Badge of Infamy

by Lester Del Rey

  VIII

  Fool

  Three days later, Doc saw his first runner.

  The tractor was churning through the sand just before sundown, headingtoward another one-night stand at a new village. Lou was driving, whileDoc and Jake brooded silently in the back, paying no attention to thecolors that were blazoned over the dunes. The cat-and-mouse game wasgetting to Doc. There was no real assurance that the village they wereapproaching might not be the target the Lobby had chosen for the nextinvestigation.

  Lou braked the tractor to a sudden halt, and pointed.

  A figure was running frantically over one of the low dunes with thelittle red sun behind him. He seemed headed toward them, but as he drewnearer they could see that he had no definite direction. He simply ran,pumping his legs frantically as if all the devils of hell were afterhim. His body swayed from side to side in exhaustion, but his arms andlegs pumped on.

  "Stop him!" Jake ordered, and Lou swung the tractor. It halted squarelyin the runner's path, and the figure struck against it and toppled.

  The legs went on pumping, digging into the dirt and gravel, but the manwas too far gone to rise. Jake and Lou shoved him through the doors intothe tractor and Doc yanked off his aspirator.

  The man was giving vent to a kind of ululating cry, weakened now almostto a whine that rose and fell with the motion of his legs. Sweat hadonce streaked his haggard face, but it was dry and blanched to a pastygray.

  Doc injected enough narcotic to quiet a maddened bull. It had no effect,except to upset the rhythm of the arms and legs. It took five moreminutes for the man to die.

  The specks were larger this time--the size of periods in twelve-pointtype. The lump at the base of the skull was as big as a small hen's egg.

  "From Edison, like the others so far. Jack Kooley," Jake answered Doc'squestion. "Durwood spent a lot of time here on his first expedition, soit's getting the worst of it."

  Doc pulled the aspirator mask back over the man's face and they carriedhim out and laid him on a low dune. They couldn't risk returning thecorpse to its people.

  This was only the primary circle of infection, direct from Durwood. Thesecond circle could be ten times as large, as the infection spread fromone to a few to many. So far it was localized. But it wouldn't stay thatway.

  Doc climbed slowly out of the tractor, lugging his small supplies ofequipment, while Jake made arrangements for them to spend the night in adeserted house. But the figure of the runner and his own failures tofind more about the disease kept haunting Doc. He began setting up hisequipment grimly.

  "Better get some sleep," Jake suggested. "You're a mite more tired thanyou think. Anyhow, I thought you told me you couldn't do any more withwhat you've got."

  Feldman looked at the supplies he had spread out, and shook his headwearily. He'd been over every chemical and combination a dozen times,without results that showed in the limited magnification of the opticalmike.

  He snapped the case shut and hit the rude table with the heel of hishand. "There are other supplies. Jake, do you have any signal to get intouch with Molly at the Ryan house?"

  "Three raps on the rear left window. I'll get Lou."

  "No!" Doc came to his feet, reaching for his jacket. "They're lookingfor three men now. It's safer if I go alone--and I'm the only one whoknows what supplies are needed. With luck, I may even get the electronmike. Got a gun I can borrow?"

  Jake found one somewhere, an old revolver with a few loads. He beganprotesting, but Doc overruled him sharply. Three men could no more fightoff the police than one, if they were spotted. He swung toward thetractor.

  "You'd better start spreading the word on everything we know. If peoplerealize they're already safe or doomed it'll be better than having themgoing crazy to avoid contagion."

  "Most of the villages know already," Jake told him. "And damn it, getback here, Doc. If you can't make it, turn tail quick, and we'll thinkof something else."

  Southport seemed normal enough as Doc drove through its streets. Thestereo house was open, and the little shops were brightly lighted. Hestopped once to pull a copy of Southport's little newspaper from adispenser. All was quiet on its front page, too.

  As usual, though, the facts were buried inside. The editorial waspouring too much oil on the waters in its lauding of the role ofMedical Lobby on Mars for no apparent reason. The death notices nolonger listed the cause of death. Medical knew something was up, atleast, and was worried.

  He parked the tractor behind Chris' house and slipped to the properwindow. Everything was seemingly quiet there. At his knock, the shadewas drawn back, and he caught a brief glimpse of Molly looking out. Amoment later she opened the rear lock to let him into the kitchen.

  "Shh. She's still up, I think. What can I do, Doc?"

  He tried to smile at her. "Hide me until it's safe to get into herlaboratory. I've got to--"

  The inner kitchen was kicked open and Chris stood beyond it, holding acocked gun in her hand.

  "It took longer than I expected, Dan," she said quietly. "But after yourletter, I knew you'd swallow the bait. You bloody fool! Did you reallybelieve I'd start doing research here just because of your imaginings?"

  He slumped slowly back against the sink. "So this is a fool's errand,then? There never was any equipment here?"

  "The equipment's here--in my office. I guessed your spies would reportit, so it had to be here. But it won't help you now, pariah Feldman!"

  He came from his braced position against the sink like a springuncoiling. He expected her to shoot, but hoped the surprise would ruinher aim. Then it was too late, and his boot hit the gun savagely,knocking it from her hand. Life in the villages had hardened himsurprisingly. She was comparatively helpless in his hands. A few minuteslater, he had her bound securely with surgical tape Molly brought him.She raged furiously in the chair where he'd dumped her, then gave up.

  "They'll get you, Daniel Feldman!" Surprisingly, there was no rage inher voice now. "You won't get away from us. The planet isn't bigenough."

  "I got away from your trial," he reminded her. "And I got away and livedwhen you left me without a chance on the ground of the spaceport."

  She laughed harshly. "_You_ got away then? You fool, who do you thinkgave you the extra battery so you could live long enough to be helped atthe spaceport? Who hired a fool like Matthews so you wouldn't get thedeath sentence you deserved? Who let you get away as an herb doctor formonths before you set yourself up as God and a traitor to mankindagain?"

  It shook him, as it was probably intended to do. How had she known aboutthe extra battery? He'd always assumed that Ben had returned to give itto him. But in that case, Chris couldn't know of it. Then he hardenedhimself again. In the old days, she'd always had one trump card hecouldn't beat and hadn't expected. But too much was involved for gamesnow.

  "Any police around, Molly?" he asked.

  Molly came back a minute later to report that everything looked clearand to show him where the equipment had been set up in Chris' office. Itwas all there, including the electron mike--a beautiful little portablemodel. There was even a small incubator with its own heat source intowhich he immediately transferred the little bottles he'd been keepingwarm against his skin. Most of the equipment had never been unpacked,which made loading it onto his tractor ridiculously easy.

  "Better come with me now, Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turnedto Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You canwriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock thephone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless youreally did leave me that battery."

  "You won't get away with it," she told him again, calmly this time.

  "No," he admitted. "Probably not. But maybe the human race will, if Ihave time to find an answer to the plague you won't see under your nose.But you won't get away with it, either. In the long run, your kind neverdo."

  Molly was sniffling as they drove away. It had probably been the bestlife she'd known, Doc supposed. Chri
s could be kind to menials. But nowMolly's work was done, and she'd have to disappear into the villages. Helet her off at the first village and drove on alone. He was itching toget to the microscope now, hardly able to wait through the long journeyback to Jake. His impatience grew with each mile.

  Finally he gave up. He swung the tractor into a small gulley betweensand dunes, left the motor idling and pulled down the shades thevillagers used for blackout traveling. There was power enough for themike here, and the cab was big enough for what he had to do.

  He mounted the mike on the tractor seat and began laying out thecollection of smears and cultures he had brought. It had been yearssince he'd made a film for the electron mike, but he found it all cameback to him as he worked.

  His hands were sweating with tension as he inserted the first film intothe chamber. He had the magnetic "lenses" set for twenty thousand power,but a quick glance showed it was too weak. He raised the power to fiftythousand.

  The filaments were there, clear and distinct.

  He turned on the little tape recorder that had been part of Chris'equipment and set the microphone where he could dictate into it withoutstopping to make clumsy notes. He readjusted the focus carefully,carrying on a running commentary.

  Then he gasped. Each of the little filaments carried three tiny darkersections; each was a cell, complete in itself, with the typical Martiantriple nucleus.

  He put a film with a tiny section of the nerve tissue from a corpse intothe chamber next, and again a quick glance at the screen was enough. Thefilaments were there, thickly crowded among nerve cells. They _did_travel along the nerves to reach the base of the brain before the largerlump could form.

  A specimen from one of the black specks was even more interesting. Thefilaments were there, but some were changed or changing into tiny, roundcells, also with the triple dark spots of nuclei. Those must be thefinal form that was released to infect others. Probably at first thesemultiplied directly in epithelial tissue, so that there was a rapidcontagion of infection. Eventually, they must form the filaments thatinvaded the nerves and caused the brief bodily reaction that wasSelznik's migraine. Then the body adapted to them and they began toincubate slowly, developing into the large cells he had first seen. When"ripe", the big cells broke apart into millions of the tiny round onesthat went back to the nerve endings, causing the black spots and killingthe host.

  He knew his enemy now, at least.

  He reached for the controls, increasing the magnification. He would loseresolution, but he might find something more at the extreme limits ofthe mike.

  Something wet and cold gushed into his face. He jerked back, trying towipe it off, but it was already evaporating, and there was a thick,acrid odor in the cab. He grabbed for his aspirator, then tried to reachthe airlock. But paralysis was already spreading through him, and hetoppled to the floor before he could escape.

  When he came to, it was morning outside, and Chris was waiting insidethe cab with two big Lobby policemen. A hypo in her hand must have beenwhat revived him.

  She touched the electron microscope with something like affection. "TheLobby technicians did a good job on this, don't you think, Dan? I warnedyou, but you wouldn't listen. And now we've even got your own tapedwords to prove you were doing forbidden research. Fool!"

  She shook her head pityingly as the tractor began moving with two otherstoward Southport.

  "You and your phony diseases. A little skin disorder, Selznik'smigraine, and a few cases of psychosis to make a new disease. Do youthink Medical Lobby can't check on such simple things? Or didn't youexpect us to hear of your open talk of revolt and realize you wereplanning to create some new germ to wipe out the Earth forces. Maybethose runners of yours were real, mass murderer!"

  She drew out another hypo and shoved the needle into his arm.Necrosynth--enough to keep him unconscious for twenty-four hours. Hestarted to curse her, but the drug acted before he could complete thethought.