* * * * *
Calhoun, of course, could only reason that this must have happened. Butnothing else could have taken place. Perhaps there were more than threeuses of the moving cattle fence to get the people prepared to move pastthe known place at which it always faded to nothingness. They mighthave been days apart, or weeks apart, or months. There might have beenstronger manifestations followed by weaker ones and then stronger onesagain.
But there was an inductive cattle fence across the highway here.Calhoun had driven into it. Every two seconds the muscles of hisbody tensed. Sometimes his heart missed a beat at the time that hisbreathing stopped, and sometimes it pounded violently. It seemed thatthe symptoms became more and more unbearable.
He got out his med kit, with hands that spasmodically jerkeduncontrollably. He fumbled out the same medication he'd givenMurgatroyd. He took two of the pellets.
”In reason,” he said coldly, ”I ought to let you take what this damnedthing would give you. But--here!”
Allison had panicked. The _idea_ of a cattle fence suggesteddiscomfort, of course, but it did not imply danger. The _experience_of a cattle fence, designed for huge hoofed beasts instead of men,was terrifying. Allison gasped. He made convulsive movements. Calhounhimself moved erratically. For one and a half seconds out of two, hecould control his muscles. For half a second at a time, he could not.But he poked a pill into Allison's mouth.
”Swallow it!” he commanded. ”Swallow!”
The ground-car rested tranquilly on the highway, which here went on fora mile and then dipped in a gentle incline and then rose once more.The totally level fields to right and left came to an end here. Nativetrees grew, trailing preposterously with long fronds. Brushwood hidmuch of the ground. That looked normal. But the lower, ground-coveringvegetation was wilted and rotting.
Allison choked upon the pellet. Calhoun forced a second upon him.Murgatroyd looked inquisitively at first one and then the other of thetwo men. He said:
”_Chee? Chee?_”
Calhoun lay back in his seat, breathing carefully to keep alive. Buthe couldn't do anything about his heartbeat. The sun shone brightly,though now it was low, toward the horizon. There were clouds in thereddened sky. A gentle breeze blew. Everything, to outward appearance,was peaceful and tranquil and commonplace upon this small world.
But in the area that human beings had taken over therewere cities which were still and silent and deserted, andsomewhere--somewhere!--the population of the planet waited uneasily forthe latest of a series of increasingly terrifying phenomena to come toan end. Up to this time the strange, creeping, universal affliction hadbegun at one place, and moved slowly to another, and then diminishedand ceased to be. But this was the greatest and worst of the torments.And it hadn't ended. It hadn't diminished. After three days itcontinued at full strength at the place where previously it had stoppedand died away.
The people of Maya were frightened. They couldn't return to theirhomes. They couldn't go anywhere. They hadn't prepared for an emergencyto last for days. They hadn't brought supplies of food.
It began to look as if they were going to starve.
Med Ship Man Page 6