Ole Doc Methuselah Part 27

Suddenly the mayor of Placer had come down with spots in his mouth and his temperature had begun to rise.

The mayor had talked to many people in the village. He had talked to the System Police s.h.i.+p officers.

The Star of s.p.a.ce had listened to the System Police band and had the decision of Emperor Smith when it was given. The liner, with its cargo of misery and death, had immediately taken off with destination unknown.

Two naval vessels had come in before the System Police craft could leave.

Twenty-inch rocket rifles had bored into the village of Placer. For five minutes the naval vessels had scorched the place.

When they had left a thousand people were dead, the once-pleasant and rich valley a charred wreck. The pa.s.ses were sealed through the peaks and a plague cross was painted on a dozen square miles from the air.

That was the end of Placer.

Ole Doc stood on the plain before the peaks and watched the rising smoke beyond. He had been late because he had not been promptly informed.

A thousand guiltless human beings had died.

Plague still lived in this galaxy.

It was no use to rail at Garth or excommunicate Em- peror Smith.

Ole Doc went back to the Morgue and began anew the anxious search. Next time he had to be in at the end.

A lot depended upon it.

The Morgue cometed along at idling speed, automati- cally avoiding debris pockets, skipping over a dark ma.s.s here and by-pa.s.sing a dead star there. Ole Doc had calculated, on the basis of information received from the Spica system, which included a list of pa.s.sengers with coun- tries-at fourteen dollars a word high s.p.a.ce rates prior- ity-that he had a sixty per cent chance of being some- where near the next landing of the Star of s.p.a.ce.

He had pounded the key ceaselessly in an effort to drum up the s.h.i.+p herself but either he was on a course diverging faster than he could contact ion beams or the Star of s.p.a.ce had no communications operator left alive. Ole Doc

gave it up, not because a naval flags.h.i.+p had tried to shut him off and bawl him out, but because he had suddenly s.h.i.+fted his plans.

He had to find that s.h.i.+p. He had to find her or the U.M.S. would be slaving on this disease for the next thousand years, for such are the depths of s.p.a.ce that unknown systems and backwash towns can harbor some- thing for centuries without notifying anyone else. The method of this notification would be grim.

Ever since the first adoption of the standard military and naval policy of "sterilization" the U.M.S. had had its grief. When men found they could take a herd of innocent bacteria, treat it with mutatrons and achieve effectively horrible and cure-resistant diseases, the military had had no patience with sick people.

The specific incident which began the practice was the operation against Holloway by the combined Grand Ar- mies of the Twin Galaxies wherein sown disease germs by the attackers had been remutated by the defenders to nullify the vaccine in the troops. The Grand Armies, as first offenders, had gone unsuspectingly into the Holloway Galaxy to be instantly chopped down by the millions by what they comfortably supposed was harmless to them.

With an entire galaxy in quarantine, with millions of troops dead-to say nothing of two billion civilians, the Grand Armies had never been able to recover and rea.s.semble for trans-s.h.i.+pment to their own realms but had been relegated to the quarantine s.p.a.ce, a hundred per cent casualty in so far as their own governments were concerned.

This had soured the military on disease warfare and not even the most enthusiastic jingoist would ever propose loosing that member of the Apocalypse, PLAGUE, against anybody, no matter the heinous character of the trumped up offences.

Now and then some would-be revolutionist would clat- ter his test tubes and whip up a virus which no one could cure and so disease warfare came to have a dark charac- ter and now smelled to the military nose like an anarchy bomb.

Hence, sterilization. When you had a new disease you probably had a revolt brewing. There was only one thing the military mind could evolve. This solution consisted of shooting every human being or otherwise who was sick with non-standard symptoms; and should a community

become stricken with a mysterious malady, it was better the community die than a planet.

The Universal Medical Society, operating without char- ter from anyone, safeguarding the secrets of medicine against destruction or abuse, had been instrumental in solving the original military prolixity for disease warfare.

Indeed, this type of fighting was one of the original reasons why the U.M.S. was originated and while there were countless other types of medicines which could be politi- cally used or abused, the germ and the virus still ranked high with the out-of-bounds offences.

Center had contacted Ole Doc some days since, offering to throw a blanket ticket on the Earth Galaxy and stop Garth. But in that this would mean that some millions of isolated humans would probably starve, that business would be ruined and so create a panic, and that the rumor, travelling far and fast would probably demoralize a dozen galaxies or overthrow ten thousand governments, Ole Doc dot-dashed back that he would play out the hand. That was brash. Hippocrates said so. It meant Ole Doc couldn't lose now without losing face with his own fellows, the only beings in the entire Universe with whom he could relax.

And so he let the Morgue idle and kept all her speakers tuned to the jingle-jangle of s.p.a.ce police and naval bands.

That they were all in code did not bother him. A junior officer, back at Skinner's Folly, had gained a healed stom- ach and had lost, unbeknownst to him, the search code via truth drug. If the junior officer would not be able to lie for two or three months, Ole Doc had the search code memorized.

"Styphon Six .... to ... over . . . yawk scwowl scree Hydrocan . . . roger . . . under over out-" mimicked Hippocrates in disgust at the clamor which filled this usually peaceful old hospital s.h.i.+p. "To Command Nine . . .

scree . . . Command Nine . . . swowwwww-Foolish people. Why they do all that, master?"

Ole Doc looked up from a manual of disease diagnosis.

"It's bad enough to listen to those things without you parroting them."

Hippocrates stood in the door self-righteously kneading bread dough with three hands and drinking some spiced ink with the fourth. "Foolish. They should say what they

mean. Then maybe somebody get something done. Go here, go there. Squadron, Flight, Fleet attention and boarders adrift! Navy get so confused no wonder we got to do their work."

"Now, now," said Ole Doc.

"Well, it may not confuse enemy," said Hippocrates, "but it sure ruin operation of my own fleet." He finished the ink, popped the bread under a baking light and came back wiping hands on an ap.r.o.n. "Good thing no girl you know on Star of s.p.a.ce. Then we really get in trouble."

"You leave my private business alone."

"You so full of adrenalin you maybe catch chivalry."

"That's not a disease."

"It disease with you," said Hippocrates, out of long suffering. "You stop reading now. Bad for eyes. You tell me page number and book and I quote."

He got the book all right, but he had to duck it, it came so hard. Ole Doc went back to the chartroom, which lay beyond the main operating room and its myriad bottles, tubes, instruments and bins. He pin-pointed out the cours- es of the main units of the search fleets and wiped off a large section of the galaxy. He threw a couple of switches on the course comptometer and several thousand cogs, arms and gears made a small whirr as the s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+fted direction and dip.

Somewhere in this sphere of thinly mattered s.p.a.ce was the Star of s.p.a.ce, or else like a drop of water under Vega's blast, she had utterly evaporated away.

Ole Doc was nervous lest he miss. Who knew how many millions of human beings might be infected by this before he was done. If only he had an exact description of symptoms!

And he sat in the "office" of the Morgue, endlessly speculating until:

"Scout Force Eighty-six to Command. Scout Force Eighty-six to Command. Clear Channel. Operational Prior- ity. Clear Channel. Scout Force Eighty-six to Command.

Banzo! Over."

Ole Doc whipped upright and grabbed his direction finders. He could get the distance in to that beam and know which way the command answer would travel. The nearest ion beam which was actively maintained was only fifteen seconds away. He had been travelling along it, parallel, after his last course change.

The speakers were dead except for faint crackling. The moment was tense with nothingness.

And then: "Command to Eighty-six. Command to Eighty-six. Revolve and Able. Over."

"Eighty-six to Command. Eighty-six to Command. Arc- ton P Lateral. Over."

"Command to Eighty-six. Command to Eighty-six. Op- erating Zyco X23 Y47 Z189076. Obit Banzo if Jet. Order Box Arcton P Lateral. AHDZA. ZED DOG FOX ABLE.

WILLIAM GEORGE QUEEN BAKER. QUEEN.

QUEEN CAST FOX. Over."