by Jerry
Blackbern’s face became dark and ugly. “You and your public. All right you nosy pig-brain. I’ve got several guys here with something that acts like malignant tuberculosis, at least they’re coughing their lungs out,” he laughed sadistically, “but in little pieces you understand, just little pieces.”
The closed phone from the yard office rang and the ground doctor appeared on the screen. “Dr. Munroe,” he said, “I’d like to remind you there is no epidemiologist at Exotic. Only the pathology crew and the medics from the Colonial Office.” He paused. “Dr. Craig died this morning.”
“I know it. I’m taking over control this afternoon.”
“Doctor, not you again,” concern mirrored the physician’s face. “That’s too bad.”
“It’s for the public,” Dave said sharply.
“It’s for the public,” the doctor repeated the liturgy.
Dave pressed the stud turning on his window. He looked out over the quarantine station. Cupped in Tycho’s crag-walled crater the symmetrical buildings were beautiful in their utilitarian design. The tackle gang expanding the cradle to receive a Transtellar freighter looked like silver bugs in the harsh, white sunlight. The ship settled into the ways like a ball floating slowly into a kitten’s claws. An exploring battleship, cradled earlier, was discharging its crew into the Physicals Building. The ground crew was setting up fire guns preparing to wrap the hull in a sterilizing flame blanket. Lines hosing out to the ship from the Chemical Building, from this distance, looked like thin, golden snakes.
Above the Lunar surface, the Sylvestrus gathering speed for Earth was like a flaming mirror. Near her was the Canaberra, Blackbern’s freighter.
He brought it closer on the screen and his lips curled in disgust. Its hull was a dirty black, mottled with areas of reddened corrosion. One of the port screens was blanked out by a cracked, plastic disk. The grounding tackle hung to the ship like shreds of seaweed to a rotten log. Freezing vapor from expanding air, escaping from a rent in the topside surface, looked like a thin plume of steam from a tea kettle.
The sight of the ship with its dread implications of disease was an anchor to his weary emotions. He realized again the public had to be protected from the biological catastrophe such a ship would cause.
One extraterrestrial disease, made horribly contagious by lack of any racial immunity, would sweep Earth’s billions; they would fall before such infection like pillars of steel in a neutrone flame.
He was a policeman; protecting the health of the public. A wave of pure contentment swept him, washed away the sodden feeling of morose despair and indignant anger.
The gong of the phone and the appearance of an unfamiliar face on the plate brought him to the screen. “This is the toll operator on Earth. Calling Dr. Munroe. Dr. Dave Munroe. Is this Dr. Munroe, Ninth Lunar Quarantine, Tycho?”
“This is Dr. Munroe. My number is Professional 33-64-1875. I am ready to speak. This call is not, I repeat, this call is not for the public.”
“This call is not for the public,” the operator repeated. “You will have a closed channel between you and your party. Vernier adjustment.” She read off the settings for his phone. There was a flash of violet light, she disappeared and the clear, wide, gold-flecked eyes of Roberta were smiling into his own.
“When will it be, Davey?” Her voice held promise of happiness in its lilting richness. “I’ve never waited so impatiently.”
He swallowed, hating to see the grinding crash of all their dreams. “It won’t be, might never be, Roberta.”
She leaned closer to her screen. So close she blanked out the details of the laboratory behind her. “You mean our marriage was forbidden?” Her lovely eyes widened in bewildered wonder. “But David. Why? Was it you? Me?”
He fumbled for a cigarette to hide the terrible burst of frustrated anger filling his mind. He forced sardonic laughter through his tight mouth. “The marital division of the bureau gave us a clean pratique. It was the”—he spit out the words—“the Bureau of Public Health, Epidemiology Division!”
“What! But David,” startled surprise flickered between her level brows.
“They had good reason,” he admitted, forcing himself to put it into words. “You see I’m to go to Exotic Disease Control.”
“Ohhhhh! David no!” She capped her mouth with a long slender hand as her face became gaunt and pale. “Not again. Not that—” Her voice trailed off into a clicking whisper.
He tore a strip of tape from the scribe talk, transliterated the message slowly, realizing as he did so, he was reciting what might well be his own epitaph. “ ‘From: Director General, Public Health. To: All Personnel. Dr. James Craig, Commander in the Public Health, Senior Medical Officer, Exotic Disease Control, Lunar Station, died this morning while entering a disease ship. He willfully entered this ship, well aware of its hazards. His conduct was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Public Health Service. Signed: Gumnes, Director General.’
“Now listen. It’s right on the same tape. Saving money,” he explained bitterly. “ ‘Personal transfer order: Commander David Munroe, Planetary Epidemiologist, upon reporting to Commander Sigmund Russell, Planetary Epidemiologist, you will take command of Exotic Disease Control to fill out the term of the late Dr. James Craig. This transfer is for the public.’
“From: Personnel Division: In accordance with Directive 43, Paragraph B of the rules and regulations of the Public Health Service which states that personnel assigned extra-hazardous duty as exemplified by Exotic Disease Control may not be married; you, Dr. David Munroe, are informed that your request for permission to marry Dr. Roberta Wallace is denied until such time as you have completed your newly assigned tour of duty. This denial is for the public.’ ”
“How long will you be there?” Roberta asked in a tight, hushed voice.
“I’ll have about four months. I’ve been there twice, you know. No one,” he said slowly, “has come back a third time.”
She tried to sound matter-of-fact. “That’s what comes from being a good doctor. Mediocrity does have its compensations.” She forced a smile. “Just think, it’ll be double pay with a bonus. Oh! Dave, if only you don’t have to go prowling around in some derelict. That is what gets them all.”
“Someone has to see where the ship came from,” he pointed out. “It’s for the public.”
“If you do get a derelict showing dead lights, just take the organisms and never mind trying to clean the ship for some big company. Don’t try and be a hero.”
He laughed at her advice. “That’s all you ever do. Just open the ship at the landing room air lock, take a sample of the organisms. See if they are the lethal cause. If they are, you just turn them over to the bacteriochemists for classification. You let the pharmacology crew work out the antigen. Then you pull the log to see where the ship had been, sterilize it, turn it over to the Colonial Office.”
“Promise me you won’t go tramping around inside one of those ships,” she insisted.
“That’s sure death; particularly if the cause of the dead lights is bacterial. That’s what killed Craig, I understand. They brought in a ship from the Mycops nucleus. The bacteria thrived on ultraviolet radiation. They were evolved in an atmosphere that was intensely ionized and extremely hot. I understand the planet is extremely rich in radium. He sterilized himself in an acid shower, covered himself with a flame blanket, but when he bivalved his suit in his quarters one of them must have still been alive. He was dead within an hour. They volatilized the ship.” He shook his head. “Nope, I can assure you I won’t go exploring into a derelict. Do I look as though I were dropped on my head as an infant?”
She ignored his humor. “Let me talk to the Director,” she suggested tenderly. “I’m doing some work for his Bureau; maybe he’ll listen to me and give you new orders.”
The line of his mouth grew hard and chiseled at this threat to his masculine ego. “Roberta, you’ll do no such thing. Look, I have a lot of work to do. I’ll call you bef
ore I go over to Exotic.”
“No, don’t.” She touched the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. “I’ll be here waiting for you when you return. Just return, that’s all I’m warning you. Besides,” she managed a smile, “I’ve got work to do, too.”
“Once I get to Exotic, I can’t call you, you know.”
“That’s better, it won’t interfere with what I’m doing. I’m trying to set up a pharmacologic formula for chitinizing the skin of the beryllium workers in the mines of Nebos. Of course it has to be reversible so they can come back to their families. Besides,” she laughed reflectively, “we should be saving our money. Just think when you come back you’ll get a year’s vacation. Let’s settle on Zercan. I hear it’s a gorgeous planet. I’ll be a housewife and cook your meals right from cans like a real twentieth-century wife and you can practice medicine. Oh! David, do be careful.”
He cut off the phone, hating himself for the emotionalism that made the globus form in his throat; realized the trajectory of such thoughts was causing mental trauma sufficient to make him a physical coward.
He clicked his jaws, drew up a scribe bank, dictated his will. He was removing his personal effects from the desk when Dr. Russell walked in.
“Personnel hated to do this to you,” Russell informed him after their formal greeting, “but there was just no one else in the area with your experience who hadn’t already been there twice. You were the nearest.”
“It’s for the public,” Dave pointed out.
“Just don’t venture beyond the landing rooms of any dead ships chasing unclassified bacteria,” he cautioned, “and I’m sure you’ll come through. Remember, don’t risk your life for nothing.”
Dave thought the warning was excessive. “You want to be briefed on this station?”
“I had a similar duty on Meissner. Fill out any gaps for me.” He clicked details on his fingers. “Lunar Operations routes the ship to your station. You check the ship’s surgeon with the analyzer and if everything is all right the ship is granted pratique for Earth.”
“If feature correlation is in excess of aging difference, check eye grounds. Some of these tramp freighters can do wonders with illegal plastic surgeons. They drag in contraband and all kinds of organisms.”
“I’ll remember that. If the ship has a doubtful itinerary, cradle and your ground crew decontaminate the ship and its cargo and the junior medics examine the personnel. They report deviants to you for whatever action you decide.”
“Whenever you have a doubt, send it to Exotic,” Dave insisted. The blonde-haired secretary appeared on the phone. “Exotic Disease Control on 4; can you take the call?”
Dave flicked switches on his desk. “Munroe, Ninth Lunar Quarantine. You want me?”
“This is Thurman, chief of ratings at Exotic, sir. I called Operations and they referred me to you. The Canaberra is here, medical officer is a Dr. Blackbern. We started the routine hull wash but he refuses to let my crew in to decontaminate the hold areas. Dr. Nissen is examining the crew now. And, sir,” Thurman appeared worried, “the Starry Maid is over us demanding that we remove some patients at once. Their doctor is most insistent.”
“What’s the Starry Maid?”
Russell leaned forward, blanked the phone. “That’s the private yacht of Mr. Latham Nordheimer.”
Dave whistled. “Where,” he whispered, “would he have been to pick up anything needing Exotic?”
Russell shrugged. “He’s got a socialite playboy for a medical officer. He couldn’t tell the difference between simple acne and malignant space burn. He’s my idea of what a high-grade moron would be with no intelligence. He’s crazy about Nordheimer’s daughter but whether it’s mutual or not I don’t know. Because he is so intellectually inferior he’s like all dim brains; dangerous when crossed. He loves his power as medical man to one of Solar’s richest men. He’d like nothing better than to turn in a doctor for a missed diagnosis.”
“Nice boy to talk back to,” Dave unblanked the phone. “Thurman, tell Dr. Blackbern I ordered you to enter the ship. If he questions this order further, call the Duty Officer of the Guard and request the riot Marines. I’ll back you up.”
“Shall I remove the patients from the Starry Maid?”
“No. They might have something contagious. Let them stew in their own impatience. We’re the Public Health Service not animals to be ordered about.”
He cut off the phone, poured two cups of coffee. “I’m not going to get high blood pressure for some rich man.” Dave grinned at Russell. “Have you ever noted that a rich man becomes paranoid; starts thinking he is above the people?”
Russell’s laugh was as soothing as balm on a space boil. “Just the same I admire your courage telling the mighty Nordheimer to wait. It’s always a comfort, though, to know the Bureau will back us up for the public.”
Dave finished his coffee. He picked up the phone, announced to the station the transfer of authority. He turned off the phone, locked the tape box, handed over the keys to Dr. Russell. “It’s all yours now. Would you have your steward pack my clothes and ship them to the Personnel Desk in the Bureau? I’ll pick them up there if I come out of Exotic.”
“Will do.” At the panel leading to the mobile ramp Russell placed a comforting hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Good luck, Munroe. Stay out of derelicts and I’ll try not to send you anything green.”
Exotic Disease Control is located on the northern edge of Mare Capsicum. The station is as functional as a lathe and with just about the same amount of beauty. It consists of a group of hemispherical buildings arranged concentrically around the metallic cradling table.
It lacks the dynamic architecture that makes Lunar Quarantine Stations so outstanding. Exotic Control was designed solely for isolating the new bacteria, viruses, fungi and yeasts with which mankind infects himself from the distant, biologically unexplored planets.
The little brown house, as the doctors refer to the isolation hospital, is located here. It is in its wards that passengers and spacemen, who have become infected, wait until their disease is cured or—! It is a part of the cost of spatial exploration; man would have it no other way.
At Exotic Disease Control are located the esoteric pathologists, the virologists, bacterio-chemists, pharmacologists. Here, too, are located the planetary cartographers and ecologists, ceaselessly studying the characteristics of the better planets so they can be certified for colonization.
When Dave alighted from the lunar car, the crew about the dirty freighter dropped chemical lines, greeted him with brazen clanging of metal as they clapped bronzed sheathed hands on the armor of his metal-covered shoulders.
The medical division, the landing gangs, the sterile squads and the decontamination crews followed him into the Administration Building. “It’s good to be back here again,” Dave said when he had thrown back his glassite helmet.
At this palpable lie, all the men let out a whoop of laughter. He stilled it with raised hand. “I don’t need to enlarge on our responsibility to the public. They trust us to prevent disease reaching Earth.
“We’ll work here now just as we did the last time I was here. I alone will investigate ships from any of the outer nuclei, or those that have questionable disease in any way. I will make all primary diagnosis and do autopsies on those remains found in ships. No one try to risk his life doing something that is my duty. These are my orders.”
Dr. Blackbern shouldered his way through the group about Dave. “Cute talk you boys make. Very lovely prattle about the care the public gets, but how about me, us? We’re a part of the public, too. I’ve been here now for three hours and all I’ve heard is talk, talk, talk.”
His dark face, stained by the tarnish of his beard, was sarcastically malevolent. “We’ve got a fortune in skins out there we want to take to Earth. One of your medics came aboard, jerked about all of our crew.”
“Before you got here,” Nissen, the pathologist, interposed, “I went aboard to see Blackbern’s men. Nord
heimer was getting so impatient I began to worry about what he might do to you.”
“I don’t think he can hurt me officially,” Dave said easily. “What about the crew?”
“Orya fever, ninety-five per cent morbidity rate. Bacterioscope reveals it in their blood; profound toxemia on the hemospectroscope. They’ll all have to stay in isolation until cure is effected. The inner fittings of the ship will have to be burned. I checked the pelts but they can be decontaminated in the gas house.”
“You don’t touch that ship or those pelts.” Blackbern’s face flamed with anger. “I’ve got a right to talk, too. I’m telling you I’m going to Earth to sell those skins—”
“Shut up!” Dave’s voice was suddenly explosive. “I run this station—”
“Why you little test-tube washer.” Blackbern’s arm swept out, pushed the men back, away from him. He came forward, a black, enraged animal, fists like lead ingots whirling madly. Dave saw it, saw the frustrated hysteria in the man, sidestepped the blow with the ease of a professional dancer, for all that he was incased in heavy armor. He caught the raging man’s arm, whirled him over his shoulder to fall stunned and helpless at his feet.
He winked at the grinning men. “He didn’t know that we test-tube washers, softies that we are, have to exercise at 3-Gs one hour every day.” He looked at Blackbern’s stupefied face. “Get up,” he ordered curtly, “we’re medical men, not marines.”
Blackbern crawled heavily to his feet. His venomous eyes were more respectful. “You going to check my ship,” he hesitated, added grudgingly, “sir?”
Dave flicked the wrist switch of his armor. Gears whined in its metallic flanks as it bivalved. He stepped out, shook the creases out of his uniform. “I’m going to check the spacemen first.”
The patients, thin, wasted caricatures of men, lay in their bunks in the isolation ward, watched him with anxious expressions in their deeply socketed eyes.