NormalizeHEADmain

10 files changed, 17 insertions, 2992 deletions

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..af35aa6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #51782 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51782)
diff --git a/old/51782-8.txt b/old/51782-8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index f9d63f3..0000000
--- a/old/51782-8.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,1437 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor, by Murray Leinster
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-
-Title: Doctor
-
-Author: Murray Leinster
-
-Release Date: April 17, 2016 [EBook #51782]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                                DOCTOR
-
-                          BY MURRAY LEINSTER
-
-                         Illustrated by FINLAY
-
-           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
-                    Galaxy Magazine February 1961.
-         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
-         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-
-
-                   Suddenly the biggest thing in the
-                    universe was the very tiniest.
-
-
-There were suns, which were nearby, and there were stars which were
-so far away that no way of telling their distance had any meaning.
-The suns had planets, most of which did not matter, but the ones that
-did count had seas and continents, and the continents had cities and
-highways and spaceports. And people.
-
-The people paid no attention to their insignificance. They built ships
-which went through emptiness beyond imagining, and they landed upon
-planets and rebuilt them to their own liking. Suns flamed terribly,
-renting their impertinence, and storms swept across the planets
-they preëmpted, but the people built more strongly and were secure.
-Everything in the universe was bigger or stronger than the people,
-but they ignored the fact. They went about the businesses they had
-contrived for themselves.
-
-They were not afraid of anything until somewhere on a certain small
-planet an infinitesimal single molecule changed itself.
-
-It was one molecule among unthinkably many, upon one planet of one
-solar system among uncountable star clusters. It was not exactly alive,
-but it acted as if it were, in which it was like all the important
-matter of the cosmos. It was actually a combination of two complicated
-substances not too firmly joined together. When one of the parts
-changed, it became a new molecule. But, like the original one, it was
-still capable of a process called autocatalysis. It practiced that
-process and catalyzed other molecules into existence, which in each
-case were duplicates of itself. Then mankind had to take notice, though
-it ignored flaming suns and monstrous storms and emptiness past belief.
-
-Men called the new molecule a virus and gave it a name. They called it
-and its duplicates "chlorophage." And chlorophage was, to people, the
-most terrifying thing in the universe.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-In a strictly temporary orbit around the planet Altaira, the _Star
-Queen_ floated, while lift-ships brought passengers and cargo up to
-it. The ship was too large to be landed economically at an unimportant
-spaceport like Altaira. It was a very modern ship and it made the
-Regulus-to-Cassim run, which is five hundred light-years, in only fifty
-days of Earthtime.
-
-Now the lift-ships were busy. There was an unusual number of passengers
-to board the _Star Queen_ at Altaira and an unusual number of them were
-women and children. The children tended to pudginess and the women had
-the dieted look of the wives of well-to-do men. Most of them looked
-red-eyed, as if they had been crying.
-
-One by one the lift-ships hooked onto the airlock of the _Star Queen_
-and delivered passengers and cargo to the ship. Presently the last of
-them was hooked on, and the last batch of passengers came through to
-the liner, and the ship's doctor watched them stream past him.
-
-His air was negligent, but he was actually impatient. Like most
-doctors, Nordenfeld approved of lean children and wiry women. They had
-fewer things wrong with them and they responded better to treatment.
-Well, he was the doctor of the _Star Queen_ and he had much authority.
-He'd exerted it back on Regulus to insist that a shipment of botanical
-specimens for Cassim travel in quarantine--to be exact, in the ship's
-practically unused hospital compartment--and he was prepared to
-exercise authority over the passengers.
-
-He had a sheaf of health slips from the examiners on the ground below.
-There was one slip for each passenger. It certified that so-and-so had
-been examined and could safely be admitted to the _Star Queen's_ air,
-her four restaurants, her two swimming pools, her recreation areas and
-the six levels of passenger cabins the ship contained.
-
-He impatiently watched the people go by. Health slips or no health
-slips, he looked them over. A characteristic gait or a typical
-complexion tint, or even a certain lack of hair luster, could tell him
-things that ground physicians might miss. In such a case the passenger
-would go back down again. It was not desirable to have deaths on a
-liner in space. Of course nobody was ever refused passage because of
-chlorophage. If it were ever discovered, the discovery would already be
-too late. But the health regulations for space travel were very, very
-strict.
-
-He looked twice at a young woman as she passed. Despite applied
-complexion, there was a trace of waxiness in her skin. Nordenfeld had
-never actually seen a case of chlorophage. No doctor alive ever had.
-The best authorities were those who'd been in Patrol ships during the
-quarantine of Kamerun when chlorophage was loose on that planet. They'd
-seen beamed-up pictures of patients, but not patients themselves. The
-Patrol ships stayed in orbit while the planet died. Most doctors, and
-Nordenfeld was among them, had only seen pictures of the screens which
-showed the patients.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-He looked sharply at the young woman. Then he glanced at her hands.
-They were normal. The young woman went on, unaware that for the
-fraction of an instant there had been the possibility of the landing of
-the _Star Queen_ on Altaira, and the destruction of her space drive,
-and the establishment of a quarantine which, if justified, would mean
-that nobody could ever leave Altaira again, but must wait there to die.
-Which would not be a long wait.
-
-A fat man puffed past. The gravity on Altaira was some five per cent
-under ship-normal and he felt the difference at once. But the veins at
-his temples were ungorged. Nordenfeld let him go by.
-
-There appeared a white-haired, space-tanned man with a briefcase under
-his arm. He saw Nordenfeld and lifted a hand in greeting. The doctor
-knew him. He stepped aside from the passengers and stood there. His
-name was Jensen, and he represented a fund which invested the surplus
-money of insurance companies. He traveled a great deal to check on the
-business interests of that organization.
-
-The doctor grunted, "What're you doing here? I thought you'd be on the
-far side of the cluster."
-
-"Oh, I get about," said Jensen. His manner was not quite normal. He was
-tense. "I got here two weeks ago on a Q-and-C tramp from Regulus. We
-were a ship load of salt meat. There's romance for you! Salt meat by
-the spaceship load!"
-
-The doctor grunted again. All sorts of things moved through space,
-naturally. The _Star Queen_ carried a botanical collection for a museum
-and pig-beryllium and furs and enzymes and a list of items no man could
-remember. He watched the passengers go by, automatically counting them
-against the number of health slips in his hand.
-
-"Lots of passengers this trip," said Jensen.
-
-"Yes," said the doctor, watching a man with a limp. "Why?"
-
-Jensen shrugged and did not answer. He was uneasy, the doctor noted.
-He and Jensen were as much unlike as two men could very well be, but
-Jensen was good company. A ship's doctor does not have much congenial
-society.
-
-The file of passengers ended abruptly. There was no one in the _Star
-Queen's_ airlock, but the "Connected" lights still burned and the
-doctor could look through into the small lift-ship from the planet down
-below. He frowned. He fingered the sheaf of papers.
-
-"Unless I missed count," he said annoyedly, "there's supposed to be one
-more passenger. I don't see--"
-
-A door opened far back in the lift-ship. A small figure appeared. It
-was a little girl perhaps ten years old. She was very neatly dressed,
-though not quite the way a mother would have done it. She wore the
-carefully composed expression of a child with no adult in charge of
-her. She walked precisely from the lift-ship into the _Star Queen's_
-lock. The opening closed briskly behind her. There was the rumbling of
-seals making themselves tight. The lights flickered for "Disconnect"
-and then "All Clear." They went out, and the lift-ship had pulled away
-from the _Star Queen_.
-
-"There's my missing passenger," said the doctor.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The child looked soberly about. She saw him. "Excuse me," she said very
-politely. "Is this the way I'm supposed to go?"
-
-"Through that door," said the doctor gruffly.
-
-"Thank you," said the little girl. She followed his direction. She
-vanished through the door. It closed.
-
-There came a deep, droning sound, which was the interplanetary drive
-of the _Star Queen_, building up that directional stress in space
-which had seemed such a triumph when it was first contrived. The ship
-swung gently. It would be turning out from orbit around Altaira. It
-swung again. The doctor knew that its astrogators were feeling for the
-incredibly exact pointing of its nose toward the next port which modern
-commercial ship operation required. An error of fractional seconds of
-arc would mean valuable time lost in making port some ten light-years
-of distance away. The drive droned and droned, building up velocity
-while the ship's aiming was refined and re-refined.
-
-The drive cut off abruptly. Jensen turned white.
-
-The doctor said impatiently, "There's nothing wrong. Probably a message
-or a report should have been beamed down to the planet and somebody
-forgot. We'll go on in a minute."
-
-But Jensen stood frozen. He was very pale. The interplanetary drive
-stayed off. Thirty seconds. A minute. Jensen swallowed audibly. Two
-minutes. Three.
-
-The steady, monotonous drone began again. It continued interminably, as
-if while it was off the ship's head had swung wide of its destination
-and the whole business of lining up for a jump in overdrive had to be
-done all over again.
-
-Then there came that "Ping-g-g-g!" and the sensation of spiral fall
-which meant overdrive. The droning ceased.
-
-Jensen breathed again. The ship's doctor looked at him sharply. Jensen
-had been taut. Now the tensions had left his body, but he looked as
-if he were going to shiver. Instead, he mopped a suddenly streaming
-forehead.
-
-"I think," said Jensen in a strange voice, "that I'll have a drink. Or
-several. Will you join me?"
-
-Nordenfeld searched his face. A ship's doctor has many duties in
-space. Passengers can have many things wrong with them, and in the
-absolute isolation of overdrive they can be remarkably affected by each
-other.
-
-"I'll be at the fourth-level bar in twenty minutes," said Nordenfeld.
-"Can you wait that long?"
-
-"I probably won't wait to have a drink," said Jensen. "But I'll be
-there."
-
-The doctor nodded curtly. He went away. He made no guesses, though he'd
-just observed the new passengers carefully and was fully aware of the
-strict health regulations that affect space travel. As a physician he
-knew that the most deadly thing in the universe was chlorophage and
-that the planet Kamerun was only one solar system away. It had been
-a stop for the _Star Queen_ until four years ago. He puzzled over
-Jensen's tenseness and the relief he'd displayed when the overdrive
-field came on. But he didn't guess. Chlorophage didn't enter his mind.
-
-Not until later.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-He saw the little girl who'd come out of the airlock last of all the
-passengers. She sat on a sofa as if someone had told her to wait there
-until something or other was arranged. Doctor Nordenfeld barely glanced
-at her. He'd known Jensen for a considerable time. Jensen had been
-a passenger on the _Star Queen_ half a dozen times, and he shouldn't
-have been upset by the temporary stoppage of an interplanetary drive.
-Nordenfeld divided people into two classes, those who were not and
-those who were worth talking to. There weren't many of the latter.
-Jensen was.
-
-He filed away the health slips. Then, thinking of Jensen's pallor,
-he asked what had happened to make the _Star Queen_ interrupt her
-slow-speed drive away from orbit around Altaira.
-
-The purser told him. But the purser was fussily concerned because there
-were so many extra passengers from Altaira. He might not be able to
-take on the expected number of passengers at the next stop-over point.
-It would be bad business to have to refuse passengers! It would give
-the space line a bad name.
-
-Then the air officer stopped Nordenfeld as he was about to join Jensen
-in the fourth-level bar. It was time for a medical inspection of the
-quarter-acre of Banthyan jungle which purified and renewed the air
-of the ship. Nordenfeld was expected to check the complex ecological
-system of the air room. Specifically, he was expected to look for and
-identify any patches of colorlessness appearing on the foliage of the
-jungle plants the _Star Queen_ carried through space.
-
-The air officer was discreet and Nordenfeld was silent about the
-ultimate reason for the inspection. Nobody liked to think about it. But
-if a particular kind of bleaching appeared, as if the chlorophyll of
-the leaves were being devoured by something too small to be seen by an
-optical microscope--why, that would be chlorophage. It would also be a
-death sentence for the _Star Queen_ and everybody in her.
-
-But the jungle passed medical inspection. The plants grew lushly in
-soil which periodically was flushed with hydroponic solution and
-then drained away again. The UV lamps were properly distributed and
-the different quarters of the air room were alternately lighted and
-darkened. And there were no colorless patches. A steady wind blew
-through the air room and had its excess moisture and unpleasing smells
-wrung out before it recirculated through the ship. Doctor Nordenfeld
-authorized the trimming of some liana-like growths which were
-developing woody tissue at the expense of leaves.
-
-The air officer also told him about the reason for the turning off of
-the interplanetary drive. He considered it a very curious happening.
-
-The doctor left the air room and passed the place where the little
-girl--the last passenger to board the _Star Queen_--waited patiently
-for somebody to arrange something. Doctor Nordenfeld took a lift to the
-fourth level and went into the bar where Jensen should be waiting.
-
-He was. He had an empty glass before him. Nordenfeld sat down and
-dialed for a drink. He had an indefinite feeling that something was
-wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. There are always things
-going wrong for a ship's doctor, though. There are so many demands on
-his patience that he is usually short of it.
-
-Jensen watched him sip at his drink.
-
-"A bad day?" he asked. He'd gotten over his own tension.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Nordenfeld shrugged, but his scowl deepened. "There are a lot of new
-passengers." He realized that he was trying to explain his feelings to
-himself. "They'll come to me feeling miserable. I have to tell each one
-that if they feel heavy and depressed, it may be the gravity-constant
-of the ship, which is greater than their home planet. If they feel
-light-headed and giddy, it may be because the gravity-constant of
-the ship is less than they're used to. But it doesn't make them feel
-better, so they come back for a second assurance. I'll be overwhelmed
-with such complaints within two hours."
-
-Jensen waited. Then he said casually--too casually, "Does anybody ever
-suspect chlorophage?"
-
-"No," said Nordenfeld shortly.
-
-Jensen fidgeted. He sipped. Then he said, "What's the news from
-Kamerun, anyhow?"
-
-"There isn't any," said Nordenfeld. "Naturally! Why ask?"
-
-"I just wondered," said Jensen. After a moment: "What was the last
-news?"
-
-"There hasn't been a message from Kamerun in two years," said
-Nordenfeld curtly. "There's no sign of anything green anywhere on the
-planet. It's considered to be--uninhabited."
-
-Jensen licked his lips. "That's what I understood. Yes."
-
-Nordenfeld drank half his drink and said unpleasantly, "There were
-thirty million people on Kamerun when the chlorophage appeared. At
-first it was apparently a virus which fed on the chlorophyll of
-plants. They died. Then it was discovered that it could also feed on
-hemoglobin, which is chemically close to chlorophyll. Hemoglobin is the
-red coloring matter of the blood. When the virus consumed it, people
-began to die. Kamerun doctors found that the chlorophage virus was
-transmitted by contact, by inhalation, by ingestion. It traveled as
-dust particles and on the feet of insects, and it was in drinking water
-and the air one breathed. The doctors on Kamerun warned spaceships
-off and the Patrol put a quarantine fleet in orbit around it to keep
-anybody from leaving. And nobody left. And everybody died. _And_ so did
-every living thing that had chlorophyll in its leaves or hemoglobin in
-its blood, or that needed plant or animal tissues to feed on. There's
-not a person left alive on Kamerun, nor an animal or bird or insect,
-nor a fish nor a tree, or plant or weed or blade of grass. There's no
-longer a quarantine fleet there. Nobody'll go there and there's nobody
-left to leave. But there are beacon satellites to record any calls and
-to warn any fool against landing. If the chlorophage got loose and was
-carried about by spaceships, it could kill the other forty billion
-humans in the galaxy, together with every green plant or animal with
-hemoglobin in its blood."
-
-"That," said Jensen, and tried to smile, "sounds final."
-
-"It isn't," Nordenfeld told him. "If there's something in the
-universe which can kill every living thing except its maker, that
-something should be killed. There should be research going on about
-the chlorophage. It would be deadly dangerous work, but it should be
-done. A quarantine won't stop contagion. It can only hinder it. That's
-useful, but not enough."
-
-Jensen moistened his lips.
-
-Nordenfeld said abruptly, "I've answered your questions. Now what's on
-your mind and what has it to do with chlorophage?"
-
-Jensen started. He went very pale.
-
-"It's too late to do anything about it," said Nordenfeld. "It's
-probably nonsense anyhow. But what is it?"
-
-Jensen stammered out his story. It explained why there were so many
-passengers for the _Star Queen_. It even explained his departure from
-Altaira. But it was only a rumor--the kind of rumor that starts up
-untraceably and can never be verified. This one was officially denied
-by the Altairan planetary government. But it was widely believed by the
-sort of people who usually were well-informed. Those who could sent
-their families up to the _Star Queen_. And that was why Jensen had been
-tense and worried until the liner had actually left Altaira behind.
-Then he felt safe.
-
-Nordenfeld's jaw set as Jensen told his tale. He made no comment, but
-when Jensen was through he nodded and went away, leaving his drink
-unfinished. Jensen couldn't see his face; it was hard as granite.
-
-And Nordenfeld, the ship's doctor of the _Star Queen_, went into the
-nearest bathroom and was violently sick. It was a reaction to what he'd
-just learned.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-There were stars which were so far away that their distance didn't
-mean anything. There were planets beyond counting in a single star
-cluster, let alone the galaxy. There were comets and gas clouds in
-space, and worlds where there was life, and other worlds where life was
-impossible. The quantity of matter which was associated with life was
-infinitesimal, and the quantity associated with consciousness--animal
-life--was so much less that the difference couldn't be expressed.
-But the amount of animal life which could reason was so minute by
-comparison that the nearest ratio would be that of a single atom to
-a sun. Mankind, in fact, was the least impressive fraction of the
-smallest category of substance in the galaxy.
-
-But men did curious things.
-
-There was the cutting off of the _Star Queen's_ short-distance drive
-before she'd gotten well away from Altaira. There had been a lift-ship
-locked to the liner's passenger airlock. When the last passenger
-entered the big ship--a little girl--the airlocks disconnected and the
-lift-ship pulled swiftly away.
-
-It was not quite two miles from the _Star Queen_ when its emergency
-airlocks opened and spacesuited figures plunged out of it to emptiness.
-Simultaneously, the ports of the lift-ship glowed and almost
-immediately the whole plating turned cherry-red, crimson, and then
-orange, from unlimited heat developed within it.
-
-The lift-ship went incandescent and ruptured and there was a spout
-of white-hot air, and then it turned blue-white and puffed itself to
-nothing in metallic steam. Where it had been there was only shining
-gas, which cooled. Beyond it there were figures in spacesuits which
-tried to swim away from it.
-
-The _Star Queen's_ control room, obviously, saw the happening. The
-lift-ship's atomic pile had flared out of control and melted down the
-ship. It had developed something like sixty thousand degrees Fahrenheit
-when it ceased to flare. It did not blow up; it only vaporized. But
-the process must have begun within seconds after the lift-ship broke
-contact with the _Star Queen_.
-
-In automatic reaction, the man in control of the liner cut her drive
-and offered to turn back and pick up the spacesuited figures in
-emptiness. The offer was declined with almost hysterical haste. In
-fact, it was barely made before the other lift-ships moved in on rescue
-missions. They had waited. And they were picking up castaways before
-the _Star Queen_ resumed its merely interplanetary drive and the
-process of aiming for a solar system some thirty light-years away.
-
-When the liner flicked into overdrive, more than half the floating
-figures had been recovered, which was remarkable. It was almost as
-remarkable as the flare-up of the lift-ship's atomic pile. One has
-to know exactly what to do to make a properly designed atomic pile
-vaporize metal. Somebody had known. Somebody had done it. And the other
-lift-ships were waiting to pick up the destroyed lift-ship's crew when
-it happened.
-
-The matter of the lift-ship's destruction was fresh in Nordenfeld's
-mind when Jensen had told his story. The two items fitted together with
-an appalling completeness. They left little doubt or hope.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Nordenfeld consulted the passenger records and presently was engaged in
-conversation with the sober-faced, composed little girl on a sofa in
-one of the cabin levels of the _Star Queen_.
-
-"You're Kathy Brand, I believe," he said matter-of-factly. "I
-understand you've been having a rather bad time of it."
-
-She seemed to consider.
-
-"It hasn't been too bad," she assured him. "At least I've been seeing
-new things. I got dreadfully tired of seeing the same things all the
-time."
-
-"What things?" asked Nordenfeld. His expression was not stern now,
-though his inner sensations were not pleasant. He needed to talk to
-this child, and he had learned how to talk to children. The secret is
-to talk exactly as to an adult, with respect and interest.
-
-"There weren't any windows," she explained, "and my father couldn't
-play with me, and all the toys and books were ruined by the water. It
-was dreadfully tedious. There weren't any other children, you see. And
-presently there weren't any grownups but my father."
-
-Nordenfeld only looked more interested. He'd been almost sure ever
-since knowing of the lift-ship's destruction and listening to Jensen's
-account of the rumor the government of Altaira denied. He was horribly
-sure now.
-
-"How long were you in the place that hadn't any windows?"
-
-"Oh, dreadfully long!" she said. "Since I was only six years old!
-Almost half my life!" She smiled brightly at him. "I remember looking
-out of windows and even playing out-of-doors, but my father and mother
-said I had to live in this place. My father talked to me often and
-often. He was very nice. But he had to wear that funny suit and keep
-the glass over his face because he didn't live in the room. The glass
-was because he went under the water, you know."
-
-Nordenfeld asked carefully conversational-sounding questions. Kathy
-Brand, now aged ten, had been taken by her father to live in a big room
-without any windows. It hadn't any doors, either. There were plants in
-it, and there were bluish lights to shine on the plants, and there was
-a place in one corner where there was water. When her father came in to
-talk to her, he came up out of the water wearing the funny suit with
-glass over his face. He went out the same way. There was a place in
-the wall where she could look out into another room, and at first her
-mother used to come and smile at her through the glass, and she talked
-into something she held in her hand, and her voice came inside. But
-later she stopped coming.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-There was only one possible kind of place which would answer Kathy's
-description. When she was six years old she had been put into some
-university's aseptic-environment room. And she had stayed there. Such
-rooms were designed for biological research. They were built and then
-made sterile of all bacterial life and afterward entered through a tank
-of antiseptic. Anyone who entered wore a suit which was made germ-free
-by its passage through the antiseptic, and he did not breathe the air
-of the aseptic room, but air which was supplied him through a hose, the
-exhaled-air hose also passing under the antiseptic outside. No germ
-or microbe or virus could possibly get into such a room without being
-bathed in corrosive fluid which would kill it. So long as there was
-someone alive outside to take care of her, a little girl could live
-there and defy even chlorophage.
-
-And Kathy Brand had done it. But, on the other hand, Kamerun was the
-only planet where it would be necessary, and it was the only world
-from which a father would land his small daughter on another planet's
-spaceport. There was no doubt. Nordenfeld grimly imagined someone--he
-would have had to be a microbiologist even to attempt it--fighting to
-survive and defeat the chlorophage while he kept his little girl in an
-aseptic-environment room.
-
-She explained quite pleasantly as Nordenfeld asked more questions.
-There had been other people besides her father, but for a long time
-there had been only him. And Nordenfeld computed that somehow she'd
-been kept alive on the dead planet Kamerun for four long years.
-
-Recently, though--very recently--her father told her that they were
-leaving. Wearing his funny, antiseptic-wetted suit, he'd enclosed her
-in a plastic bag with a tank attached to it. Air flowed from the tank
-into the bag and out through a hose that was all wetted inside. She
-breathed quite comfortably.
-
-It made sense. An air tank could be heated and its contents sterilized
-to supply germ-free--or virus-free--air. And Kathy's father took an axe
-and chopped away a wall of the room. He picked her up, still inside the
-plastic bag, and carried her out. There was nobody about. There was no
-grass. There were no trees. Nothing moved.
-
-Here Kathy's account was vague, but Nordenfeld could guess at the
-strangeness of a dead planet, to the child who barely remembered
-anything but the walls of an aseptic-environment room.
-
-Her father carried her to a little ship, said Kathy, and they talked
-a lot after the ship took off. He told her that he was taking her to
-a place where she could run about outdoors and play, but he had to go
-somewhere else. He did mysterious things which to Nordenfeld meant a
-most scrupulous decontamination of a small spaceship's interior and
-its airlock. Its outer surface would reach a temperature at which no
-organic material could remain uncooked.
-
-And finally, said Kathy, her father had opened a door and told her to
-step out and good-by, and she did, and the ship went away--her father
-still wearing his funny suit--and people came and asked her questions
-she did not understand.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Kathy's narrative fitted perfectly into the rumor Jensen said
-circulated among usually well-informed people on Altaira. They
-believed, said Jensen, that a small spaceship had appeared in the sky
-above Altaira's spaceport. It ignored all calls, landed swiftly, opened
-an airlock and let someone out, and plunged for the sky again. And the
-story said that radar telescopes immediately searched for and found
-the ship in space. They trailed it, calling vainly for it to identify
-itself, while it drove at top speed for Altaira's sun.
-
-It reached the sun and dived in.
-
-Nordenfeld reached the skipper on intercom vision-phone. Jensen had
-been called there to repeat his tale to the skipper.
-
-"I've talked to the child," said Nordenfeld grimly, "and I'm putting
-her into isolation quarters in the hospital compartment. She's from
-Kamerun. She was kept in an aseptic-environment room at some university
-or other. She says her father looked after her. I get an impression of
-a last-ditch fight by microbiologists against the chlorophage. They
-lost it. Apparently her father landed her on Altaira and dived into
-the sun. From her story, he took every possible precaution to keep her
-from contagion or carrying contagion with her to Altaira. Maybe he
-succeeded. There's no way to tell--yet."
-
-The skipper listened in silence.
-
-Jensen said thinly, "Then the story about the landing was true."
-
-"Yes. The authorities isolated her, and then shipped her off on the
-_Star Queen_. Your well-informed friends, Jensen, didn't know what
-their government was going to do!" Nordenfeld paused, and said more
-coldly still, "They didn't handle it right. They should have killed
-her, painlessly but at once. Her body should have been immersed, with
-everything that had touched it, in full-strength nitric acid. The
-same acid should have saturated the place where the ship landed and
-every place she walked. Every room she entered, and every hall she
-passed through, should have been doused with nitric and then burned.
-It would still not have been all one could wish. The air she breathed
-couldn't be recaptured and heated white-hot. But the chances for
-Altaira's population to go on living would be improved. Instead, they
-isolated her and they shipped her off with us--and thought they were
-accomplishing something by destroying the lift-ship that had her in an
-airtight compartment until she walked into the _Star Queen's_ lock!"
-
-The skipper said heavily, "Do you think she's brought chlorophage on
-board?"
-
-"I've no idea," said Nordenfeld. "If she did, it's too late to do
-anything but drive the _Star Queen_ into the nearest sun.... No. Before
-that, one should give warning that she was aground on Altaira. No ship
-should land there. No ship should take off. Altaira should be blocked
-off from the rest of the galaxy like Kamerun was. And to the same end
-result."
-
-Jensen said unsteadily; "There'll be trouble if this is known on the
-ship. There'll be some unwilling to sacrifice themselves."
-
-"Sacrifice?" said Nordenfeld. "They're dead! But before they lie down,
-they can keep everybody they care about from dying too! Would you want
-to land and have your wife and family die of it?"
-
-The skipper said in the same heavy voice, "What are the probabilities?
-You say there was an effort to keep her from contagion. What are the
-odds?"
-
-"Bad," said Nordenfeld. "The man tried, for the child's sake. But I
-doubt he managed to make a completely aseptic transfer from the room
-she lived in to the spaceport on Altaira. The authorities on Altaira
-should have known it. They should have killed her and destroyed
-everything she'd touched. And _still_ the odds would have been bad!"
-
-Jensen said, "But you can't do that, Nordenfeld! Not now!"
-
-"I shall take every measure that seems likely to be useful." Then
-Nordenfeld snapped, "Damnation, man! Do you realize that this
-chlorophage can wipe out the human race if it really gets loose? Do you
-think I'll let sentiment keep me from doing what has to be done?"
-
-He flicked off the vision-phone.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The _Star Queen_ came out of overdrive. Her skipper arranged it to be
-done at the time when the largest possible number of her passengers
-and crew would be asleep. Those who were awake, of course, felt the
-peculiar inaudible sensation which one subjectively translated into
-sound. They felt the momentary giddiness which--having no natural
-parallel--feels like the sensation of treading on a stair-step that
-isn't there, combined with a twisting sensation so it is like a spiral
-fall. The passengers who were awake were mostly in the bars, and the
-bartenders explained that the ship had shifted overdrive generators and
-there was nothing to it.
-
-Those who were asleep started awake, but there was nothing in their
-surroundings to cause alarm. Some blinked in the darkness of their
-cabins and perhaps turned on the cabin lights, but everything seemed
-normal. They turned off the lights again. Some babies cried and had to
-be soothed. But there was nothing except wakening to alarm anybody.
-Babies went back to sleep and mothers returned to their beds and--such
-awakenings being customary--went back to sleep also.
-
-It was natural enough. There were vague and commonplace noises,
-together making an indefinite hum. Fans circulated the ship's purified
-and reinvigorated air. Service motors turned in remote parts of the
-hull. Cooks and bakers moved about in the kitchens. Nobody could tell
-by any physical sensation that the _Star Queen_ was not in overdrive,
-except in the control room.
-
-There the stars could be seen. They were unthinkably remote. The ship
-was light-years from any place where humans lived. She did not drive.
-Her skipper had a family on Cassim. He would not land a plague ship
-which might destroy them. The executive officer had a small son. If
-his return meant that small son's death as well as his own, he would
-not return. All through the ship, the officers who had to know the
-situation recognized that if chlorophage had gotten into the _Star
-Queen_, the ship must not land anywhere. Nobody could survive. Nobody
-must attempt it.
-
-So the huge liner hung in the emptiness between the stars, waiting
-until it could be known definitely that chlorophage was aboard or that
-with absolute certainty it was absent. The question was up to Doctor
-Nordenfeld.
-
-He had isolated himself with Kathy in the ship's hospital compartment.
-Since the ship was built it had been used once by a grown man who
-developed mumps, and once by an adolescent boy who developed a raging
-fever which antibiotics stopped. Health measures for space travel were
-strict. The hospital compartment had only been used those two times.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-On this voyage it had been used to contain an assortment of botanical
-specimens from a planet seventy light-years beyond Regulus. They were
-on their way to the botanical research laboratory on Cassim. As a
-routine precaution they'd been placed in the hospital, which could
-be fumigated when they were taken out. Now the doctor had piled them
-in one side of the compartment, which he had divided in half with a
-transparent plastic sheet. He stayed in that side. Kathy occupied the
-other.
-
-She had some flowering plants to look at and admire. They'd come from
-the air room and she was delighted with their coloring and beauty.
-But Doctor Nordenfeld had put them there as a continuing test for
-chlorophage. If Kathy carried that murderous virus on her person, the
-flowering plants would die of it--probably even before she did.
-
-It was a scrupulously scientific test for the deadly stuff. Completely
-sealed off except for a circulator to freshen the air she breathed,
-Kathy was settled with toys and picture books. It was an improvised
-but well-designed germproof room. The air for Kathy to breathe was
-sterilized before it reached her. The air she had breathed was
-sterilized as it left her plastic-sided residence. It should be the
-perfection of protection for the ship--if it was not already too late.
-
-The vision-phone buzzed. Doctor Nordenfeld stirred in his chair and
-flipped the switch. The _Star Queen's_ skipper looked at him out of the
-screen.
-
-"I've cut the overdrive," said the skipper. "The passengers haven't
-been told."
-
-"Very sensible," said the doctor.
-
-"When will we know?"
-
-"That we can go on living? When the other possibility is exhausted."
-
-"Then, how will we know?" asked skipper stonily.
-
-Doctor Nordenfeld ticked off the possibilities. He bent down a finger.
-"One, her father took great pains. Maybe he did manage an aseptic
-transfer from a germ-free room to Altaira. Kathy may not have been
-exposed to the chlorophage. If she hasn't, no bleached spots will show
-up on the air-room foliage or among the flowering plants in the room
-with her. Nobody in the crew or among the passengers will die."
-
-He bent down a second finger. "It is probably more likely that white
-spots will appear on the plants in the air room _and_ here, and people
-will start to die. That will mean Kathy brought contagion here the
-instant she arrived, and almost certainly that Altaira will become like
-Kamerun--uninhabited. In such a case we are finished."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-He bent down a third finger. "Not so likely, but preferable, white
-spots may appear on the foliage inside the plastic with Kathy, but not
-in the ship's air room. In that case she was exposed, but the virus was
-incubating when she came on board, and only developed and spread after
-she was isolated. Possibly, in such a case, we can save the passengers
-and crew, but the ship will probably have to be melted down in space.
-It would be tricky, but it might be done."
-
-The skipper hesitated. "If that last happened, she--"
-
-"I will take whatever measures are necessary," said Doctor Nordenfeld.
-"To save your conscience, we won't discuss them. They should have been
-taken on Altaira."
-
-He reached over and flipped off the phone. Then he looked up and into
-the other part of the ship's hospital space. Kathy came out from behind
-a screen, where she'd made ready for bed. She was beaming. She had a
-large picture book under one arm and a doll under the other.
-
-"It's all right for me to have these with me, isn't it, Doctor
-Nordenfeld?" she asked hopefully. "I didn't have any picture books but
-one, and it got worn out. And my doll--it was dreadful how shabby she
-was!"
-
-The doctor frowned. She smiled at him. He said, "After all, picture
-books are made to be looked at and dolls to be played with."
-
-She skipped to the tiny hospital bed on the far side of the presumably
-virusproof partition. She climbed into it and zestfully arranged the
-doll to share it. She placed the book within easy reach.
-
-She said, "I think my father would say you were very nice, Doctor
-Nordenfeld, to look after me so well."
-
-"No-o-o-o," said the doctor in a detached voice. "I'm just doing what
-anybody ought to do."
-
-She snuggled down under the covers. He looked at his watch and
-shrugged. It was very easy to confuse official night with official day,
-in space. Everybody else was asleep. He'd been putting Kathy through
-tests which began with measurements of pulse and respiration and
-temperature and went on from there. Kathy managed them herself, under
-his direction.
-
-He settled down with one of the medical books he'd brought into
-the isolation section with him. Its title was _Decontamination of
-Infectious Material from Different Planets_. He read it grimly.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The time came when the _Star Queen_ should have come out of overdrive
-with the sun Circe blazing fiercely nearby, and a green planet with
-ice caps to be approached on interplanetary drive. There should have
-been droning, comforting drive noises to assure the passengers--who
-naturally could not see beyond the ship's steel walls--that they were
-within a mere few million miles of a world where sunshine was normal,
-and skies were higher than ship's ceilings, and there were fascinating
-things to see and do.
-
-Some of the passengers packed their luggage and put it outside their
-cabins to be picked up for landing. But no stewards came for it.
-Presently there was an explanation. The ship had run under maximum
-speed and the planetfall would be delayed.
-
-The passengers were disappointed but not concerned. The luggage
-vanished into cabins again.
-
-The _Star Queen_ floated in space among a thousand thousand million
-stars. Her astrogators had computed a course to the nearest star into
-which to drive the _Star Queen_, but it would not be used unless there
-was mutiny among the crew. It would be better to go in remote orbit
-around Circe III and give the news of chlorophage on Altaira, if Doctor
-Nordenfeld reported it on the ship.
-
-Time passed. One day. Two. Three. Then Jensen called the hospital
-compartment on vision-phone. His expression was dazed. Nordenfeld saw
-the interior of the control room behind Jensen. He said, "You're a
-passenger, Jensen. How is it you're in the control room?"
-
-Jensen moistened his lips. "The skipper thought I'd better not
-associate with the other passengers. I've stayed with the officers the
-past few days. We--the ones who know what's in prospect--we're keeping
-separate from the others so--nobody will let anything out by accident."
-
-"Very wise. When the skipper comes back on duty, ask him to call me.
-I've something interesting to tell him."
-
-"He's--checking something now," said Jensen. His voice was thin and
-reedy. "The--air officer reports there are white patches on the plants
-in the air room. They're growing. Fast. He told me to tell you.
-He's--gone to make sure."
-
-"No need," said Nordenfeld bitterly.
-
-He swung the vision-screen. It faced that part of the hospital space
-beyond the plastic sheeting. There were potted flowering plants there.
-They had pleased Kathy. They shared her air. And there were white
-patches on their leaves.
-
-"I thought," said Nordenfeld with an odd mirthless levity, "that the
-skipper'd be interested. It is of no importance whatever now, but
-I accomplished something remarkable. Kathy's father didn't manage
-an aseptic transfer. She brought the chlorophage with her. But I
-confined it. The plants on the far side of that plastic sheet show the
-chlorophage patches plainly. I expect Kathy to show signs of anemia
-shortly. I'd decided that drastic measures would have to be taken,
-and it looked like they might work, because I've confined the virus.
-It's there where Kathy is, but it isn't where I am. All the botanical
-specimens on my side of the sheet are untouched. The phage hasn't hit
-them. It is remarkable. But it doesn't matter a damn if the air room's
-infected. And I was so proud!"
-
-Jensen did not respond.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Nordenfeld said ironically, "Look what I accomplished! I protected
-the air plants on my side See? They're beautifully green! No sign of
-infection! It means that a man can work with chlorophage! A laboratory
-ship could land on Kamerun and keep itself the equivalent of an
-aseptic-environment room while the damned chlorophage was investigated
-and ultimately whipped! And it doesn't matter!"
-
-Jensen said numbly, "We can't ever make port. We ought--we ought to--"
-
-"We'll take the necessary measures," Nordenfeld told him. "Very quietly
-and very efficiently, with neither the crew nor the passengers knowing
-that Altaira sent the chlorophage on board the _Star Queen_ in the hope
-of banishing it from there. The passengers won't know that their own
-officials shipped it off with them as they tried to run away.... And
-I was so proud that I'd improvised an aseptic room to keep Kathy in! I
-sterilized the air that went in to her, and I sterilized--"
-
-Then he stopped. He stopped quite short. He stared at the air unit, set
-up and with two pipes passing through the plastic partition which cut
-the hospital space in two. He turned utterly white. He went roughly to
-the air machine. He jerked back its cover. He put his hand inside.
-
-Minutes later he faced back to the vision-screen from which Jensen
-looked apathetically at him.
-
-"Tell the skipper to call me," he said in a savage tone. "Tell him to
-call me instantly he comes back! Before he issues any orders at all!"
-
-He bent over the sterilizing equipment and very carefully began to
-disassemble it. He had it completely apart when Kathy waked. She peered
-at him through the plastic separation sheet.
-
-"Good morning, Doctor Nordenfeld," she said cheerfully.
-
-The doctor grunted. Kathy smiled at him. She had gotten on very good
-terms with the doctor, since she'd been kept in the ship's hospital.
-She did not feel that she was isolated. In having the doctor where she
-could talk to him at any time, she had much more company than ever
-before. She had read her entire picture book to him and discussed her
-doll at length. She took it for granted that when he did not answer or
-frowned that he was simply busy. But he was company because she could
-see him.
-
-Doctor Nordenfeld put the air apparatus together with an extremely
-peculiar expression on his face. It had been built for Kathy's special
-isolation by a ship's mechanic. It should sterilize the used air going
-into Kathy's part of the compartment, and it should sterilize the
-used air pushed out by the supplied fresh air. The hospital itself
-was an independent sealed unit, with its own chemical air freshener,
-and it had been divided into two. The air freshener was where Doctor
-Nordenfeld could attend to it, and the sterilizer pump simply shared
-the freshening with Kathy. But--
-
-But the pipe that pumped air to Kathy was brown and discolored from
-having been used for sterilizing, and the pipe that brought air back
-was not. It was cold. It had never been heated.
-
-So Doctor Nordenfeld had been exposed to any contagion Kathy could
-spread. He hadn't been protected at all. Yet the potted plants on
-Kathy's side of the barrier were marked with great white splotches
-which grew almost as one looked, while the botanical specimens in the
-doctor's part of the hospital--as much infected as Kathy's could have
-been, by failure of the ship's mechanic to build the sterilizer to work
-two ways: the stacked plants, the alien plants, the strange plants from
-seventy light-years beyond Regulus--they were vividly green. There
-was no trace of chlorophage on them. Yet they had been as thoroughly
-exposed as Doctor Nordenfeld himself!
-
-The doctor's hands shook. His eyes burned. He took out a surgeon's
-scalpel and ripped the plastic partition from floor to ceiling. Kathy
-watched interestedly.
-
-"Why did you do that, Doctor Nordenfeld?" she asked.
-
-He said in an emotionless, unnatural voice, "I'm going to do something
-that it was very stupid of me not to do before. It should have been
-done when you were six years old, Kathy. It should have been done on
-Kamerun, and after that on Altaira. Now we're going to do it here. You
-can help me."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The _Star Queen_ had floated out of overdrive long enough to throw all
-distance computations off. But she swung about, and swam back, and
-presently she was not too far from the world where she was now many
-days overdue. Lift-ships started up from the planet's surface. But the
-_Star Queen_ ordered them back.
-
-"Get your spaceport health officer on the vision-phone," ordered the
-_Star Queen's_ skipper. "We've had chlorophage on board."
-
-There was panic. Even at a distance of a hundred thousand miles,
-chlorophage could strike stark terror into anybody. But presently the
-image of the spaceport health officer appeared on the _Star Queen's_
-screen.
-
-"We're not landing," said Doctor Nordenfeld. "There's almost certainly
-an outbreak of chlorophage on Altaira, and we're going back to do
-something about it. It got on our ship with passengers from there.
-We've whipped it, but we may need some help."
-
-The image of the health officer aground was a mask of horror for
-seconds after Nordenfeld's last statement. Then his expression became
-incredulous, though still horrified.
-
-"We came on to here," said Doctor Nordenfeld, "to get you to send
-word by the first other ship to the Patrol that a quarantine has
-to be set up on Altaira, and we need to be inspected for recovery
-from chlorophage infection. And we need to pass on, officially, the
-discovery that whipped the contagion on this ship. We were carrying
-botanical specimens to Cassim and we discovered that they were immune
-to chlorophage. That's absurd, of course. Their green coloring is the
-same substance as in plants under Sol-type suns anywhere. They couldn't
-be immune to chlorophage. So there had to be something else."
-
-"Was--was there?" asked the health officer.
-
-"There was. Those specimens came from somewhere beyond Regulus. They
-carried, as normal symbiotes on their foliage, microörganisms unknown
-both on Kamerun and Altaira. The alien bugs are almost the size of
-virus particles, feed on virus particles, and are carried by contact,
-air, and so on, as readily as virus particles themselves. We discovered
-that those microörganisms devoured chlorophage. We washed them off the
-leaves of the plants, sprayed them in our air-room jungle, and they
-multiplied faster than the chlorophage. Our whole air supply is now
-loaded with an airborne antichlorophage organism which has made our
-crew and passengers immune. We're heading back to Altaira to turn loose
-our merry little bugs on that planet. It appears that they grow on
-certain vegetation, but they'll live anywhere there's phage to eat.
-We're keeping some chlorophage cultures alive so our microörganisms
-don't die out for lack of food!"
-
-The medical officer on the ground gasped. "Keeping phage _alive_?"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"I hope you've recorded this," said Nordenfeld. "It's rather important.
-This trick should have been tried on Kamerun and Altaira and everywhere
-else new diseases have turned up. When there's a bug on one planet
-that's deadly to us, there's bound to be a bug on some other planet
-that's deadly to it! The same goes for any pests or vermin--the
-principle of natural enemies. All we have to do is find the enemies!"
-
-There was more communication between the _Star Queen_ and the spaceport
-on Circe III, which the _Star Queen_ would not make other contact with
-on this trip, and presently the big liner headed back to Altaira. It
-was necessary for official as well as humanitarian reasons. There would
-need to be a health examination of the _Star Queen_ to certify that it
-was safe for passengers to breathe her air and eat in her restaurants
-and swim in her swimming pools and occupy the six levels of passenger
-cabins she contained. This would have to be done by a Patrol ship,
-which would turn up at Altaira.
-
-The _Star Queen's_ skipper would be praised by his owners for not
-having driven the liner into a star, and the purser would be forgiven
-for the confusion in his records due to off-schedule operations of
-the big ship, and Jensen would find in the ending of all terror of
-chlorophage an excellent reason to look for appreciation in the value
-of the investments he was checking up. And Doctor Nordenfeld....
-
-He talked very gravely to Kathy. "I'm afraid," he told her, "that your
-father isn't coming back. What would you like to do?"
-
-She smiled at him hopefully. "Could I be your little girl?" she asked.
-Doctor Nordenfeld grunted. "Hm ... I'll think about it."
-
-But he smiled at her. She grinned at him. And it was settled.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor, by Murray Leinster
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR ***
-
-***** This file should be named 51782-8.txt or 51782-8.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/7/8/51782/
-
-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 public domain print editions 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.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
-http://gutenberg.org/license).
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
-http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
-809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
-business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
-information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
-page at http://pglaf.org
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit http://pglaf.org
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/51782-8.zip b/old/51782-8.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 201a13c..0000000
--- a/old/51782-8.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/old/51782-h.zip b/old/51782-h.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index fd4fc2b..0000000
--- a/old/51782-h.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/old/51782-h/51782-h.htm b/old/51782-h/51782-h.htm
deleted file mode 100644
index 59e3939..0000000
--- a/old/51782-h/51782-h.htm
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,1555 +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 Doctor, by Murray Leinster.
-    </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 Doctor, by Murray Leinster
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-
-Title: Doctor
-
-Author: Murray Leinster
-
-Release Date: April 17, 2016 [EBook #51782]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR ***
-
-
-
-
-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="392" height="500" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-<h1>DOCTOR</h1>
-
-<p>BY MURRAY LEINSTER</p>
-
-<p>Illustrated by FINLAY</p>
-
-<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
-Galaxy Magazine February 1961.<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/illus1.jpg" width="600" height="425" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p class="ph3">Suddenly the biggest thing in the<br />
-universe was the very tiniest.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>There were suns, which were nearby, and there were stars which were
-so far away that no way of telling their distance had any meaning.
-The suns had planets, most of which did not matter, but the ones that
-did count had seas and continents, and the continents had cities and
-highways and spaceports. And people.</p>
-
-<p>The people paid no attention to their insignificance. They built ships
-which went through emptiness beyond imagining, and they landed upon
-planets and rebuilt them to their own liking. Suns flamed terribly,
-renting their impertinence, and storms swept across the planets
-they pre&euml;mpted, but the people built more strongly and were secure.
-Everything in the universe was bigger or stronger than the people,
-but they ignored the fact. They went about the businesses they had
-contrived for themselves.</p>
-
-<p>They were not afraid of anything until somewhere on a certain small
-planet an infinitesimal single molecule changed itself.</p>
-
-<p>It was one molecule among unthinkably many, upon one planet of one
-solar system among uncountable star clusters. It was not exactly alive,
-but it acted as if it were, in which it was like all the important
-matter of the cosmos. It was actually a combination of two complicated
-substances not too firmly joined together. When one of the parts
-changed, it became a new molecule. But, like the original one, it was
-still capable of a process called autocatalysis. It practiced that
-process and catalyzed other molecules into existence, which in each
-case were duplicates of itself. Then mankind had to take notice, though
-it ignored flaming suns and monstrous storms and emptiness past belief.</p>
-
-<p>Men called the new molecule a virus and gave it a name. They called it
-and its duplicates "chlorophage." And chlorophage was, to people, the
-most terrifying thing in the universe.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>In a strictly temporary orbit around the planet Altaira, the <i>Star
-Queen</i> floated, while lift-ships brought passengers and cargo up to
-it. The ship was too large to be landed economically at an unimportant
-spaceport like Altaira. It was a very modern ship and it made the
-Regulus-to-Cassim run, which is five hundred light-years, in only fifty
-days of Earthtime.</p>
-
-<p>Now the lift-ships were busy. There was an unusual number of passengers
-to board the <i>Star Queen</i> at Altaira and an unusual number of them were
-women and children. The children tended to pudginess and the women had
-the dieted look of the wives of well-to-do men. Most of them looked
-red-eyed, as if they had been crying.</p>
-
-<p>One by one the lift-ships hooked onto the airlock of the <i>Star Queen</i>
-and delivered passengers and cargo to the ship. Presently the last of
-them was hooked on, and the last batch of passengers came through to
-the liner, and the ship's doctor watched them stream past him.</p>
-
-<p>His air was negligent, but he was actually impatient. Like most
-doctors, Nordenfeld approved of lean children and wiry women. They had
-fewer things wrong with them and they responded better to treatment.
-Well, he was the doctor of the <i>Star Queen</i> and he had much authority.
-He'd exerted it back on Regulus to insist that a shipment of botanical
-specimens for Cassim travel in quarantine&mdash;to be exact, in the ship's
-practically unused hospital compartment&mdash;and he was prepared to
-exercise authority over the passengers.</p>
-
-<p>He had a sheaf of health slips from the examiners on the ground below.
-There was one slip for each passenger. It certified that so-and-so had
-been examined and could safely be admitted to the <i>Star Queen's</i> air,
-her four restaurants, her two swimming pools, her recreation areas and
-the six levels of passenger cabins the ship contained.</p>
-
-<p>He impatiently watched the people go by. Health slips or no health
-slips, he looked them over. A characteristic gait or a typical
-complexion tint, or even a certain lack of hair luster, could tell him
-things that ground physicians might miss. In such a case the passenger
-would go back down again. It was not desirable to have deaths on a
-liner in space. Of course nobody was ever refused passage because of
-chlorophage. If it were ever discovered, the discovery would already be
-too late. But the health regulations for space travel were very, very
-strict.</p>
-
-<p>He looked twice at a young woman as she passed. Despite applied
-complexion, there was a trace of waxiness in her skin. Nordenfeld had
-never actually seen a case of chlorophage. No doctor alive ever had.
-The best authorities were those who'd been in Patrol ships during the
-quarantine of Kamerun when chlorophage was loose on that planet. They'd
-seen beamed-up pictures of patients, but not patients themselves. The
-Patrol ships stayed in orbit while the planet died. Most doctors, and
-Nordenfeld was among them, had only seen pictures of the screens which
-showed the patients.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>He looked sharply at the young woman. Then he glanced at her hands.
-They were normal. The young woman went on, unaware that for the
-fraction of an instant there had been the possibility of the landing of
-the <i>Star Queen</i> on Altaira, and the destruction of her space drive,
-and the establishment of a quarantine which, if justified, would mean
-that nobody could ever leave Altaira again, but must wait there to die.
-Which would not be a long wait.</p>
-
-<p>A fat man puffed past. The gravity on Altaira was some five per cent
-under ship-normal and he felt the difference at once. But the veins at
-his temples were ungorged. Nordenfeld let him go by.</p>
-
-<p>There appeared a white-haired, space-tanned man with a briefcase under
-his arm. He saw Nordenfeld and lifted a hand in greeting. The doctor
-knew him. He stepped aside from the passengers and stood there. His
-name was Jensen, and he represented a fund which invested the surplus
-money of insurance companies. He traveled a great deal to check on the
-business interests of that organization.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor grunted, "What're you doing here? I thought you'd be on the
-far side of the cluster."</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, I get about," said Jensen. His manner was not quite normal. He was
-tense. "I got here two weeks ago on a Q-and-C tramp from Regulus. We
-were a ship load of salt meat. There's romance for you! Salt meat by
-the spaceship load!"</p>
-
-<p>The doctor grunted again. All sorts of things moved through space,
-naturally. The <i>Star Queen</i> carried a botanical collection for a museum
-and pig-beryllium and furs and enzymes and a list of items no man could
-remember. He watched the passengers go by, automatically counting them
-against the number of health slips in his hand.</p>
-
-<p>"Lots of passengers this trip," said Jensen.</p>
-
-<p>"Yes," said the doctor, watching a man with a limp. "Why?"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen shrugged and did not answer. He was uneasy, the doctor noted.
-He and Jensen were as much unlike as two men could very well be, but
-Jensen was good company. A ship's doctor does not have much congenial
-society.</p>
-
-<p>The file of passengers ended abruptly. There was no one in the <i>Star
-Queen's</i> airlock, but the "Connected" lights still burned and the
-doctor could look through into the small lift-ship from the planet down
-below. He frowned. He fingered the sheaf of papers.</p>
-
-<p>"Unless I missed count," he said annoyedly, "there's supposed to be one
-more passenger. I don't see&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>A door opened far back in the lift-ship. A small figure appeared. It
-was a little girl perhaps ten years old. She was very neatly dressed,
-though not quite the way a mother would have done it. She wore the
-carefully composed expression of a child with no adult in charge of
-her. She walked precisely from the lift-ship into the <i>Star Queen's</i>
-lock. The opening closed briskly behind her. There was the rumbling of
-seals making themselves tight. The lights flickered for "Disconnect"
-and then "All Clear." They went out, and the lift-ship had pulled away
-from the <i>Star Queen</i>.</p>
-
-<p>"There's my missing passenger," said the doctor.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The child looked soberly about. She saw him. "Excuse me," she said very
-politely. "Is this the way I'm supposed to go?"</p>
-
-<p>"Through that door," said the doctor gruffly.</p>
-
-<p>"Thank you," said the little girl. She followed his direction. She
-vanished through the door. It closed.</p>
-
-<p>There came a deep, droning sound, which was the interplanetary drive
-of the <i>Star Queen</i>, building up that directional stress in space
-which had seemed such a triumph when it was first contrived. The ship
-swung gently. It would be turning out from orbit around Altaira. It
-swung again. The doctor knew that its astrogators were feeling for the
-incredibly exact pointing of its nose toward the next port which modern
-commercial ship operation required. An error of fractional seconds of
-arc would mean valuable time lost in making port some ten light-years
-of distance away. The drive droned and droned, building up velocity
-while the ship's aiming was refined and re-refined.</p>
-
-<p>The drive cut off abruptly. Jensen turned white.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor said impatiently, "There's nothing wrong. Probably a message
-or a report should have been beamed down to the planet and somebody
-forgot. We'll go on in a minute."</p>
-
-<p>But Jensen stood frozen. He was very pale. The interplanetary drive
-stayed off. Thirty seconds. A minute. Jensen swallowed audibly. Two
-minutes. Three.</p>
-
-<p>The steady, monotonous drone began again. It continued interminably, as
-if while it was off the ship's head had swung wide of its destination
-and the whole business of lining up for a jump in overdrive had to be
-done all over again.</p>
-
-<p>Then there came that "Ping-g-g-g!" and the sensation of spiral fall
-which meant overdrive. The droning ceased.</p>
-
-<p>Jensen breathed again. The ship's doctor looked at him sharply. Jensen
-had been taut. Now the tensions had left his body, but he looked as
-if he were going to shiver. Instead, he mopped a suddenly streaming
-forehead.</p>
-
-<p>"I think," said Jensen in a strange voice, "that I'll have a drink. Or
-several. Will you join me?"</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld searched his face. A ship's doctor has many duties in
-space. Passengers can have many things wrong with them, and in the
-absolute isolation of overdrive they can be remarkably affected by each
-other.</p>
-
-<p>"I'll be at the fourth-level bar in twenty minutes," said Nordenfeld.
-"Can you wait that long?"</p>
-
-<p>"I probably won't wait to have a drink," said Jensen. "But I'll be
-there."</p>
-
-<p>The doctor nodded curtly. He went away. He made no guesses, though he'd
-just observed the new passengers carefully and was fully aware of the
-strict health regulations that affect space travel. As a physician he
-knew that the most deadly thing in the universe was chlorophage and
-that the planet Kamerun was only one solar system away. It had been
-a stop for the <i>Star Queen</i> until four years ago. He puzzled over
-Jensen's tenseness and the relief he'd displayed when the overdrive
-field came on. But he didn't guess. Chlorophage didn't enter his mind.</p>
-
-<p>Not until later.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>He saw the little girl who'd come out of the airlock last of all the
-passengers. She sat on a sofa as if someone had told her to wait there
-until something or other was arranged. Doctor Nordenfeld barely glanced
-at her. He'd known Jensen for a considerable time. Jensen had been
-a passenger on the <i>Star Queen</i> half a dozen times, and he shouldn't
-have been upset by the temporary stoppage of an interplanetary drive.
-Nordenfeld divided people into two classes, those who were not and
-those who were worth talking to. There weren't many of the latter.
-Jensen was.</p>
-
-<p>He filed away the health slips. Then, thinking of Jensen's pallor,
-he asked what had happened to make the <i>Star Queen</i> interrupt her
-slow-speed drive away from orbit around Altaira.</p>
-
-<p>The purser told him. But the purser was fussily concerned because there
-were so many extra passengers from Altaira. He might not be able to
-take on the expected number of passengers at the next stop-over point.
-It would be bad business to have to refuse passengers! It would give
-the space line a bad name.</p>
-
-<p>Then the air officer stopped Nordenfeld as he was about to join Jensen
-in the fourth-level bar. It was time for a medical inspection of the
-quarter-acre of Banthyan jungle which purified and renewed the air
-of the ship. Nordenfeld was expected to check the complex ecological
-system of the air room. Specifically, he was expected to look for and
-identify any patches of colorlessness appearing on the foliage of the
-jungle plants the <i>Star Queen</i> carried through space.</p>
-
-<p>The air officer was discreet and Nordenfeld was silent about the
-ultimate reason for the inspection. Nobody liked to think about it. But
-if a particular kind of bleaching appeared, as if the chlorophyll of
-the leaves were being devoured by something too small to be seen by an
-optical microscope&mdash;why, that would be chlorophage. It would also be a
-death sentence for the <i>Star Queen</i> and everybody in her.</p>
-
-<p>But the jungle passed medical inspection. The plants grew lushly in
-soil which periodically was flushed with hydroponic solution and
-then drained away again. The UV lamps were properly distributed and
-the different quarters of the air room were alternately lighted and
-darkened. And there were no colorless patches. A steady wind blew
-through the air room and had its excess moisture and unpleasing smells
-wrung out before it recirculated through the ship. Doctor Nordenfeld
-authorized the trimming of some liana-like growths which were
-developing woody tissue at the expense of leaves.</p>
-
-<p>The air officer also told him about the reason for the turning off of
-the interplanetary drive. He considered it a very curious happening.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor left the air room and passed the place where the little
-girl&mdash;the last passenger to board the <i>Star Queen</i>&mdash;waited patiently
-for somebody to arrange something. Doctor Nordenfeld took a lift to the
-fourth level and went into the bar where Jensen should be waiting.</p>
-
-<p>He was. He had an empty glass before him. Nordenfeld sat down and
-dialed for a drink. He had an indefinite feeling that something was
-wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. There are always things
-going wrong for a ship's doctor, though. There are so many demands on
-his patience that he is usually short of it.</p>
-
-<p>Jensen watched him sip at his drink.</p>
-
-<p>"A bad day?" he asked. He'd gotten over his own tension.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Nordenfeld shrugged, but his scowl deepened. "There are a lot of new
-passengers." He realized that he was trying to explain his feelings to
-himself. "They'll come to me feeling miserable. I have to tell each one
-that if they feel heavy and depressed, it may be the gravity-constant
-of the ship, which is greater than their home planet. If they feel
-light-headed and giddy, it may be because the gravity-constant of
-the ship is less than they're used to. But it doesn't make them feel
-better, so they come back for a second assurance. I'll be overwhelmed
-with such complaints within two hours."</p>
-
-<p>Jensen waited. Then he said casually&mdash;too casually, "Does anybody ever
-suspect chlorophage?"</p>
-
-<p>"No," said Nordenfeld shortly.</p>
-
-<p>Jensen fidgeted. He sipped. Then he said, "What's the news from
-Kamerun, anyhow?"</p>
-
-<p>"There isn't any," said Nordenfeld. "Naturally! Why ask?"</p>
-
-<p>"I just wondered," said Jensen. After a moment: "What was the last
-news?"</p>
-
-<p>"There hasn't been a message from Kamerun in two years," said
-Nordenfeld curtly. "There's no sign of anything green anywhere on the
-planet. It's considered to be&mdash;uninhabited."</p>
-
-<p>Jensen licked his lips. "That's what I understood. Yes."</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld drank half his drink and said unpleasantly, "There were
-thirty million people on Kamerun when the chlorophage appeared. At
-first it was apparently a virus which fed on the chlorophyll of
-plants. They died. Then it was discovered that it could also feed on
-hemoglobin, which is chemically close to chlorophyll. Hemoglobin is the
-red coloring matter of the blood. When the virus consumed it, people
-began to die. Kamerun doctors found that the chlorophage virus was
-transmitted by contact, by inhalation, by ingestion. It traveled as
-dust particles and on the feet of insects, and it was in drinking water
-and the air one breathed. The doctors on Kamerun warned spaceships
-off and the Patrol put a quarantine fleet in orbit around it to keep
-anybody from leaving. And nobody left. And everybody died. <i>And</i> so did
-every living thing that had chlorophyll in its leaves or hemoglobin in
-its blood, or that needed plant or animal tissues to feed on. There's
-not a person left alive on Kamerun, nor an animal or bird or insect,
-nor a fish nor a tree, or plant or weed or blade of grass. There's no
-longer a quarantine fleet there. Nobody'll go there and there's nobody
-left to leave. But there are beacon satellites to record any calls and
-to warn any fool against landing. If the chlorophage got loose and was
-carried about by spaceships, it could kill the other forty billion
-humans in the galaxy, together with every green plant or animal with
-hemoglobin in its blood."</p>
-
-<p>"That," said Jensen, and tried to smile, "sounds final."</p>
-
-<p>"It isn't," Nordenfeld told him. "If there's something in the
-universe which can kill every living thing except its maker, that
-something should be killed. There should be research going on about
-the chlorophage. It would be deadly dangerous work, but it should be
-done. A quarantine won't stop contagion. It can only hinder it. That's
-useful, but not enough."</p>
-
-<p>Jensen moistened his lips.</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld said abruptly, "I've answered your questions. Now what's on
-your mind and what has it to do with chlorophage?"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen started. He went very pale.</p>
-
-<p>"It's too late to do anything about it," said Nordenfeld. "It's
-probably nonsense anyhow. But what is it?"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen stammered out his story. It explained why there were so many
-passengers for the <i>Star Queen</i>. It even explained his departure from
-Altaira. But it was only a rumor&mdash;the kind of rumor that starts up
-untraceably and can never be verified. This one was officially denied
-by the Altairan planetary government. But it was widely believed by the
-sort of people who usually were well-informed. Those who could sent
-their families up to the <i>Star Queen</i>. And that was why Jensen had been
-tense and worried until the liner had actually left Altaira behind.
-Then he felt safe.</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld's jaw set as Jensen told his tale. He made no comment, but
-when Jensen was through he nodded and went away, leaving his drink
-unfinished. Jensen couldn't see his face; it was hard as granite.</p>
-
-<p>And Nordenfeld, the ship's doctor of the <i>Star Queen</i>, went into the
-nearest bathroom and was violently sick. It was a reaction to what he'd
-just learned.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>There were stars which were so far away that their distance didn't
-mean anything. There were planets beyond counting in a single star
-cluster, let alone the galaxy. There were comets and gas clouds in
-space, and worlds where there was life, and other worlds where life was
-impossible. The quantity of matter which was associated with life was
-infinitesimal, and the quantity associated with consciousness&mdash;animal
-life&mdash;was so much less that the difference couldn't be expressed.
-But the amount of animal life which could reason was so minute by
-comparison that the nearest ratio would be that of a single atom to
-a sun. Mankind, in fact, was the least impressive fraction of the
-smallest category of substance in the galaxy.</p>
-
-<p>But men did curious things.</p>
-
-<p>There was the cutting off of the <i>Star Queen's</i> short-distance drive
-before she'd gotten well away from Altaira. There had been a lift-ship
-locked to the liner's passenger airlock. When the last passenger
-entered the big ship&mdash;a little girl&mdash;the airlocks disconnected and the
-lift-ship pulled swiftly away.</p>
-
-<p>It was not quite two miles from the <i>Star Queen</i> when its emergency
-airlocks opened and spacesuited figures plunged out of it to emptiness.
-Simultaneously, the ports of the lift-ship glowed and almost
-immediately the whole plating turned cherry-red, crimson, and then
-orange, from unlimited heat developed within it.</p>
-
-<p>The lift-ship went incandescent and ruptured and there was a spout
-of white-hot air, and then it turned blue-white and puffed itself to
-nothing in metallic steam. Where it had been there was only shining
-gas, which cooled. Beyond it there were figures in spacesuits which
-tried to swim away from it.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Star Queen's</i> control room, obviously, saw the happening. The
-lift-ship's atomic pile had flared out of control and melted down the
-ship. It had developed something like sixty thousand degrees Fahrenheit
-when it ceased to flare. It did not blow up; it only vaporized. But
-the process must have begun within seconds after the lift-ship broke
-contact with the <i>Star Queen</i>.</p>
-
-<p>In automatic reaction, the man in control of the liner cut her drive
-and offered to turn back and pick up the spacesuited figures in
-emptiness. The offer was declined with almost hysterical haste. In
-fact, it was barely made before the other lift-ships moved in on rescue
-missions. They had waited. And they were picking up castaways before
-the <i>Star Queen</i> resumed its merely interplanetary drive and the
-process of aiming for a solar system some thirty light-years away.</p>
-
-<p>When the liner flicked into overdrive, more than half the floating
-figures had been recovered, which was remarkable. It was almost as
-remarkable as the flare-up of the lift-ship's atomic pile. One has
-to know exactly what to do to make a properly designed atomic pile
-vaporize metal. Somebody had known. Somebody had done it. And the other
-lift-ships were waiting to pick up the destroyed lift-ship's crew when
-it happened.</p>
-
-<p>The matter of the lift-ship's destruction was fresh in Nordenfeld's
-mind when Jensen had told his story. The two items fitted together with
-an appalling completeness. They left little doubt or hope.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Nordenfeld consulted the passenger records and presently was engaged in
-conversation with the sober-faced, composed little girl on a sofa in
-one of the cabin levels of the <i>Star Queen</i>.</p>
-
-<p>"You're Kathy Brand, I believe," he said matter-of-factly. "I
-understand you've been having a rather bad time of it."</p>
-
-<p>She seemed to consider.</p>
-
-<p>"It hasn't been too bad," she assured him. "At least I've been seeing
-new things. I got dreadfully tired of seeing the same things all the
-time."</p>
-
-<p>"What things?" asked Nordenfeld. His expression was not stern now,
-though his inner sensations were not pleasant. He needed to talk to
-this child, and he had learned how to talk to children. The secret is
-to talk exactly as to an adult, with respect and interest.</p>
-
-<p>"There weren't any windows," she explained, "and my father couldn't
-play with me, and all the toys and books were ruined by the water. It
-was dreadfully tedious. There weren't any other children, you see. And
-presently there weren't any grownups but my father."</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld only looked more interested. He'd been almost sure ever
-since knowing of the lift-ship's destruction and listening to Jensen's
-account of the rumor the government of Altaira denied. He was horribly
-sure now.</p>
-
-<p>"How long were you in the place that hadn't any windows?"</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, dreadfully long!" she said. "Since I was only six years old!
-Almost half my life!" She smiled brightly at him. "I remember looking
-out of windows and even playing out-of-doors, but my father and mother
-said I had to live in this place. My father talked to me often and
-often. He was very nice. But he had to wear that funny suit and keep
-the glass over his face because he didn't live in the room. The glass
-was because he went under the water, you know."</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld asked carefully conversational-sounding questions. Kathy
-Brand, now aged ten, had been taken by her father to live in a big room
-without any windows. It hadn't any doors, either. There were plants in
-it, and there were bluish lights to shine on the plants, and there was
-a place in one corner where there was water. When her father came in to
-talk to her, he came up out of the water wearing the funny suit with
-glass over his face. He went out the same way. There was a place in
-the wall where she could look out into another room, and at first her
-mother used to come and smile at her through the glass, and she talked
-into something she held in her hand, and her voice came inside. But
-later she stopped coming.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>There was only one possible kind of place which would answer Kathy's
-description. When she was six years old she had been put into some
-university's aseptic-environment room. And she had stayed there. Such
-rooms were designed for biological research. They were built and then
-made sterile of all bacterial life and afterward entered through a tank
-of antiseptic. Anyone who entered wore a suit which was made germ-free
-by its passage through the antiseptic, and he did not breathe the air
-of the aseptic room, but air which was supplied him through a hose, the
-exhaled-air hose also passing under the antiseptic outside. No germ
-or microbe or virus could possibly get into such a room without being
-bathed in corrosive fluid which would kill it. So long as there was
-someone alive outside to take care of her, a little girl could live
-there and defy even chlorophage.</p>
-
-<p>And Kathy Brand had done it. But, on the other hand, Kamerun was the
-only planet where it would be necessary, and it was the only world
-from which a father would land his small daughter on another planet's
-spaceport. There was no doubt. Nordenfeld grimly imagined someone&mdash;he
-would have had to be a microbiologist even to attempt it&mdash;fighting to
-survive and defeat the chlorophage while he kept his little girl in an
-aseptic-environment room.</p>
-
-<p>She explained quite pleasantly as Nordenfeld asked more questions.
-There had been other people besides her father, but for a long time
-there had been only him. And Nordenfeld computed that somehow she'd
-been kept alive on the dead planet Kamerun for four long years.</p>
-
-<p>Recently, though&mdash;very recently&mdash;her father told her that they were
-leaving. Wearing his funny, antiseptic-wetted suit, he'd enclosed her
-in a plastic bag with a tank attached to it. Air flowed from the tank
-into the bag and out through a hose that was all wetted inside. She
-breathed quite comfortably.</p>
-
-<p>It made sense. An air tank could be heated and its contents sterilized
-to supply germ-free&mdash;or virus-free&mdash;air. And Kathy's father took an axe
-and chopped away a wall of the room. He picked her up, still inside the
-plastic bag, and carried her out. There was nobody about. There was no
-grass. There were no trees. Nothing moved.</p>
-
-<p>Here Kathy's account was vague, but Nordenfeld could guess at the
-strangeness of a dead planet, to the child who barely remembered
-anything but the walls of an aseptic-environment room.</p>
-
-<p>Her father carried her to a little ship, said Kathy, and they talked
-a lot after the ship took off. He told her that he was taking her to
-a place where she could run about outdoors and play, but he had to go
-somewhere else. He did mysterious things which to Nordenfeld meant a
-most scrupulous decontamination of a small spaceship's interior and
-its airlock. Its outer surface would reach a temperature at which no
-organic material could remain uncooked.</p>
-
-<p>And finally, said Kathy, her father had opened a door and told her to
-step out and good-by, and she did, and the ship went away&mdash;her father
-still wearing his funny suit&mdash;and people came and asked her questions
-she did not understand.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Kathy's narrative fitted perfectly into the rumor Jensen said
-circulated among usually well-informed people on Altaira. They
-believed, said Jensen, that a small spaceship had appeared in the sky
-above Altaira's spaceport. It ignored all calls, landed swiftly, opened
-an airlock and let someone out, and plunged for the sky again. And the
-story said that radar telescopes immediately searched for and found
-the ship in space. They trailed it, calling vainly for it to identify
-itself, while it drove at top speed for Altaira's sun.</p>
-
-<p>It reached the sun and dived in.</p>
-
-<p>Nordenfeld reached the skipper on intercom vision-phone. Jensen had
-been called there to repeat his tale to the skipper.</p>
-
-<p>"I've talked to the child," said Nordenfeld grimly, "and I'm putting
-her into isolation quarters in the hospital compartment. She's from
-Kamerun. She was kept in an aseptic-environment room at some university
-or other. She says her father looked after her. I get an impression of
-a last-ditch fight by microbiologists against the chlorophage. They
-lost it. Apparently her father landed her on Altaira and dived into
-the sun. From her story, he took every possible precaution to keep her
-from contagion or carrying contagion with her to Altaira. Maybe he
-succeeded. There's no way to tell&mdash;yet."</p>
-
-<p>The skipper listened in silence.</p>
-
-<p>Jensen said thinly, "Then the story about the landing was true."</p>
-
-<p>"Yes. The authorities isolated her, and then shipped her off on the
-<i>Star Queen</i>. Your well-informed friends, Jensen, didn't know what
-their government was going to do!" Nordenfeld paused, and said more
-coldly still, "They didn't handle it right. They should have killed
-her, painlessly but at once. Her body should have been immersed, with
-everything that had touched it, in full-strength nitric acid. The
-same acid should have saturated the place where the ship landed and
-every place she walked. Every room she entered, and every hall she
-passed through, should have been doused with nitric and then burned.
-It would still not have been all one could wish. The air she breathed
-couldn't be recaptured and heated white-hot. But the chances for
-Altaira's population to go on living would be improved. Instead, they
-isolated her and they shipped her off with us&mdash;and thought they were
-accomplishing something by destroying the lift-ship that had her in an
-airtight compartment until she walked into the <i>Star Queen's</i> lock!"</p>
-
-<p>The skipper said heavily, "Do you think she's brought chlorophage on
-board?"</p>
-
-<p>"I've no idea," said Nordenfeld. "If she did, it's too late to do
-anything but drive the <i>Star Queen</i> into the nearest sun.... No. Before
-that, one should give warning that she was aground on Altaira. No ship
-should land there. No ship should take off. Altaira should be blocked
-off from the rest of the galaxy like Kamerun was. And to the same end
-result."</p>
-
-<p>Jensen said unsteadily; "There'll be trouble if this is known on the
-ship. There'll be some unwilling to sacrifice themselves."</p>
-
-<p>"Sacrifice?" said Nordenfeld. "They're dead! But before they lie down,
-they can keep everybody they care about from dying too! Would you want
-to land and have your wife and family die of it?"</p>
-
-<p>The skipper said in the same heavy voice, "What are the probabilities?
-You say there was an effort to keep her from contagion. What are the
-odds?"</p>
-
-<p>"Bad," said Nordenfeld. "The man tried, for the child's sake. But I
-doubt he managed to make a completely aseptic transfer from the room
-she lived in to the spaceport on Altaira. The authorities on Altaira
-should have known it. They should have killed her and destroyed
-everything she'd touched. And <i>still</i> the odds would have been bad!"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen said, "But you can't do that, Nordenfeld! Not now!"</p>
-
-<p>"I shall take every measure that seems likely to be useful." Then
-Nordenfeld snapped, "Damnation, man! Do you realize that this
-chlorophage can wipe out the human race if it really gets loose? Do you
-think I'll let sentiment keep me from doing what has to be done?"</p>
-
-<p>He flicked off the vision-phone.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The <i>Star Queen</i> came out of overdrive. Her skipper arranged it to be
-done at the time when the largest possible number of her passengers
-and crew would be asleep. Those who were awake, of course, felt the
-peculiar inaudible sensation which one subjectively translated into
-sound. They felt the momentary giddiness which&mdash;having no natural
-parallel&mdash;feels like the sensation of treading on a stair-step that
-isn't there, combined with a twisting sensation so it is like a spiral
-fall. The passengers who were awake were mostly in the bars, and the
-bartenders explained that the ship had shifted overdrive generators and
-there was nothing to it.</p>
-
-<p>Those who were asleep started awake, but there was nothing in their
-surroundings to cause alarm. Some blinked in the darkness of their
-cabins and perhaps turned on the cabin lights, but everything seemed
-normal. They turned off the lights again. Some babies cried and had to
-be soothed. But there was nothing except wakening to alarm anybody.
-Babies went back to sleep and mothers returned to their beds and&mdash;such
-awakenings being customary&mdash;went back to sleep also.</p>
-
-<p>It was natural enough. There were vague and commonplace noises,
-together making an indefinite hum. Fans circulated the ship's purified
-and reinvigorated air. Service motors turned in remote parts of the
-hull. Cooks and bakers moved about in the kitchens. Nobody could tell
-by any physical sensation that the <i>Star Queen</i> was not in overdrive,
-except in the control room.</p>
-
-<p>There the stars could be seen. They were unthinkably remote. The ship
-was light-years from any place where humans lived. She did not drive.
-Her skipper had a family on Cassim. He would not land a plague ship
-which might destroy them. The executive officer had a small son. If
-his return meant that small son's death as well as his own, he would
-not return. All through the ship, the officers who had to know the
-situation recognized that if chlorophage had gotten into the <i>Star
-Queen</i>, the ship must not land anywhere. Nobody could survive. Nobody
-must attempt it.</p>
-
-<p>So the huge liner hung in the emptiness between the stars, waiting
-until it could be known definitely that chlorophage was aboard or that
-with absolute certainty it was absent. The question was up to Doctor
-Nordenfeld.</p>
-
-<p>He had isolated himself with Kathy in the ship's hospital compartment.
-Since the ship was built it had been used once by a grown man who
-developed mumps, and once by an adolescent boy who developed a raging
-fever which antibiotics stopped. Health measures for space travel were
-strict. The hospital compartment had only been used those two times.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>On this voyage it had been used to contain an assortment of botanical
-specimens from a planet seventy light-years beyond Regulus. They were
-on their way to the botanical research laboratory on Cassim. As a
-routine precaution they'd been placed in the hospital, which could
-be fumigated when they were taken out. Now the doctor had piled them
-in one side of the compartment, which he had divided in half with a
-transparent plastic sheet. He stayed in that side. Kathy occupied the
-other.</p>
-
-<p>She had some flowering plants to look at and admire. They'd come from
-the air room and she was delighted with their coloring and beauty.
-But Doctor Nordenfeld had put them there as a continuing test for
-chlorophage. If Kathy carried that murderous virus on her person, the
-flowering plants would die of it&mdash;probably even before she did.</p>
-
-<p>It was a scrupulously scientific test for the deadly stuff. Completely
-sealed off except for a circulator to freshen the air she breathed,
-Kathy was settled with toys and picture books. It was an improvised
-but well-designed germproof room. The air for Kathy to breathe was
-sterilized before it reached her. The air she had breathed was
-sterilized as it left her plastic-sided residence. It should be the
-perfection of protection for the ship&mdash;if it was not already too late.</p>
-
-<p>The vision-phone buzzed. Doctor Nordenfeld stirred in his chair and
-flipped the switch. The <i>Star Queen's</i> skipper looked at him out of the
-screen.</p>
-
-<p>"I've cut the overdrive," said the skipper. "The passengers haven't
-been told."</p>
-
-<p>"Very sensible," said the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>"When will we know?"</p>
-
-<p>"That we can go on living? When the other possibility is exhausted."</p>
-
-<p>"Then, how will we know?" asked skipper stonily.</p>
-
-<p>Doctor Nordenfeld ticked off the possibilities. He bent down a finger.
-"One, her father took great pains. Maybe he did manage an aseptic
-transfer from a germ-free room to Altaira. Kathy may not have been
-exposed to the chlorophage. If she hasn't, no bleached spots will show
-up on the air-room foliage or among the flowering plants in the room
-with her. Nobody in the crew or among the passengers will die."</p>
-
-<p>He bent down a second finger. "It is probably more likely that white
-spots will appear on the plants in the air room <i>and</i> here, and people
-will start to die. That will mean Kathy brought contagion here the
-instant she arrived, and almost certainly that Altaira will become like
-Kamerun&mdash;uninhabited. In such a case we are finished."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>He bent down a third finger. "Not so likely, but preferable, white
-spots may appear on the foliage inside the plastic with Kathy, but not
-in the ship's air room. In that case she was exposed, but the virus was
-incubating when she came on board, and only developed and spread after
-she was isolated. Possibly, in such a case, we can save the passengers
-and crew, but the ship will probably have to be melted down in space.
-It would be tricky, but it might be done."</p>
-
-<p>The skipper hesitated. "If that last happened, she&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>"I will take whatever measures are necessary," said Doctor Nordenfeld.
-"To save your conscience, we won't discuss them. They should have been
-taken on Altaira."</p>
-
-<p>He reached over and flipped off the phone. Then he looked up and into
-the other part of the ship's hospital space. Kathy came out from behind
-a screen, where she'd made ready for bed. She was beaming. She had a
-large picture book under one arm and a doll under the other.</p>
-
-<p>"It's all right for me to have these with me, isn't it, Doctor
-Nordenfeld?" she asked hopefully. "I didn't have any picture books but
-one, and it got worn out. And my doll&mdash;it was dreadful how shabby she
-was!"</p>
-
-<p>The doctor frowned. She smiled at him. He said, "After all, picture
-books are made to be looked at and dolls to be played with."</p>
-
-<p>She skipped to the tiny hospital bed on the far side of the presumably
-virusproof partition. She climbed into it and zestfully arranged the
-doll to share it. She placed the book within easy reach.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-  <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="578" height="500" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>She said, "I think my father would say you were very nice, Doctor
-Nordenfeld, to look after me so well."</p>
-
-<p>"No-o-o-o," said the doctor in a detached voice. "I'm just doing what
-anybody ought to do."</p>
-
-<p>She snuggled down under the covers. He looked at his watch and
-shrugged. It was very easy to confuse official night with official day,
-in space. Everybody else was asleep. He'd been putting Kathy through
-tests which began with measurements of pulse and respiration and
-temperature and went on from there. Kathy managed them herself, under
-his direction.</p>
-
-<p>He settled down with one of the medical books he'd brought into
-the isolation section with him. Its title was <i>Decontamination of
-Infectious Material from Different Planets</i>. He read it grimly.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The time came when the <i>Star Queen</i> should have come out of overdrive
-with the sun Circe blazing fiercely nearby, and a green planet with
-ice caps to be approached on interplanetary drive. There should have
-been droning, comforting drive noises to assure the passengers&mdash;who
-naturally could not see beyond the ship's steel walls&mdash;that they were
-within a mere few million miles of a world where sunshine was normal,
-and skies were higher than ship's ceilings, and there were fascinating
-things to see and do.</p>
-
-<p>Some of the passengers packed their luggage and put it outside their
-cabins to be picked up for landing. But no stewards came for it.
-Presently there was an explanation. The ship had run under maximum
-speed and the planetfall would be delayed.</p>
-
-<p>The passengers were disappointed but not concerned. The luggage
-vanished into cabins again.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Star Queen</i> floated in space among a thousand thousand million
-stars. Her astrogators had computed a course to the nearest star into
-which to drive the <i>Star Queen</i>, but it would not be used unless there
-was mutiny among the crew. It would be better to go in remote orbit
-around Circe III and give the news of chlorophage on Altaira, if Doctor
-Nordenfeld reported it on the ship.</p>
-
-<p>Time passed. One day. Two. Three. Then Jensen called the hospital
-compartment on vision-phone. His expression was dazed. Nordenfeld saw
-the interior of the control room behind Jensen. He said, "You're a
-passenger, Jensen. How is it you're in the control room?"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen moistened his lips. "The skipper thought I'd better not
-associate with the other passengers. I've stayed with the officers the
-past few days. We&mdash;the ones who know what's in prospect&mdash;we're keeping
-separate from the others so&mdash;nobody will let anything out by accident."</p>
-
-<p>"Very wise. When the skipper comes back on duty, ask him to call me.
-I've something interesting to tell him."</p>
-
-<p>"He's&mdash;checking something now," said Jensen. His voice was thin and
-reedy. "The&mdash;air officer reports there are white patches on the plants
-in the air room. They're growing. Fast. He told me to tell you.
-He's&mdash;gone to make sure."</p>
-
-<p>"No need," said Nordenfeld bitterly.</p>
-
-<p>He swung the vision-screen. It faced that part of the hospital space
-beyond the plastic sheeting. There were potted flowering plants there.
-They had pleased Kathy. They shared her air. And there were white
-patches on their leaves.</p>
-
-<p>"I thought," said Nordenfeld with an odd mirthless levity, "that the
-skipper'd be interested. It is of no importance whatever now, but
-I accomplished something remarkable. Kathy's father didn't manage
-an aseptic transfer. She brought the chlorophage with her. But I
-confined it. The plants on the far side of that plastic sheet show the
-chlorophage patches plainly. I expect Kathy to show signs of anemia
-shortly. I'd decided that drastic measures would have to be taken,
-and it looked like they might work, because I've confined the virus.
-It's there where Kathy is, but it isn't where I am. All the botanical
-specimens on my side of the sheet are untouched. The phage hasn't hit
-them. It is remarkable. But it doesn't matter a damn if the air room's
-infected. And I was so proud!"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen did not respond.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Nordenfeld said ironically, "Look what I accomplished! I protected
-the air plants on my side See? They're beautifully green! No sign of
-infection! It means that a man can work with chlorophage! A laboratory
-ship could land on Kamerun and keep itself the equivalent of an
-aseptic-environment room while the damned chlorophage was investigated
-and ultimately whipped! And it doesn't matter!"</p>
-
-<p>Jensen said numbly, "We can't ever make port. We ought&mdash;we ought to&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>"We'll take the necessary measures," Nordenfeld told him. "Very quietly
-and very efficiently, with neither the crew nor the passengers knowing
-that Altaira sent the chlorophage on board the <i>Star Queen</i> in the hope
-of banishing it from there. The passengers won't know that their own
-officials shipped it off with them as they tried to run away.... And
-I was so proud that I'd improvised an aseptic room to keep Kathy in! I
-sterilized the air that went in to her, and I sterilized&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>Then he stopped. He stopped quite short. He stared at the air unit, set
-up and with two pipes passing through the plastic partition which cut
-the hospital space in two. He turned utterly white. He went roughly to
-the air machine. He jerked back its cover. He put his hand inside.</p>
-
-<p>Minutes later he faced back to the vision-screen from which Jensen
-looked apathetically at him.</p>
-
-<p>"Tell the skipper to call me," he said in a savage tone. "Tell him to
-call me instantly he comes back! Before he issues any orders at all!"</p>
-
-<p>He bent over the sterilizing equipment and very carefully began to
-disassemble it. He had it completely apart when Kathy waked. She peered
-at him through the plastic separation sheet.</p>
-
-<p>"Good morning, Doctor Nordenfeld," she said cheerfully.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor grunted. Kathy smiled at him. She had gotten on very good
-terms with the doctor, since she'd been kept in the ship's hospital.
-She did not feel that she was isolated. In having the doctor where she
-could talk to him at any time, she had much more company than ever
-before. She had read her entire picture book to him and discussed her
-doll at length. She took it for granted that when he did not answer or
-frowned that he was simply busy. But he was company because she could
-see him.</p>
-
-<p>Doctor Nordenfeld put the air apparatus together with an extremely
-peculiar expression on his face. It had been built for Kathy's special
-isolation by a ship's mechanic. It should sterilize the used air going
-into Kathy's part of the compartment, and it should sterilize the
-used air pushed out by the supplied fresh air. The hospital itself
-was an independent sealed unit, with its own chemical air freshener,
-and it had been divided into two. The air freshener was where Doctor
-Nordenfeld could attend to it, and the sterilizer pump simply shared
-the freshening with Kathy. But&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>But the pipe that pumped air to Kathy was brown and discolored from
-having been used for sterilizing, and the pipe that brought air back
-was not. It was cold. It had never been heated.</p>
-
-<p>So Doctor Nordenfeld had been exposed to any contagion Kathy could
-spread. He hadn't been protected at all. Yet the potted plants on
-Kathy's side of the barrier were marked with great white splotches
-which grew almost as one looked, while the botanical specimens in the
-doctor's part of the hospital&mdash;as much infected as Kathy's could have
-been, by failure of the ship's mechanic to build the sterilizer to work
-two ways: the stacked plants, the alien plants, the strange plants from
-seventy light-years beyond Regulus&mdash;they were vividly green. There
-was no trace of chlorophage on them. Yet they had been as thoroughly
-exposed as Doctor Nordenfeld himself!</p>
-
-<p>The doctor's hands shook. His eyes burned. He took out a surgeon's
-scalpel and ripped the plastic partition from floor to ceiling. Kathy
-watched interestedly.</p>
-
-<p>"Why did you do that, Doctor Nordenfeld?" she asked.</p>
-
-<p>He said in an emotionless, unnatural voice, "I'm going to do something
-that it was very stupid of me not to do before. It should have been
-done when you were six years old, Kathy. It should have been done on
-Kamerun, and after that on Altaira. Now we're going to do it here. You
-can help me."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The <i>Star Queen</i> had floated out of overdrive long enough to throw all
-distance computations off. But she swung about, and swam back, and
-presently she was not too far from the world where she was now many
-days overdue. Lift-ships started up from the planet's surface. But the
-<i>Star Queen</i> ordered them back.</p>
-
-<p>"Get your spaceport health officer on the vision-phone," ordered the
-<i>Star Queen's</i> skipper. "We've had chlorophage on board."</p>
-
-<p>There was panic. Even at a distance of a hundred thousand miles,
-chlorophage could strike stark terror into anybody. But presently the
-image of the spaceport health officer appeared on the <i>Star Queen's</i>
-screen.</p>
-
-<p>"We're not landing," said Doctor Nordenfeld. "There's almost certainly
-an outbreak of chlorophage on Altaira, and we're going back to do
-something about it. It got on our ship with passengers from there.
-We've whipped it, but we may need some help."</p>
-
-<p>The image of the health officer aground was a mask of horror for
-seconds after Nordenfeld's last statement. Then his expression became
-incredulous, though still horrified.</p>
-
-<p>"We came on to here," said Doctor Nordenfeld, "to get you to send
-word by the first other ship to the Patrol that a quarantine has
-to be set up on Altaira, and we need to be inspected for recovery
-from chlorophage infection. And we need to pass on, officially, the
-discovery that whipped the contagion on this ship. We were carrying
-botanical specimens to Cassim and we discovered that they were immune
-to chlorophage. That's absurd, of course. Their green coloring is the
-same substance as in plants under Sol-type suns anywhere. They couldn't
-be immune to chlorophage. So there had to be something else."</p>
-
-<p>"Was&mdash;was there?" asked the health officer.</p>
-
-<p>"There was. Those specimens came from somewhere beyond Regulus. They
-carried, as normal symbiotes on their foliage, micro&ouml;rganisms unknown
-both on Kamerun and Altaira. The alien bugs are almost the size of
-virus particles, feed on virus particles, and are carried by contact,
-air, and so on, as readily as virus particles themselves. We discovered
-that those micro&ouml;rganisms devoured chlorophage. We washed them off the
-leaves of the plants, sprayed them in our air-room jungle, and they
-multiplied faster than the chlorophage. Our whole air supply is now
-loaded with an airborne antichlorophage organism which has made our
-crew and passengers immune. We're heading back to Altaira to turn loose
-our merry little bugs on that planet. It appears that they grow on
-certain vegetation, but they'll live anywhere there's phage to eat.
-We're keeping some chlorophage cultures alive so our micro&ouml;rganisms
-don't die out for lack of food!"</p>
-
-<p>The medical officer on the ground gasped. "Keeping phage <i>alive</i>?"</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>"I hope you've recorded this," said Nordenfeld. "It's rather important.
-This trick should have been tried on Kamerun and Altaira and everywhere
-else new diseases have turned up. When there's a bug on one planet
-that's deadly to us, there's bound to be a bug on some other planet
-that's deadly to it! The same goes for any pests or vermin&mdash;the
-principle of natural enemies. All we have to do is find the enemies!"</p>
-
-<p>There was more communication between the <i>Star Queen</i> and the spaceport
-on Circe III, which the <i>Star Queen</i> would not make other contact with
-on this trip, and presently the big liner headed back to Altaira. It
-was necessary for official as well as humanitarian reasons. There would
-need to be a health examination of the <i>Star Queen</i> to certify that it
-was safe for passengers to breathe her air and eat in her restaurants
-and swim in her swimming pools and occupy the six levels of passenger
-cabins she contained. This would have to be done by a Patrol ship,
-which would turn up at Altaira.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Star Queen's</i> skipper would be praised by his owners for not
-having driven the liner into a star, and the purser would be forgiven
-for the confusion in his records due to off-schedule operations of
-the big ship, and Jensen would find in the ending of all terror of
-chlorophage an excellent reason to look for appreciation in the value
-of the investments he was checking up. And Doctor Nordenfeld....</p>
-
-<p>He talked very gravely to Kathy. "I'm afraid," he told her, "that your
-father isn't coming back. What would you like to do?"</p>
-
-<p>She smiled at him hopefully. "Could I be your little girl?" she asked.
-Doctor Nordenfeld grunted. "Hm ... I'll think about it."</p>
-
-<p>But he smiled at her. She grinned at him. And it was settled.</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doctor, by Murray Leinster
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR ***
-
-***** This file should be named 51782-h.htm or 51782-h.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/7/8/51782/
-
-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 public domain print editions 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.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
-http://gutenberg.org/license).
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
-http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
-809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
-business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
-information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
-page at http://pglaf.org
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit http://pglaf.org
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-
-
-</pre>
-
-</body>
-</html>
diff --git a/old/51782-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/51782-h/images/cover.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
index 187a804..0000000
--- a/old/51782-h/images/cover.jpg
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/old/51782-h/images/illus1.jpg b/old/51782-h/images/illus1.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
index f250a81..0000000
--- a/old/51782-h/images/illus1.jpg
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/old/51782-h/images/illus2.jpg b/old/51782-h/images/illus2.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
index deb0ddf..0000000
--- a/old/51782-h/images/illus2.jpg
+++ /dev/null