?</p> - -<p>The drugs vendor glowed cheerfully, uncommunicative. She opened a -panel in its side and looked in on restless interlacing cogs, and on -the inside of the door saw printed some directions.... "To remove or -examine records before reaching end of the reel—"</p> - -<p>After a few fumbling minutes she had the answer. In the cafeteria at -breakfast and lunch, thirty-eight men out of the forty-eight aboard -ship had taken more than his norm of stimulant. Twenty-one had taken -aspirin as well. The only woman who had made an unusual purchase was -herself!</p> - -<p>She remembered the hamsters that had thrown off the infection with a -short sharp fever, and checked back in the records to the day before. -There was a short rise in aspirin sales to women at late afternoon. The -women were safe.</p> - -<p>It was the men who had melting sickness!</p> - -<p>Melting sickness killed in hours, according to Pat Mead. How long had -the men been sick?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As she was leaving, Jerry came into the pharmacy, recorded his -thumbprint and took a box of aspirin from the machine.</p> - -<p>She felt all right. Self-control was working well and it was pleasant -still to walk down the corridor smiling at the people who passed. -She took the emergency elevator to the control room and showed her -credentials to the technician on watch.</p> - -<p>"Medical Emergency." At a small control panel in the corner was a large -red button, precisely labeled. She considered it and picked up the -control room phone. This was the hard part, telling someone, especially -someone who had it—Max.</p> - -<p>She dialed, and when the click on the end of the line showed he had -picked the phone up, she told Max what she had seen.</p> - -<p>"No women, just the men," he repeated. "That right?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Probably it's chemically alien, inhibited by one of the female sex -hormones. We'll try sex hormone shots, if we have to. Where are you -calling from?"</p> - -<p>She told him.</p> - -<p>"That's right. Give Nucleocat Cureall another chance. It might work -this time. Push that button."</p> - -<p>She went to the panel and pushed the large red button. Through the -long height of the <i>Explorer</i>, bells woke to life and began to ring -in frightened clangor, emergency doors thumped shut, mechanical -apparatus hummed into life and canned voices began to give rapid urgent -directions.</p> - -<p>A plague had come.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She obeyed the mechanical orders, went out into the hall and walked in -line with the others. The captain walked ahead of her and the gorgeous -Shelia Davenport fell into step beside her. "I look like a positive hag -this morning. Does that mean I'm sick? Are we all sick?"</p> - -<p>June shrugged, unwilling to say what she knew.</p> - -<p>Others came out of all rooms into the corridor, thickening the line. -They could hear each room lock as the last person left it, and then, -faintly, the hiss of disinfectant spray. Behind them, on the heels of -the last person in line, segments of the ship slammed off and began to -hiss.</p> - -<p>They wound down the spiral corridor until they reached the medical -treatment section again, and there they waited in line.</p> - -<p>"It won't scar my arms, will it?" asked Shelia apprehensively, -glancing at her smooth, lovely arms.</p> - -<p>The mechanical voice said, "Next. Step inside, please, and stand clear -of the door."</p> - -<p>"Not a bit," June reassured Shelia, and stepped into the cubicle.</p> - -<p>Inside, she was directed from cubicle to cubicle and given the usual -buffeting by sprays and radiation, had blood samples taken and was -injected with Nucleocat and a series of other protectives. At last she -was directed through another door into a tiny cubicle with a chair.</p> - -<p>"You are to wait here," commanded the recorded voice metallically. "In -twenty minutes the door will unlock and you may then leave. All people -now treated may visit all parts of the ship which have been protected. -It is forbidden to visit any quarantined or unsterile part of the ship -without permission from the medical officers."</p> - -<p>Presently the door unlocked and she emerged into bright lights again, -feeling slightly battered.</p> - -<p>She was in the clinic. A few men sat on the edge of beds and looked -sick. One was lying down. Brant and Bess St. Clair sat near each other, -not speaking.</p> - -<p>Approaching her was George Barton, reading a thermometer with a puzzled -expression.</p> - -<p>"What is it, George?" she asked anxiously.</p> - -<p>"Some of the women have slight fever, but it's going down. None of the -fellows have any—but their white count is way up, their red count is -way down, and they look sick to me."</p> - -<p>She approached St. Clair. His usually ruddy cheeks were pale, his pulse -was light and too fast, and his skin felt clammy. "How's the headache? -Did the Nucleocat treatment help?"</p> - -<p>"I feel worse, if anything."</p> - -<p>"Better set up beds," she told George. "Get everyone back into the -clinic."</p> - -<p>"We're doing that," George assured her. "That's what Hal is doing."</p> - -<p>She went back to the laboratory. Max was pacing up and down, absently -running his hands through his black hair until it stood straight up. He -stopped when he saw her face, and scowled thoughtfully. "They are still -sick?" It was more a statement than a question.</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>"The Cureall didn't cure this time," he muttered. "That leaves it up -to us. We have melting sickness and according to Pat and the hamsters, -that leaves us less than a day to find out what it is and learn how to -stop it."</p> - -<p>Suddenly an idea for another test struck him and he moved to the work -table to set it up. He worked rapidly, with an occasional uncoordinated -movement betraying his usual efficiency.</p> - -<p>It was strange to see Max troubled and afraid.</p> - -<p>She put on a laboratory smock and began to work. She worked in -silence. The mechanicals had failed. Hal and George Barton were busy -staving off death from the weaker cases and trying to gain time for Max -and her to work. The problem of the plague had to be solved by the two -of them alone. It was in their hands.</p> - -<p>Another test, no results. Another test, no results. Max's hands were -shaking and he stopped a moment to take stimulants.</p> - -<p>She went into the ward for a moment, found Bess and warned her quietly -to tell the other women to be ready to take over if the men became too -sick to go on. "But tell them calmly. We don't want to frighten the -men." She lingered in the ward long enough to see the word spread among -the women in a widening wave of paler faces and compressed lips; then -she went back to the laboratory.</p> - -<p>Another test. There was no sign of a micro-organism in anyone's blood, -merely a growing horde of leucocytes and phagocytes, prowling as if -mobilized to repel invasion.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Len Marlow was wheeled in unconscious, with Hal Barton's written -comments and conclusions pinned to the blanket.</p> - -<p>"I don't feel so well myself," the assistant complained. "The air feels -thick. I can't breathe."</p> - -<p>June saw that his lips were blue. "Oxygen short," she told Max.</p> - -<p>"Low red corpuscle count," Max answered. "Look into a drop and see -what's going on. Use mine; I feel the same way he does." She took two -drops of Max's blood. The count was low, falling too fast.</p> - -<p>Breathing is useless without the proper minimum of red corpuscles in -the blood. People below that minimum die of asphyxiation although their -lungs are full of pure air. The red corpuscle count was falling too -fast. The time she and Max had to work in was too short.</p> - -<p>"Pump some more CO<sub>2</sub> into the air system," Max said urgently over the -phone. "Get some into the men's end of the ward."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She looked through the microscope at the live sample of blood. It was a -dark clear field and bright moving things spun and swirled through it, -but she could see nothing that did not belong there.</p> - -<p>"Hal," Max called over the general speaker system, "cut the other -treatments, check for accelerating anemia. Treat it like monoxide -poisoning—CO<sub>2</sub> and oxygen."</p> - -<p>She reached into a cupboard under the work table, located two cylinders -of oxygen, cracked the valves and handed one to Max and one to the -assistant. Some of the bluish tint left the assistant's face as he -breathed and he went over to the patient with reawakened concern.</p> - -<p>"Not breathing, Doc!"</p> - -<p>Max was working at the desk, muttering equations of hemoglobin -catalysis.</p> - -<p>"Len's gone, Doc," the assistant said more loudly.</p> - -<p>"Artificial respiration and get him into a regeneration tank," said -June, not moving from the microscope. "Hurry! Hal will show you how. -The oxidation and mechanical heart action in the tank will keep him -going. Put anyone in a tank who seems to be dying. Get some women to -help you. Give them Hal's instructions."</p> - -<p>The tanks were ordinarily used to suspend animation in a nutrient bath -during the regrowth of any diseased organ. It could preserve life in -an almost totally destroyed body during the usual disintegration and -regrowth treatments for cancer and old age, and it could encourage -healing as destruction continued ... but they could not prevent -ultimate death as long as the disease was not conquered.</p> - -<p>The drop of blood in June's microscope was a great, dark field, and in -the foreground, brought to gargantuan solidity by the stereo effect, -drifted neat saucer shapes of red blood cells. They turned end for end, -floating by the humped misty mass of a leucocyte which was crawling on -the cover glass. There were not enough red corpuscles, and she felt -that they grew fewer as she watched.</p> - -<p>She fixed her eye on one, not blinking in fear that she would miss what -might happen. It was a tidy red button, and it spun as it drifted, the -current moving it aside in a curve as it passed by the leucocyte.</p> - -<p>Then, abruptly, the cell vanished.</p> - -<p>June stared numbly at the place where it had been.</p> - -<p>Behind her, Max was calling over the speaker system again: "Dr. Stark -speaking. Any technician who knows anything about the life tanks, start -bringing more out of storage and set them up. Emergency."</p> - -<p>"We may need forty-seven," June said quietly.</p> - -<p>"We may need forty-seven," Max repeated to the ship in general. His -voice did not falter. "Set them up along the corridor. Hook them in on -extension lines."</p> - -<p>His voice filtered back from the empty floors above in a series of dim -echoes. What he had said meant that every man on board might be on the -point of heart stoppage.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>June looked blindly through the binocular microscope, trying to think. -Out of the corner of her eyes she could see that Max was wavering and -breathing more and more frequently of the pure, cold, burning oxygen of -the cylinders. In the microscope she could see that there were fewer -red cells left alive in the drop of his blood. The rate of fall was -accelerating.</p> - -<p>She didn't have to glance at Max to know how he would look—skin pale, -black eyebrows and keen brown eyes slightly squinted in thought, a -faint ironical grin twisting the bluing lips. Intelligent, thin, -sensitive, his face was part of her mind. It was inconceivable that -Max could die. He couldn't die. He couldn't leave her alone.</p> - -<p>She forced her mind back to the problem. All the men of the <i>Explorer</i> -were at the same point, wherever they were.</p> - -<p>Moving to Max's desk, she spoke into the intercom system: "Bess, send -a couple of women to look through the ship, room by room, with a -stretcher. Make sure all the men are down here." She remembered Reno. -"Sparks, heard anything from Reno? Is he back?"</p> - -<p>Sparks replied weakly after a lag. "The last I heard from Reno was a -call this morning. He was raving about mirrors, and Pat Mead's folks -not being real people, just carbon copies, and claiming he was crazy; -and I should send him the psychiatrist. I thought he was kidding. He -didn't call back."</p> - -<p>"Thanks, Sparks." Reno was lost.</p> - -<p>Max dialed and spoke to the bridge over the phone. "Are you okay up -there? Forget about engineering controls. Drop everything and head for -the tanks while you can still walk."</p> - -<p>June went back to the work table and whispered into her own phone. -"Bess, send up a stretcher for Max. He looks pretty bad."</p> - -<p>There had to be a solution. The life tanks could sustain life in a -damaged body, encouraging it to regrow more rapidly, but they merely -slowed death as long as the disease was not checked. The postponement -could not last long, for destruction could go on steadily in the tanks -until the nutritive solution would hold no life except the triumphant -microscopic killers that caused melting sickness.</p> - -<p>There were very few red blood corpuscles in the microscope field now, -incredibly few. She tipped the microscope and they began to drift, -spinning slowly. A lone corpuscle floated through the center. She -watched it as the current swept it in an arc past the dim off-focus -bulk of the leucocyte. There was a sweep of motion and it vanished.</p> - -<p>For a moment it meant nothing to her; then she lifted her head from -the microscope and looked around. Max sat at his desk, head in hand, -his rumpled short black hair sticking out between his fingers at odd -angles. A pencil and a pad scrawled with formulas lay on the desk -before him. She could see his concentration in the rigid set of his -shoulders. He was still thinking; he had not given up.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Max, I just saw a leucocyte grab a red blood corpuscle. It was -unbelievably fast."</p> - -<p>"Leukemia," muttered Max without moving. "Galloping leukemia yet! That -comes under the heading of cancer. Well, that's part of the answer. It -might be all we need." He grinned feebly and reached for the speaker -set. "Anybody still on his feet in there?" he muttered into it, and -the question was amplified to a booming voice throughout the ship. -"Hal, are you still going? Look, Hal, change all the dials, change the -dials, set them to deep melt and regeneration. One week. This is like -leukemia. Got it? This is like leukemia."</p> - -<p>June rose. It was time for her to take over the job. She leaned across -his desk and spoke into the speaker system. "Doctor Walton talking," -she said. "This is to the women. Don't let any of the men work any -more; they'll kill themselves. See that they all go into the tanks -right away. Set the tank dials for deep regeneration. You can see how -from the ones that are set."</p> - -<p>Two exhausted and frightened women clattered in the doorway with a -stretcher. Their hands were scratched and oily from helping to set up -tanks.</p> - -<p>"That order includes you," she told Max sternly and caught him as he -swayed.</p> - -<p>Max saw the stretcher bearers and struggled upright. "Ten more -minutes," he said clearly. "Might think of an idea. Something not right -in this setup. I have to figure how to prevent a relapse, how the thing -started."</p> - -<p>He knew more bacteriology than she did; she had to help him think. She -motioned the bearers to wait, fixed a breathing mask for Max from a -cylinder of CO<sub>2</sub> and the opened one of oxygen. Max went back to his -desk.</p> - -<p>She walked up and down, trying to think, remembering the hamsters. The -melting sickness, it was called. Melting. She struggled with an impulse -to open a tank which held one of the men. She wanted to look in, see if -that would explain the name.</p> - -<p>Melting Sickness....</p> - -<p>Footsteps came and Pat Mead stood uncertainly in the doorway. Tall, -handsome, rugged, a pioneer. "Anything I can do?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She barely looked at him. "You can stay out of our way. We're busy."</p> - -<p>"I'd like to help," he said.</p> - -<p>"Very funny." She was vicious, enjoying the whip of her words. "Every -man is dying because you're a carrier, and you want to help."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He stood nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. "A guinea pig, -maybe. I'm immune. All the Meads are."</p> - -<p>"Go away." God, why couldn't she think? What makes a Mead immune?</p> - -<p>"Aw, let 'im alone," Max muttered. "Pat hasn't done anything." He went -waveringly to the microscope, took a tiny sliver from his finger, -suspended it in a slide and slipped it under the lens with detached -habitual dexterity. "Something funny going on," he said to June. -"Symptoms don't feel right."</p> - -<p>After a moment he straightened and motioned for her to look. -"Leucocytes, phagocytes—" He was bewildered. "My own—"</p> - -<p>She looked in, and then looked back at Pat in a growing wave of -horror. "They're not your own, Max!" she whispered.</p> - -<p>Max rested a hand on the table to brace himself, put his eye to the -microscope, and looked again. June knew what he saw. Phagocytes, -leucocytes, attacking and devouring his tissues in a growing incredible -horde, multiplying insanely.</p> - -<p><i>Not his phagocytes! Pat Mead's!</i> The Meads' evolved cells had learned -too much. They were contagious. And not Pat Mead's.... How much alike -<i>were</i> the Meads?... Mead cells contagious from one to another, not -a disease attacking or being fought, but acting as normal leucocytes -in whatever body they were in! The leucocytes of tall, red-headed -people, finding no strangeness in the bloodstream of any of the tall, -red-headed people. No strangeness.... A toti-potent leucocyte finding -its way into cellular wombs.</p> - -<p>The womblike life tanks. For the men of the <i>Explorer</i>, a week's cure -with deep melting to de-differentiate the leucocytes and turn them back -to normal tissue, then regrowth and reforming from the cells that were -there. From the cells that <i>were</i> there. <i>From the cells that were -there....</i></p> - -<p>"Pat—"</p> - -<p>"I know." Pat began to laugh, his face twisted with sudden -understanding. "I understand. I get it. I'm a contagious personality. -That's funny, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>Max rose suddenly from the microscope and lurched toward him, fists -clenched. Pat caught him as he fell, and the bewildered stretcher -bearers carried him out to the tanks.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>For a week June tended the tanks. The other women volunteered to help, -but she refused. She said nothing, hoping her guess would not be true.</p> - -<p>"Is everything all right?" Elsie asked her anxiously. "How is Jerry -coming along?" Elsie looked haggard and worn, like all the women, from -doing the work that the men had always done.</p> - -<p>"He's fine," June said tonelessly, shutting tight the door of the tank -room. "They're all fine."</p> - -<p>"That's good," Elsie said, but she looked more frightened than before.</p> - -<p>June firmly locked the tank room door and the girl went away.</p> - -<p>The other women had been listening, and now they wandered back to -their jobs, unsatisfied by June's answer, but not daring to ask for -the actual truth. They were there whenever June went into the tank -room, and they were still there—or relieved by others; June was -not sure—when she came out. And always some one of them asked the -unvarying question for all the others, and June gave the unvarying -answer. But she kept the key. No woman but herself knew what was going -on in the life tanks.</p> - -<p>Then the day of completion came. June told no one of the hour. She -went into the room as on the other days, locked the door behind her, -and there was the nightmare again. This time it was reality and she -wandered down a path between long rows of coffinlike tanks, calling, -"Max! Max!" silently and looking into each one as it opened.</p> - -<p>But each face she looked at was the same. Watching them dissolve and -regrow in the nutrient solution, she had only been able to guess at the -horror of what was happening. Now she knew.</p> - -<p>They were all the same lean-boned, blond-skinned face, with a -pin-feather growth of reddish down on cheeks and scalp. All -horribly—and handsomely—the same.</p> - -<p>A medical kit lay carelessly on the floor beside Max's tank. She stood -near the bag. "Max," she said, and found her throat closing. The canned -voice of the mechanical mocked her, speaking glibly about waking and -sitting up. "I'm sorry, Max...."</p> - -<p>The tall man with rugged features and bright blue eyes sat up sleepily -and lifted an eyebrow at her, and ran his hand over his red-fuzzed head -in a gesture of bewilderment.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter, June?" he asked drowsily.</p> - -<p>She gripped his arm. "Max—"</p> - -<p>He compared the relative size of his arm with her hand and said -wonderingly, "You shrank."</p> - -<p>"I know, Max. I know."</p> - -<p>He turned his head and looked at his arms and legs, pale blond arms -and legs with a down of red hair. He touched the thick left arm, -squeezed a pinch of hard flesh. "It isn't mine," he said, surprised. -"But I can feel it."</p> - -<p>Watching his face was like watching a stranger mimicking and distorting -Max's expressions. Max in fear. Max trying to understand what had -happened to him, looking around at the other men sitting up in their -tanks. Max feeling the terror that was in herself and all the men as -they stared at themselves and their friends and saw what they had -become.</p> - -<p>"We're all Pat Mead," he said harshly. "All the Meads are Pat Mead. -That's why he was surprised to see people who didn't look like himself."</p> - -<p>"Yes, Max."</p> - -<p>"Max," he repeated. "It's me, all right. The nervous system didn't -change." His new blue eyes held hers. "My love didn't, either. Did -yours? Did it, June?"</p> - -<p>"No, Max." But she couldn't know yet. She had loved Max with the thin, -ironic face, the rumpled black hair and the twisted smile that never -really hid his quick sympathy. Now he was Pat Mead. Could he also be -Max? "Of course I still love you, darling."</p> - -<p>He grinned. It was still the wry smile of Max, though fitting strangely -on the handsome new blond face. "Then it isn't so bad. It might even be -pretty good. I envied him this big, muscular body. If Pat or any of -these Meads so much as looks at you, I'm going to knock his block off. -Understand?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She laughed and couldn't stop. It wasn't that funny. But it was still -Max, trying to be unafraid, drawing on humor. Maybe the rest of the men -would also be their old selves, enough so the women would not feel that -their men were strangers.</p> - -<p>Behind her, male voices spoke characteristically. She did not have -to turn to know which was which: "This is one way to keep a guy from -stealing your girl," that was Len Marlow; "I've got to write down all -my reactions," Hal Barton; "Now I can really work that hillside vein of -metal," St. Clair. Then others complaining, swearing, laughing bitterly -at the trick that had been played on them and their flirting, tempted -women. She knew who they were. Their women would know them apart, too.</p> - -<p>"We'll go outside," Max said. "You and I. Maybe the shock won't be so -bad to the women after they see me." He paused. "You didn't tell them, -did you?"</p> - -<p>"I couldn't. I wasn't sure. I—was hoping I was wrong."</p> - -<p>She opened the door and closed it quickly. There was a small crowd on -the other side.</p> - -<p>"Hello, Pat," Elsie said uncertainly, trying to look past them into the -tank room before the door shut.</p> - -<p>"I'm not Pat, I'm Max," said the tall man with the blue eyes and the -fuzz-reddened skull. "Listen—"</p> - -<p>"Good heavens, Pat, what happened to your hair?" Shelia asked.</p> - -<p>"I'm Max," insisted the man with the handsome face and the sharp blue -eyes. "Don't you get it? I'm Max Stark. The melting sickness is Mead -cells. We caught them from Pat. They adapted us to Minos. They also -changed us all into Pat Mead."</p> - -<p>The women stared at him, at each other. They shook their heads.</p> - -<p>"They don't understand," June said. "I couldn't have if I hadn't seen -it happening, Max."</p> - -<p>"It's Pat," said Shelia, dazedly stubborn. "He shaved off his hair. -It's some kind of joke."</p> - -<p>Max shook her shoulders, glaring down at her face. "I'm Max. Max Stark. -They all look like me. Do you hear? It's funny, but it's not a joke. -Laugh for us, for God's sake!"</p> - -<p>"It's too much," said June. "They'll have to see."</p> - -<p>She opened the door and let them in. They hurried past her to the -tanks, looking at forty-six identical blond faces, beginning to call in -frightened voices:</p> - -<p>"Jerry!"</p> - -<p>"Harry!"</p> - -<p>"Lee, where are you, sweetheart—"</p> - -<p>June shut the door on the voices that were growing hysterical, the -women terrified and helpless, the men shouting to let the women know -who they were.</p> - -<p>"It isn't easy," said Max, looking down at his own thick muscles. "But -you aren't changed and the other girls aren't. That helps."</p> - -<p>Through the muffled noise and hysteria, a bell was ringing.</p> - -<p>"It's the airlock," June said.</p> - -<p>Peering in the viewplate were nine Meads from Alexandria. To all -appearances, eight of them were Pat Mead at various ages, from fifteen -to fifty, and the other was a handsome, leggy, red-headed girl who -could have been his sister.</p> - -<p>Regretfully, they explained through the voice tube that they had walked -over from Alexandria to bring news that the plane pilot had contracted -melting sickness there and had died.</p> - -<p>They wanted to come in.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>June and Max told them to wait and returned to the tank room. The -men were enjoying their new height and strength, and the women were -bewilderedly learning that they could tell one Pat Mead from another, -by voice, by gesture of face or hand. The panic was gone. In its place -was a dull acceptance of the fantastic situation.</p> - -<p>Max called for attention. "There are nine Meads outside who want to -come in. They have different names, but they're all Pat Mead."</p> - -<p>They frowned or looked blank, and George Barton asked, "Why didn't you -let them in? I don't see any problem."</p> - -<p>"One of them," said Max soberly, "is a girl. <i>Patricia</i> Mead. The girl -wants to come in."</p> - -<p>There was a long silence while the implication settled to the fear -center of the women's minds. Shelia the beautiful felt it first. She -cried, "No! Please don't let her in!" There was real fright in her tone -and the women caught it quickly.</p> - -<p>Elsie clung to Jerry, begging, "You don't want me to change, do you, -Jerry? You like me the way I am! Tell me you do!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The other girls backed away. It was illogical, but it was human. June -felt terror rising in herself. She held up her hand for quiet, and -presented the necessity to the group.</p> - -<p>"Only half of us can leave Minos," she said. "The men cannot eat -ship food; they've been conditioned to this planet. We women can go, -but we would have to go without our men. We can't go outside without -contagion, and we can't spend the rest of our lives in quarantine -inside the ship. George Barton is right—there is no problem."</p> - -<p>"But we'd be changed!" Shelia shrilled. "I don't want to become a Mead! -I don't want to be somebody else!"</p> - -<p>She ran to the inner wall of the corridor. There was a brief -hesitation, and then, one by one, the women fled to that side, until -there were only Bess, June and four others left.</p> - -<p>"See!" cried Shelia. "A vote! We can't let the girl in!"</p> - -<p>No one spoke. To change, to be someone else—the idea was strange -and horrifying. The men stood uneasily glancing at each other, as if -looking into mirrors, and against the wall of the corridor the women -watched in fear and huddled together, staring at the men. One man in -forty-seven poses. One of them made a beseeching move toward Elsie and -she shrank away.</p> - -<p>"No, Jerry! I won't let you change me!"</p> - -<p>Max stirred restlessly, the ironic smile that made his new face his own -unconsciously twisting into a grimace of pity. "We men can't leave, and -you women can't stay," he said bluntly. "Why not let Patricia Mead in. -Get it over with!"</p> - -<p>June took a small mirror from her belt pouch and studied her own face, -aware of Max talking forcefully, the men standing silent, the women -pleading. Her face ... her own face with its dark blue eyes, small -nose, long mobile lips ... the mind and the body are inseparable; the -shape of a face is part of the mind. She put the mirror back.</p> - -<p>"I'd kill myself!" Shelia was sobbing. "I'd rather die!"</p> - -<p>"You won't die," Max was saying. "Can't you see there's only one -solution—"</p> - -<p>They were looking at Max. June stepped silently out of the tank room, -and then turned and went to the airlock. She opened the valves that -would let in Pat Mead's sister.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Contagion, by Katherine MacLean - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTAGION *** - -***** This file should be named 50774-h.htm or 50774-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/7/7/50774/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Contagion - -Author: Katherine MacLean - -Release Date: December 27, 2015 [EBook #50774] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTAGION *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - CONTAGION - - By KATHERINE MacLEAN - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - - Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing - seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, - perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really. - - -It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The -forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a -wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf -shadows. - -The hunt party of the _Explorer_ filed along the narrow trail, guns -ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries -of strange birds. - -A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had -been fired. - -"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her -voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the -forest. - -"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice -in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton -standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked -like a duck." - -"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into -sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the -bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said -soberly. - -"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, -June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still -love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and -touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely -visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a -greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet. - - * * * * * - -They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship _Explorer_ -towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of -the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and -clouds, and they longed to be outside. - -But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, -for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be -like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to -be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies -had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships -which had touched on some plague planet. - -The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight -spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion. - -The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the -alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the -copper and purple shadows. - -They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker -browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her -someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole -in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved. - -This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, -humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller -than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood -breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung -a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder. - -They lowered their guns. - -"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he -reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be -heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?" - -The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest -sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of -evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be -wearing a three day growth of red stubble. - -Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to -Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria." - -"English?" gasped June. - -"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to -you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass -twice, but we couldn't attract its attention." - - * * * * * - -June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the -tree. Thirty-six light years--thirty-six times six trillion miles -of monotonous space travel--to be told that the planet was already -settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not -on the map." - -"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We -have been here three generations and yet no traders have come." - -Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name -is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and -George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D." - -"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually. -"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos -before." - -The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June -could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded -steel. - -"What--what is the population of Minos?" she asked. - -He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only -one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city -planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with -the Bartons quickly. "That is--you are people, aren't you?" he asked -startlingly. - -"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired. - -"Well, you are all so--so--" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the -faces of the group. "So varied." - -They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled. - -"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these--interesting -different hair colors and face shapes and so forth--" He made a vague -wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to -insult them. - -"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered. - -June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the -intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us." - -She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What -should a person look like, Mr. Mead?" - -He indicated her with a smile. "Like you." - -June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own -description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, -like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly -humorous blue eyes. - -"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and -me?" - -Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin. -"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think -that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit -so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I -suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside -down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air -is breathable." - -"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague." - -Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the -wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take -off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. -Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers. - -"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two -years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead -families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all -related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way -people can look." - -_Plague._ "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked. - -"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting -sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to -do about it." - -"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for -some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice. - -Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all -the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, -and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship -were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone -and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace -them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife -and bow. - -"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton. - -"No." - -"Any other diseases?" - -"Not a one." - -Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching -awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on -the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!" - - * * * * * - -Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to -the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing -now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting -sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions. - -The polished silver and black column of the _Explorer_ seemed to rise -higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry -blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the -trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up. - -"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming. - -"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time -beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board -and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it -brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. -Plenty good enough." - -The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that -he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never -experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos. - - * * * * * - -"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully. - -Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet -of plants that covered the ground and began to open it. - -"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people -still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe -you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be -no good as a check for what the other Meads might have." - -Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and -hypodermics. - -"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest. - -"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, -and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the -tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a -stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being -smaller and frailer than Pat Mead. - -"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid -samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the -arm." - -Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed -and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine -nerve surgeon on Earth. - -High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship -and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, -it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from -their earphones: - -"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He -banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could -see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat. - -Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and -pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew -away over the odd-colored forest. - -"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got -through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max -dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles -without exposing them to air. - -"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still -carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't -show on you, but still carry enough germs--if that's what caused it--to -wipe out a planet." - -"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able -to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease." - -"Starting with me?" Pat asked. - -"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on -board." - -"More needles?" - -"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in." - -"Rough?" - -"It isn't easy." - -A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit -decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in -glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and -compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs. - -In the _Explorer_, stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, -was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes -so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused -chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing -could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to -the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name. - -But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had -been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human -treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and -interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding -against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient. - -Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and -around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall -by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered -to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given -solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic -blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being -directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized -and injected with various immunizing solutions. - -Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme -dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were -dripped into his veins through long thin tubes. - -All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of -allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him. - - * * * * * - -June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped -off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a -wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall.... - -"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully. - -Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he -asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally -get something to eat?" - -"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, -using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?" - -The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled -chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go -jump in the lake?" - -"Are you hungry?" - -"No food since yesterday." - -"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and -hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which -made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast. - -They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing -hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of -Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of -antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system -would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human -blood cells, and fight back against them violently. - -One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, -so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human -cells, and thus succumb more rapidly. - -"How ya doing, George?" Max asked. - -"Routine," George Barton grunted absently. - -On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a -viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the -horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther -away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green -where there were fields. - -Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been -there a long time--Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like -Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to -let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that -patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through -it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?" - - * * * * * - -Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and -began circling lazily. - -"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway -colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living -here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it." - -"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with -excitement. - -"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be -out in twenty minutes." - -"May I go see him?" - -"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets -out. Tell him we sent you." - -"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a -fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half -of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, -the sound of unfamiliar voices. - - * * * * * - -They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich -subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria -was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship -had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had -the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound -absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each -table where people leisurely ate and talked. - -They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June -could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of -conversation. - -"--new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. -He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman." - -The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three -heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in -the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose -tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four -different desserts, and assorted beverages. - -Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a -table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are -saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, -for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?" - -Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the -shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in." - -"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out -and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have -you seen Bess? Oh--there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away. - -A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly -talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, -alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even -larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward -their table. - -"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled -woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you _really_ swim across a -river to come here?" - -Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all -directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with -us. Let me help choose your tray." - -Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist -and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting -wild animals with a bow and arrow. - -"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat." - -June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and -escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be -claiming the hero of the hour. - - * * * * * - -Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost -voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He -ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked -around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said -nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing. - -"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we -will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and -cocktail bars that used to be inside." - -"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to -the music, and tried to locate its source. - -"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony. - -They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a -day. - -Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, -and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave -of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about -crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm -animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth -seeds with local ground, about mines and strata. - -There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and -drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think -of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed -that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center -of interest. - -Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish. - -June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions -more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his -jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, -eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most -chimingly of all. - -June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a -man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment -more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening -to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked -almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had -forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly -aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's -end of the table. - -"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting -another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he -added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness. - -"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat -Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man -she loved. Or--was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. -They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their -lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet -the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of -guilt. - -Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the -mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a -question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like -you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He -glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of -this. It sounds medical to me." - -Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy. -"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it." - -Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You -hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of -those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?" - - * * * * * - -"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry." - -"Why?" Len was aggrieved. - -"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different -amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the -carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until -you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then -you'd starve to death on a full stomach." - -Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, -but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one -side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn. - -"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people -had no doctors." - -"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of -the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality -and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle -of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the -face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided -that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did -it all right.'" - -"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear. - -"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells--" - - * * * * * - -She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the -explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to -Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and -hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells -have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, -hunting, eating and reproducing alone. - -Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. -He put them through the hard savage school of evolution--a thousand -generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien -indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the -cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it. - -"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution -in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where -they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he -had taken them from." - -"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward. - -"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about -it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering -ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his -neck at the age of eighty." - -"A character," Max said. - -Why was she afraid? "It worked then?" - -"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers -didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It -worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were -still eating out of hydroponics tanks." - -"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank -culture expert. There's a job for you." - -"Uh-_uh_!" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. -Human cell control--right up your alley." - -"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be -able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it -just for the taste." - -Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test -hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry -the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were -injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We -can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they -object?" - -"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for -safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first." - -The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the -hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle -with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before -returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on -the hour or run the risk of disease. - - * * * * * - -Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a -mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their -mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." -They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over -to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters. - -Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; -the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he -entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a -hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three -were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but -recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive -and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the -attack. - -June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. -They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to -dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose -of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was -hairless and pink, like a still-born baby. - -"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. -Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. -Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some -temperature charts and graphs of blood counts. - -June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her -field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with -laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, -then abruptly lightened. - -Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous -Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. -It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon -and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous -vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero -out of the pages of a book--Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. - -She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join -them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual -lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back. - -"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they -passed he lightly touched her arm. - -"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, -and knew that he had heard. - - * * * * * - -That night she had a nightmare. She was running down a long corridor -looking for Max, but every man she came to was a big bronze man with -red hair and bright blue eyes who grinned at her. - -The pink hamster! She woke suddenly, feeling as if alarm bells had been -ringing, and listened carefully, but there was no sound. She had had a -nightmare, she told herself, but alarm bells were still ringing in her -unconscious. Something was wrong. - -Lying still and trying to preserve the images, she groped for a -meaning, but the mood faded under the cold touch of reason. Damn -intuitive thinking! A pink hamster! Why did the unconscious have to be -so vague? She fell asleep again and forgot. - -They had lunch with Pat Mead that day, and after it was over Pat -delayed June with a hand on her shoulder and looked down at her for a -moment. "I want you, June," he said and then turned away, answering the -hails of a party at another table as if he had not spoken. She stood -shaken, and then walked to the door where Max waited. - -She was particularly affectionate with Max the rest of the day, and it -pleased him. He would not have been if he had known why. She tried to -forget Pat's blunt statement. - -June was in the laboratory with Max, watching the growth of a small -tank culture of the alien protoplasm from a Minos weed, and listening -to Len Marlow pour out his troubles. - -"And Elsie tags around after that big goof all day, listening to his -stories. And then she tells me I'm just jealous, I'm imagining things!" -He passed his hand across his eyes. "I came away from Earth to be with -Elsie.... I'm getting a headache. Look, can't you persuade Pat to cut -it out, June? You and Max are his friends." - -"Here, have an aspirin," June said. "We'll see what we can do." - -"Thanks." Len picked up his tank culture and went out, not at all -cheered. - - * * * * * - -Max sat brooding over the dials and meters at his end of the -laboratory, apparently sunk in thought. When Len had gone, he spoke -almost harshly. - -"Why encourage the guy? Why let him hope?" - -"Found out anything about the differences in protoplasm?" she evaded. - -"Why let him kid himself? What chance has he got against that hunk of -muscle and smooth talk?" - -"But Pat isn't after Elsie," she protested. - -"Every scatter-brained woman on this ship is trailing after Pat with -her tongue hanging out. Brant St. Clair is in the bar right now. -He doesn't say what he is drinking about, but do you think Pat is -resisting all these women crowding down on him?" - -"There are other things besides looks and charm," she said, grimly -trying to concentrate on a slide under her binocular microscope. - -"Yeah, and whatever they are, Pat has them, too. Who's more competent -to support a woman and a family on a frontier planet than a handsome -bruiser who was born here?" - -"I meant," June spun around on her stool with unexpected passion, -"there is old friendship, and there's fondness, and memories, and -loyalty!" She was half shouting. - -"They're not worth much on the second-hand market," Max said. He was -sitting slumped on his lab stool, looking dully at his dials. "Now -_I'm_ getting a headache!" He smiled ruefully. "No kidding, a real -headache. And over other people's troubles yet!" - -Other people's troubles.... She got up and wandered out into the long -curving halls. "I want you June," Pat's voice repeated in her mind. -Why did the man have to be so overpoweringly attractive, so glaring a -contrast to Max? Why couldn't the universe manage to run on without -generating troublesome love triangles? - - * * * * * - -She walked up the curving ramps to the dining hall where they had eaten -and drunk and talked yesterday. It was empty except for one couple -talking forehead to forehead over cold coffee. - -She turned and wandered down the long easy spiral of corridor to -the pharmacy and dispensary. It was empty. George was probably in -the test lab next door, where he could hear if he was wanted. The -automatic vendor of harmless euphorics, stimulants and opiates stood -in the corner, brightly decorated in pastel abstract designs, with its -automatic tabulator graph glowing above it. - -Max had a headache, she remembered. She recorded her thumbprint in the -machine and pushed the plunger for a box of aspirins, trying to focus -her attention on the problem of adapting the people of the ship to -the planet Minos. An aquarium tank with a faint solution of histamine -would be enough to convert a piece of human skin into a community of -voracious active phagocytes individually seeking something to devour, -but could they eat enough to live away from the rich sustaining plasma -of human blood? - -After the aspirins, she pushed another plunger for something for -herself. Then she stood looking at it, a small box with three pills in -her hand--Theobromine, a heart strengthener and a confidence-giving -euphoric all in one, something to steady shaky nerves. She had used it -before only in emergency. She extended a hand and looked at it. It was -trembling. Damn triangles! - -While she was looking at her hand there was a click from the automatic -drug vendor. It summed the morning use of each drug in the vendors -throughout the ship, and recorded it in a neat addition to the end of -each graph line. For a moment she could not find the green line for -anodynes and the red line for stimulants, and then she saw that they -went almost straight up. - -There were too many being used--far too many to be explained by -jealousy or psychosomatic peevishness. This was an epidemic, and only -one disease was possible! - -The disinfecting of Pat had not succeeded. Nucleocat Cureall, killer of -all infections, had not cured! Pat had brought melting sickness into -the ship with him! - -Who had it? - -The drugs vendor glowed cheerfully, uncommunicative. She opened a -panel in its side and looked in on restless interlacing cogs, and on -the inside of the door saw printed some directions.... "To remove or -examine records before reaching end of the reel--" - -After a few fumbling minutes she had the answer. In the cafeteria at -breakfast and lunch, thirty-eight men out of the forty-eight aboard -ship had taken more than his norm of stimulant. Twenty-one had taken -aspirin as well. The only woman who had made an unusual purchase was -herself! - -She remembered the hamsters that had thrown off the infection with a -short sharp fever, and checked back in the records to the day before. -There was a short rise in aspirin sales to women at late afternoon. The -women were safe. - -It was the men who had melting sickness! - -Melting sickness killed in hours, according to Pat Mead. How long had -the men been sick? - - * * * * * - -As she was leaving, Jerry came into the pharmacy, recorded his -thumbprint and took a box of aspirin from the machine. - -She felt all right. Self-control was working well and it was pleasant -still to walk down the corridor smiling at the people who passed. -She took the emergency elevator to the control room and showed her -credentials to the technician on watch. - -"Medical Emergency." At a small control panel in the corner was a large -red button, precisely labeled. She considered it and picked up the -control room phone. This was the hard part, telling someone, especially -someone who had it--Max. - -She dialed, and when the click on the end of the line showed he had -picked the phone up, she told Max what she had seen. - -"No women, just the men," he repeated. "That right?" - -"Yes." - -"Probably it's chemically alien, inhibited by one of the female sex -hormones. We'll try sex hormone shots, if we have to. Where are you -calling from?" - -She told him. - -"That's right. Give Nucleocat Cureall another chance. It might work -this time. Push that button." - -She went to the panel and pushed the large red button. Through the -long height of the _Explorer_, bells woke to life and began to ring -in frightened clangor, emergency doors thumped shut, mechanical -apparatus hummed into life and canned voices began to give rapid urgent -directions. - -A plague had come. - - * * * * * - -She obeyed the mechanical orders, went out into the hall and walked in -line with the others. The captain walked ahead of her and the gorgeous -Shelia Davenport fell into step beside her. "I look like a positive hag -this morning. Does that mean I'm sick? Are we all sick?" - -June shrugged, unwilling to say what she knew. - -Others came out of all rooms into the corridor, thickening the line. -They could hear each room lock as the last person left it, and then, -faintly, the hiss of disinfectant spray. Behind them, on the heels of -the last person in line, segments of the ship slammed off and began to -hiss. - -They wound down the spiral corridor until they reached the medical -treatment section again, and there they waited in line. - -"It won't scar my arms, will it?" asked Shelia apprehensively, -glancing at her smooth, lovely arms. - -The mechanical voice said, "Next. Step inside, please, and stand clear -of the door." - -"Not a bit," June reassured Shelia, and stepped into the cubicle. - -Inside, she was directed from cubicle to cubicle and given the usual -buffeting by sprays and radiation, had blood samples taken and was -injected with Nucleocat and a series of other protectives. At last she -was directed through another door into a tiny cubicle with a chair. - -"You are to wait here," commanded the recorded voice metallically. "In -twenty minutes the door will unlock and you may then leave. All people -now treated may visit all parts of the ship which have been protected. -It is forbidden to visit any quarantined or unsterile part of the ship -without permission from the medical officers." - -Presently the door unlocked and she emerged into bright lights again, -feeling slightly battered. - -She was in the clinic. A few men sat on the edge of beds and looked -sick. One was lying down. Brant and Bess St. Clair sat near each other, -not speaking. - -Approaching her was George Barton, reading a thermometer with a puzzled -expression. - -"What is it, George?" she asked anxiously. - -"Some of the women have slight fever, but it's going down. None of the -fellows have any--but their white count is way up, their red count is -way down, and they look sick to me." - -She approached St. Clair. His usually ruddy cheeks were pale, his pulse -was light and too fast, and his skin felt clammy. "How's the headache? -Did the Nucleocat treatment help?" - -"I feel worse, if anything." - -"Better set up beds," she told George. "Get everyone back into the -clinic." - -"We're doing that," George assured her. "That's what Hal is doing." - -She went back to the laboratory. Max was pacing up and down, absently -running his hands through his black hair until it stood straight up. He -stopped when he saw her face, and scowled thoughtfully. "They are still -sick?" It was more a statement than a question. - -She nodded. - -"The Cureall didn't cure this time," he muttered. "That leaves it up -to us. We have melting sickness and according to Pat and the hamsters, -that leaves us less than a day to find out what it is and learn how to -stop it." - -Suddenly an idea for another test struck him and he moved to the work -table to set it up. He worked rapidly, with an occasional uncoordinated -movement betraying his usual efficiency. - -It was strange to see Max troubled and afraid. - -She put on a laboratory smock and began to work. She worked in -silence. The mechanicals had failed. Hal and George Barton were busy -staving off death from the weaker cases and trying to gain time for Max -and her to work. The problem of the plague had to be solved by the two -of them alone. It was in their hands. - -Another test, no results. Another test, no results. Max's hands were -shaking and he stopped a moment to take stimulants. - -She went into the ward for a moment, found Bess and warned her quietly -to tell the other women to be ready to take over if the men became too -sick to go on. "But tell them calmly. We don't want to frighten the -men." She lingered in the ward long enough to see the word spread among -the women in a widening wave of paler faces and compressed lips; then -she went back to the laboratory. - -Another test. There was no sign of a micro-organism in anyone's blood, -merely a growing horde of leucocytes and phagocytes, prowling as if -mobilized to repel invasion. - - * * * * * - -Len Marlow was wheeled in unconscious, with Hal Barton's written -comments and conclusions pinned to the blanket. - -"I don't feel so well myself," the assistant complained. "The air feels -thick. I can't breathe." - -June saw that his lips were blue. "Oxygen short," she told Max. - -"Low red corpuscle count," Max answered. "Look into a drop and see -what's going on. Use mine; I feel the same way he does." She took two -drops of Max's blood. The count was low, falling too fast. - -Breathing is useless without the proper minimum of red corpuscles in -the blood. People below that minimum die of asphyxiation although their -lungs are full of pure air. The red corpuscle count was falling too -fast. The time she and Max had to work in was too short. - -"Pump some more CO_{2} into the air system," Max said urgently over the -phone. "Get some into the men's end of the ward." - - * * * * * - -She looked through the microscope at the live sample of blood. It was a -dark clear field and bright moving things spun and swirled through it, -but she could see nothing that did not belong there. - -"Hal," Max called over the general speaker system, "cut the other -treatments, check for accelerating anemia. Treat it like monoxide -poisoning--CO_{2} and oxygen." - -She reached into a cupboard under the work table, located two cylinders -of oxygen, cracked the valves and handed one to Max and one to the -assistant. Some of the bluish tint left the assistant's face as he -breathed and he went over to the patient with reawakened concern. - -"Not breathing, Doc!" - -Max was working at the desk, muttering equations of hemoglobin -catalysis. - -"Len's gone, Doc," the assistant said more loudly. - -"Artificial respiration and get him into a regeneration tank," said -June, not moving from the microscope. "Hurry! Hal will show you how. -The oxidation and mechanical heart action in the tank will keep him -going. Put anyone in a tank who seems to be dying. Get some women to -help you. Give them Hal's instructions." - -The tanks were ordinarily used to suspend animation in a nutrient bath -during the regrowth of any diseased organ. It could preserve life in -an almost totally destroyed body during the usual disintegration and -regrowth treatments for cancer and old age, and it could encourage -healing as destruction continued ... but they could not prevent -ultimate death as long as the disease was not conquered. - -The drop of blood in June's microscope was a great, dark field, and in -the foreground, brought to gargantuan solidity by the stereo effect, -drifted neat saucer shapes of red blood cells. They turned end for end, -floating by the humped misty mass of a leucocyte which was crawling on -the cover glass. There were not enough red corpuscles, and she felt -that they grew fewer as she watched. - -She fixed her eye on one, not blinking in fear that she would miss what -might happen. It was a tidy red button, and it spun as it drifted, the -current moving it aside in a curve as it passed by the leucocyte. - -Then, abruptly, the cell vanished. - -June stared numbly at the place where it had been. - -Behind her, Max was calling over the speaker system again: "Dr. Stark -speaking. Any technician who knows anything about the life tanks, start -bringing more out of storage and set them up. Emergency." - -"We may need forty-seven," June said quietly. - -"We may need forty-seven," Max repeated to the ship in general. His -voice did not falter. "Set them up along the corridor. Hook them in on -extension lines." - -His voice filtered back from the empty floors above in a series of dim -echoes. What he had said meant that every man on board might be on the -point of heart stoppage. - - * * * * * - -June looked blindly through the binocular microscope, trying to think. -Out of the corner of her eyes she could see that Max was wavering and -breathing more and more frequently of the pure, cold, burning oxygen of -the cylinders. In the microscope she could see that there were fewer -red cells left alive in the drop of his blood. The rate of fall was -accelerating. - -She didn't have to glance at Max to know how he would look--skin pale, -black eyebrows and keen brown eyes slightly squinted in thought, a -faint ironical grin twisting the bluing lips. Intelligent, thin, -sensitive, his face was part of her mind. It was inconceivable that -Max could die. He couldn't die. He couldn't leave her alone. - -She forced her mind back to the problem. All the men of the _Explorer_ -were at the same point, wherever they were. - -Moving to Max's desk, she spoke into the intercom system: "Bess, send -a couple of women to look through the ship, room by room, with a -stretcher. Make sure all the men are down here." She remembered Reno. -"Sparks, heard anything from Reno? Is he back?" - -Sparks replied weakly after a lag. "The last I heard from Reno was a -call this morning. He was raving about mirrors, and Pat Mead's folks -not being real people, just carbon copies, and claiming he was crazy; -and I should send him the psychiatrist. I thought he was kidding. He -didn't call back." - -"Thanks, Sparks." Reno was lost. - -Max dialed and spoke to the bridge over the phone. "Are you okay up -there? Forget about engineering controls. Drop everything and head for -the tanks while you can still walk." - -June went back to the work table and whispered into her own phone. -"Bess, send up a stretcher for Max. He looks pretty bad." - -There had to be a solution. The life tanks could sustain life in a -damaged body, encouraging it to regrow more rapidly, but they merely -slowed death as long as the disease was not checked. The postponement -could not last long, for destruction could go on steadily in the tanks -until the nutritive solution would hold no life except the triumphant -microscopic killers that caused melting sickness. - -There were very few red blood corpuscles in the microscope field now, -incredibly few. She tipped the microscope and they began to drift, -spinning slowly. A lone corpuscle floated through the center. She -watched it as the current swept it in an arc past the dim off-focus -bulk of the leucocyte. There was a sweep of motion and it vanished. - -For a moment it meant nothing to her; then she lifted her head from -the microscope and looked around. Max sat at his desk, head in hand, -his rumpled short black hair sticking out between his fingers at odd -angles. A pencil and a pad scrawled with formulas lay on the desk -before him. She could see his concentration in the rigid set of his -shoulders. He was still thinking; he had not given up. - - * * * * * - -"Max, I just saw a leucocyte grab a red blood corpuscle. It was -unbelievably fast." - -"Leukemia," muttered Max without moving. "Galloping leukemia yet! That -comes under the heading of cancer. Well, that's part of the answer. It -might be all we need." He grinned feebly and reached for the speaker -set. "Anybody still on his feet in there?" he muttered into it, and -the question was amplified to a booming voice throughout the ship. -"Hal, are you still going? Look, Hal, change all the dials, change the -dials, set them to deep melt and regeneration. One week. This is like -leukemia. Got it? This is like leukemia." - -June rose. It was time for her to take over the job. She leaned across -his desk and spoke into the speaker system. "Doctor Walton talking," -she said. "This is to the women. Don't let any of the men work any -more; they'll kill themselves. See that they all go into the tanks -right away. Set the tank dials for deep regeneration. You can see how -from the ones that are set." - -Two exhausted and frightened women clattered in the doorway with a -stretcher. Their hands were scratched and oily from helping to set up -tanks. - -"That order includes you," she told Max sternly and caught him as he -swayed. - -Max saw the stretcher bearers and struggled upright. "Ten more -minutes," he said clearly. "Might think of an idea. Something not right -in this setup. I have to figure how to prevent a relapse, how the thing -started." - -He knew more bacteriology than she did; she had to help him think. She -motioned the bearers to wait, fixed a breathing mask for Max from a -cylinder of CO_{2} and the opened one of oxygen. Max went back to his -desk. - -She walked up and down, trying to think, remembering the hamsters. The -melting sickness, it was called. Melting. She struggled with an impulse -to open a tank which held one of the men. She wanted to look in, see if -that would explain the name. - -Melting Sickness.... - -Footsteps came and Pat Mead stood uncertainly in the doorway. Tall, -handsome, rugged, a pioneer. "Anything I can do?" he asked. - -She barely looked at him. "You can stay out of our way. We're busy." - -"I'd like to help," he said. - -"Very funny." She was vicious, enjoying the whip of her words. "Every -man is dying because you're a carrier, and you want to help." - - * * * * * - -He stood nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. "A guinea pig, -maybe. I'm immune. All the Meads are." - -"Go away." God, why couldn't she think? What makes a Mead immune? - -"Aw, let 'im alone," Max muttered. "Pat hasn't done anything." He went -waveringly to the microscope, took a tiny sliver from his finger, -suspended it in a slide and slipped it under the lens with detached -habitual dexterity. "Something funny going on," he said to June. -"Symptoms don't feel right." - -After a moment he straightened and motioned for her to look. -"Leucocytes, phagocytes--" He was bewildered. "My own--" - -She looked in, and then looked back at Pat in a growing wave of -horror. "They're not your own, Max!" she whispered. - -Max rested a hand on the table to brace himself, put his eye to the -microscope, and looked again. June knew what he saw. Phagocytes, -leucocytes, attacking and devouring his tissues in a growing incredible -horde, multiplying insanely. - -_Not his phagocytes! Pat Mead's!_ The Meads' evolved cells had learned -too much. They were contagious. And not Pat Mead's.... How much alike -_were_ the Meads?... Mead cells contagious from one to another, not -a disease attacking or being fought, but acting as normal leucocytes -in whatever body they were in! The leucocytes of tall, red-headed -people, finding no strangeness in the bloodstream of any of the tall, -red-headed people. No strangeness.... A toti-potent leucocyte finding -its way into cellular wombs. - -The womblike life tanks. For the men of the _Explorer_, a week's cure -with deep melting to de-differentiate the leucocytes and turn them back -to normal tissue, then regrowth and reforming from the cells that were -there. From the cells that _were_ there. _From the cells that were -there...._ - -"Pat--" - -"I know." Pat began to laugh, his face twisted with sudden -understanding. "I understand. I get it. I'm a contagious personality. -That's funny, isn't it?" - -Max rose suddenly from the microscope and lurched toward him, fists -clenched. Pat caught him as he fell, and the bewildered stretcher -bearers carried him out to the tanks. - - * * * * * - -For a week June tended the tanks. The other women volunteered to help, -but she refused. She said nothing, hoping her guess would not be true. - -"Is everything all right?" Elsie asked her anxiously. "How is Jerry -coming along?" Elsie looked haggard and worn, like all the women, from -doing the work that the men had always done. - -"He's fine," June said tonelessly, shutting tight the door of the tank -room. "They're all fine." - -"That's good," Elsie said, but she looked more frightened than before. - -June firmly locked the tank room door and the girl went away. - -The other women had been listening, and now they wandered back to -their jobs, unsatisfied by June's answer, but not daring to ask for -the actual truth. They were there whenever June went into the tank -room, and they were still there--or relieved by others; June was -not sure--when she came out. And always some one of them asked the -unvarying question for all the others, and June gave the unvarying -answer. But she kept the key. No woman but herself knew what was going -on in the life tanks. - -Then the day of completion came. June told no one of the hour. She -went into the room as on the other days, locked the door behind her, -and there was the nightmare again. This time it was reality and she -wandered down a path between long rows of coffinlike tanks, calling, -"Max! Max!" silently and looking into each one as it opened. - -But each face she looked at was the same. Watching them dissolve and -regrow in the nutrient solution, she had only been able to guess at the -horror of what was happening. Now she knew. - -They were all the same lean-boned, blond-skinned face, with a -pin-feather growth of reddish down on cheeks and scalp. All -horribly--and handsomely--the same. - -A medical kit lay carelessly on the floor beside Max's tank. She stood -near the bag. "Max," she said, and found her throat closing. The canned -voice of the mechanical mocked her, speaking glibly about waking and -sitting up. "I'm sorry, Max...." - -The tall man with rugged features and bright blue eyes sat up sleepily -and lifted an eyebrow at her, and ran his hand over his red-fuzzed head -in a gesture of bewilderment. - -"What's the matter, June?" he asked drowsily. - -She gripped his arm. "Max--" - -He compared the relative size of his arm with her hand and said -wonderingly, "You shrank." - -"I know, Max. I know." - -He turned his head and looked at his arms and legs, pale blond arms -and legs with a down of red hair. He touched the thick left arm, -squeezed a pinch of hard flesh. "It isn't mine," he said, surprised. -"But I can feel it." - -Watching his face was like watching a stranger mimicking and distorting -Max's expressions. Max in fear. Max trying to understand what had -happened to him, looking around at the other men sitting up in their -tanks. Max feeling the terror that was in herself and all the men as -they stared at themselves and their friends and saw what they had -become. - -"We're all Pat Mead," he said harshly. "All the Meads are Pat Mead. -That's why he was surprised to see people who didn't look like himself." - -"Yes, Max." - -"Max," he repeated. "It's me, all right. The nervous system didn't -change." His new blue eyes held hers. "My love didn't, either. Did -yours? Did it, June?" - -"No, Max." But she couldn't know yet. She had loved Max with the thin, -ironic face, the rumpled black hair and the twisted smile that never -really hid his quick sympathy. Now he was Pat Mead. Could he also be -Max? "Of course I still love you, darling." - -He grinned. It was still the wry smile of Max, though fitting strangely -on the handsome new blond face. "Then it isn't so bad. It might even be -pretty good. I envied him this big, muscular body. If Pat or any of -these Meads so much as looks at you, I'm going to knock his block off. -Understand?" - - * * * * * - -She laughed and couldn't stop. It wasn't that funny. But it was still -Max, trying to be unafraid, drawing on humor. Maybe the rest of the men -would also be their old selves, enough so the women would not feel that -their men were strangers. - -Behind her, male voices spoke characteristically. She did not have -to turn to know which was which: "This is one way to keep a guy from -stealing your girl," that was Len Marlow; "I've got to write down all -my reactions," Hal Barton; "Now I can really work that hillside vein of -metal," St. Clair. Then others complaining, swearing, laughing bitterly -at the trick that had been played on them and their flirting, tempted -women. She knew who they were. Their women would know them apart, too. - -"We'll go outside," Max said. "You and I. Maybe the shock won't be so -bad to the women after they see me." He paused. "You didn't tell them, -did you?" - -"I couldn't. I wasn't sure. I--was hoping I was wrong." - -She opened the door and closed it quickly. There was a small crowd on -the other side. - -"Hello, Pat," Elsie said uncertainly, trying to look past them into the -tank room before the door shut. - -"I'm not Pat, I'm Max," said the tall man with the blue eyes and the -fuzz-reddened skull. "Listen--" - -"Good heavens, Pat, what happened to your hair?" Shelia asked. - -"I'm Max," insisted the man with the handsome face and the sharp blue -eyes. "Don't you get it? I'm Max Stark. The melting sickness is Mead -cells. We caught them from Pat. They adapted us to Minos. They also -changed us all into Pat Mead." - -The women stared at him, at each other. They shook their heads. - -"They don't understand," June said. "I couldn't have if I hadn't seen -it happening, Max." - -"It's Pat," said Shelia, dazedly stubborn. "He shaved off his hair. -It's some kind of joke." - -Max shook her shoulders, glaring down at her face. "I'm Max. Max Stark. -They all look like me. Do you hear? It's funny, but it's not a joke. -Laugh for us, for God's sake!" - -"It's too much," said June. "They'll have to see." - -She opened the door and let them in. They hurried past her to the -tanks, looking at forty-six identical blond faces, beginning to call in -frightened voices: - -"Jerry!" - -"Harry!" - -"Lee, where are you, sweetheart--" - -June shut the door on the voices that were growing hysterical, the -women terrified and helpless, the men shouting to let the women know -who they were. - -"It isn't easy," said Max, looking down at his own thick muscles. "But -you aren't changed and the other girls aren't. That helps." - -Through the muffled noise and hysteria, a bell was ringing. - -"It's the airlock," June said. - -Peering in the viewplate were nine Meads from Alexandria. To all -appearances, eight of them were Pat Mead at various ages, from fifteen -to fifty, and the other was a handsome, leggy, red-headed girl who -could have been his sister. - -Regretfully, they explained through the voice tube that they had walked -over from Alexandria to bring news that the plane pilot had contracted -melting sickness there and had died. - -They wanted to come in. - - * * * * * - -June and Max told them to wait and returned to the tank room. The -men were enjoying their new height and strength, and the women were -bewilderedly learning that they could tell one Pat Mead from another, -by voice, by gesture of face or hand. The panic was gone. In its place -was a dull acceptance of the fantastic situation. - -Max called for attention. "There are nine Meads outside who want to -come in. They have different names, but they're all Pat Mead." - -They frowned or looked blank, and George Barton asked, "Why didn't you -let them in? I don't see any problem." - -"One of them," said Max soberly, "is a girl. _Patricia_ Mead. The girl -wants to come in." - -There was a long silence while the implication settled to the fear -center of the women's minds. Shelia the beautiful felt it first. She -cried, "No! Please don't let her in!" There was real fright in her tone -and the women caught it quickly. - -Elsie clung to Jerry, begging, "You don't want me to change, do you, -Jerry? You like me the way I am! Tell me you do!" - - * * * * * - -The other girls backed away. It was illogical, but it was human. June -felt terror rising in herself. She held up her hand for quiet, and -presented the necessity to the group. - -"Only half of us can leave Minos," she said. "The men cannot eat -ship food; they've been conditioned to this planet. We women can go, -but we would have to go without our men. We can't go outside without -contagion, and we can't spend the rest of our lives in quarantine -inside the ship. George Barton is right--there is no problem." - -"But we'd be changed!" Shelia shrilled. "I don't want to become a Mead! -I don't want to be somebody else!" - -She ran to the inner wall of the corridor. There was a brief -hesitation, and then, one by one, the women fled to that side, until -there were only Bess, June and four others left. - -"See!" cried Shelia. "A vote! We can't let the girl in!" - -No one spoke. To change, to be someone else--the idea was strange -and horrifying. The men stood uneasily glancing at each other, as if -looking into mirrors, and against the wall of the corridor the women -watched in fear and huddled together, staring at the men. One man in -forty-seven poses. One of them made a beseeching move toward Elsie and -she shrank away. - -"No, Jerry! I won't let you change me!" - -Max stirred restlessly, the ironic smile that made his new face his own -unconsciously twisting into a grimace of pity. "We men can't leave, and -you women can't stay," he said bluntly. "Why not let Patricia Mead in. -Get it over with!" - -June took a small mirror from her belt pouch and studied her own face, -aware of Max talking forcefully, the men standing silent, the women -pleading. Her face ... her own face with its dark blue eyes, small -nose, long mobile lips ... the mind and the body are inseparable; the -shape of a face is part of the mind. She put the mirror back. - -"I'd kill myself!" Shelia was sobbing. "I'd rather die!" - -"You won't die," Max was saying. "Can't you see there's only one -solution--" - -They were looking at Max. June stepped silently out of the tank room, -and then turned and went to the airlock. She opened the valves that -would let in Pat Mead's sister. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Contagion, by Katherine MacLean - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTAGION *** - -***** This file should be named 50774.txt or 50774.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/7/7/50774/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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