by Andre Norton
Chapter VIII
HEADACHES
They lifted from Sargol on schedule and went into Hyper also on schedule.From that point on there was nothing to do but wait out the usual dulltime of flight between systems and hope that Steen Wilcox had plotted acourse which would cut that flight time to a minimum. But this voyagethere was little relaxation once they were in Hyper. No matter when Danedropped into the mess cabin, which was the common meeting place of thespacer, he was apt to find others there before him, usually with a mug ofone of Mura's special brews close at hand, speculating about theirlanding date.
Dane, himself, once he had thrown off the lingering effects of hisSargolian illness, applied time to his studies. When he had first joinedthe Queen as a recruit straight out of the training Pool, he had speedilylearned that all the ten years of intensive study then behind him hadonly been an introduction to the amount he still had to absorb before hecould take his place as an equal with such a trader as Van Rycke--if hehad the stuff which would raise him in time to that exalted level. Whilehe had still had his superior's favor he had dared to treat him as aninstructor, going to him with perplexing problems of stowage or barter.But now he had no desire to intrude upon the Cargo-master, and doggedlywrestled with the microtapes of old records on his own, painfullyworking out the why and wherefor for any departure from the regularprocedure. He had no inkling of his own future status--whether the returnto Terra would find him permanently earthed. And he would ask noquestions.
They had been four days of ship's time in Hyper when Dane walked into themess cabin, tired after his work with old records, to discover no Murabusy in the galley beyond, no brew steaming on the heat coil. Rip sat atthe table, his long legs stuck out, his usually happy face very sober.
"What's wrong?" Dane reached for a mug, then seeing no pot of drink, putit back in place.
"Frank's sick--"
"What!" Dane turned. Illness such as they had run into on Sargol had alogical base. But illness on board ship was something else.
"Tau has him isolated. He has a bad headache and he blacked out when hetried to sit up. Tau's running tests."
Dane sat down. "Could be something he ate--"
Rip shook his head. "He wasn't at the feast--remember? And he didn't eatanything from outside, he swore that to Tau. In fact he didn't go dirtmuch while we were down--"
That was only too true as Dane could now recall. And the fact that thesteward had not been at the feast, had not sampled native food products,wiped out the simplest and most comforting reasons for his presentcollapse.
"What's this about Frank?" Ali stood in the doorway. "He said yesterdaythat he had a headache. But now Tau has him shut off--"
"But he wasn't at that feast." Ali stopped short as the implications ofthat struck him. "How's Tang feeling?"
"Fine--why?" The Com-tech had come up behind Kamil and was answering forhimself. "Why this interest in the state of my health?"
"Frank's down with something--in isolation," Rip replied bluntly. "Did hedo anything out of the ordinary when we were off ship?"
For a long moment the other stared at Shannon and then he shook his head."No. And he wasn't dirt-side to any extent either. So Tau's runningtests--" He lapsed into silence. None of them wished to put theirthoughts into words.
Dane picked up the microtape he had brought with him and went on down thecorridor to return it. The panel of the cargo office was ajar and to hisrelief he found Van Rycke out. He shoved the tape back in its case andpulled out the next one. Sinbad was there, not in his own privatehammock, but sprawled out on the Cargo-master's bunk. He watched Danelazily, mouthing a silent mew of welcome. For some reason since they hadblasted from Sargol the cat had been lazy--as if his adventures afieldthere had sapped much of his vitality.
"Why aren't you out working?" Dane asked as he leaned over to scratchunder a furry chin raised for the benefit of such a caress. "You inspectthe hold lately, boy?"
Sinbad merely blinked and after the manner of his species lookedinfinitely bored. As Dane turned to go the Cargo-master came in. Heshowed no surprise at Dane's presence. Instead he reached out andfingered the label of the tape Dane had just chosen. After a glance atthe identifying symbol he took it out of his assistant's hand, plopped itback in its case, and stood for a moment eyeing the selection of pastvoyage records. With a tongue-click of satisfaction he pulled out anotherand tossed it across the desk to Dane.
"See what you can make out of this tangle," he ordered. But Dane'sshoulders went back as if some weight had been lifted from them. The oldeasiness was still lacking, but he was no longer exiled to the outerdarkness of Van Rycke's displeasure.
Holding the microtape as if it were a first grade Koros stone Dane wentback to his own cabin, snapped the tape into his reader, adjusted the earbuttons and lay back on his bunk to listen.
He was deep in the intricacy of a deal so complicated that he was lostafter the first two moves, when he opened his eyes to see Ali at the doorpanel. The Engineer-apprentice made an emphatic beckoning wave and Daneslipped off the ear buttons.
"What is it?" His question lacked a cordial note.
"I've got to have help." Ali was terse. "Kosti's blacked out!"
"What!" Dane sat up and dropped his feet to the deck in almost onemovement.
"I can't shift him alone," Ali stated the obvious. The giant jetman wasalmost double his size. "We must get him to his quarters. And I won't askStotz--"
For a perfectly good reason Dane knew. An assistant--two of theapprentices--could go sick, but their officers' continued good healthmeant the most to the Queen. If some infection were aboard it would bebetter for Ali and himself to be exposed, than to have Johan Stotz withall his encyclopedic knowledge of the ship's engines contract anydisease.
They found the jetman half sitting, half lying in the short foot or so ofcorridor which led to his own cubby. He had been making for his quarterswhen the seizure had taken him. And by the time the two reached his side,he was beginning to come around, moaning, his hands going to his head.
Together they got him on his feet and guided him to his bunk where hecollapsed again, dead weight they had to push into place. Dane looked atAli--
"Tau?"
"Haven't had time to call him yet." Ali was jerking at the thigh strapswhich fastened Kosti's space boots.
"I'll go." Glad for the task Dane sped up the ladder to the next sectionand threaded the narrow side hall to the Medic's cabin where he knockedon the panel.
There was a pause before Craig Tau looked out, deep lines of wearinessbracketing his mouth, etched between his eyes.
"Kosti, sir," Dane gave his bad news quickly. "He's collapsed. We got himto his cabin--"
Tau showed no sign of surprise. His hand shot out for his kit.
"You touched him?" At the other's nod he added an order. "Stay in yourquarters until I have a chance to look you over--understand?"
Dane had no chance to answer, the Medic was already on his way. He wentto his own cabin, understanding the reason for his imprisonment, butinwardly rebelling against it. Rather than sit idle he snapped on thereader--but, although facts and figures were dunned into his ears--hereally heard very little. He couldn't apply himself--not with a newspecter leering at him from the bulkhead.
The dangers of the space lanes were not to be numbered, death walkedamong the stars a familiar companion of all spacemen. And to the FreeTrader it was the extra and invisible crewman on every ship that raised.But there were deaths and deaths--And Dane could not forget the gruesomelegends Van Rycke collected avidly as his hobby--had recorded in hisprivate library of the folk lore of space.
Stories such as that of the ghostly "New Hope" carrying refugees from thefirst Martian Rebellion--the ship which had lifted for the stars but hadnever arrived, which wandered for a timeless eternity, a derelict in freefall, its port closed but the warning "dead" lights on at its nose--aship which through five centuries had been sighted only by a spacer insimilar distress. Such stories were numerous. T
here were other tales of"plague" ships wandering free with their dead crews, or discovered andshot into some sun by a patrol cruiser so that they might not carry theirinfection farther. Plague--the nebulous "worst" the Traders had to face.Dane screwed his eyes shut, tried to concentrate upon the droning voicein his ears, but he could not control his thoughts nor--his fears.
At a touch on his arm he started so wildly that he jerked the cord loosefrom the reader and sat up, somewhat shamefaced, to greet Tau. At theMedic's orders he stripped for one of the most complete examinations hehad ever undergone outside a quarantine port. It included an almostmicroscopic inspection of the skin on his neck and shoulders, but whenTau had done he gave a sigh of relief.
"Well, you haven't got it--at least you don't show any signs yet," heamended his first statement almost before the words were out of hismouth.
"What were you looking for?"
Tau took time out to explain. "Here," his fingers touched the smallhollow at the base of Dane's throat and then swung him around andindicated two places on the back of his neck and under his shoulderblades. "Kosti and Mura both have red eruptions here. It's as if theyhave been given an injection of some narcotic." Tau sat down on the jumpseat while Dane dressed. "Kosti was dirt-side--he might have picked upsomething--"
"But Mura--"
"That's it!" Tau brought his fist down on the edge of the bunk. "Frankhardly left the ship--yet he showed the first signs. On the other handyou are all right so far and you were off ship. And Ali's clean and hewas with you on the hunt. We'll just have to wait and see." He got upwearily. "If your head begins to ache," he told Dane, "you get back herein a hurry and stay put--understand?"
As Dane learned all the other members of the crew were given the sametype of inspection. But none of them showed the characteristic markswhich meant trouble. They were on course for Terra--but--and that butmust have loomed large in all their minds--once there would they beallowed to land? Could they even hope for a hearing? Plague ship--Taumust find the answer before they came into normal space about their ownsolar system or they were in for such trouble as made a broken contractseem the simplest of mishaps.
Kosti and Mura were in isolation. There were volunteers for nursing andTau, unable to be in two places at once, finally picked Weeks to lookafter his crewmate in the engineering section.
There was doubling up of duties. Tau could no longer share with Mura thecare of the hydro garden so Van Rycke took over. While Dane found himselfin charge of the galley and, while he did not have Mura's deft hand atdisguising the monotonous concentrates to the point they resembled freshfood, after a day or two he began to experiment cautiously and produced astew which brought some short words of appreciation from Captain Jellico.
They all breathed a sigh of relief when, after three days, no more signsof the mysterious illness showed on new members of the crew. It becameroutine to parade before Tau stripped to the waist each morning for theinspection of the danger points, and the Medic's vigilance did notrelax.
In the meantime neither Mura nor Kosti appeared to suffer. Once theinitial stages of headaches and blackouts were passed, the patientslapsed into a semi-conscious state as if they were under sedation of sometype. They would eat, if the food was placed in their mouths, but theydid not seem to know what was going on about them, nor did they answerwhen spoken to.
Tau, between visits to them, worked feverishly in his tiny lab, analyzingblood samples, reading the records of obscure diseases, trying to findthe reason for their attacks. But as yet his discoveries were exactlynothing. He had come out of his quarters and sat in limp exhaustion atthe mess table while Dane placed before him a mug of stimulating caf-hag.
"I don't get it!" The Medic addressed the table top rather than theamateur cook. "It's a poison of some kind. Kosti went dirt-side--Muradidn't. Yet Mura came down with it first. And we didn't ship any foodfrom Sargol. Neither did he eat any while we were there. Unless he didand we didn't know about it. If I could just bring him to long enough toanswer a couple of questions!" Sighing he dropped his weary head on hisfolded arms and within seconds was asleep.
Dane put the mug back on the heating unit and sat down at the other endof the table. He did not have the heart to shake Tau intowakefulness--let the poor devil get a slice of bunk time, he certainlyneeded it after the fatigues of the past four days.
Van Rycke passed along the corridor on his way to the hydro, Sinbad athis heels. But in a moment the cat was back, leaping up on Dane's knee.He did not curl up, but rubbed against the young man's arm, finallyreaching up with a paw to touch Dane's chin, uttering one of thesoundless, mews which were his bid for attention.
"What's the matter, boy?" Dane fondled the cat's ears. "You haven't gota headache--have you?" In that second a wild surmise came into his mind.Sinbad had been planet-side on Sargol as much as he could, and on shipboard he was equally at home in all their cabins--could he be the carrierof the disease?
A good idea--only if it were true, then logically the second victimshould have been Van, or Dane--whereas Sinbad lingered most of the timein their cabins--not Kosti. The cat, as far as he knew, had never shownany particular fondness for the jetman and certainly did not sleep inKarl's quarters. No--that point did not fit. But he would mention it toTau--no use overlooking anything--no matter how wild.
It was the sequence of victims which puzzled them all. As far as Tau hadbeen able to discover Mura and Kosti had nothing much in common exceptthat they were crewmates on the same spacer. They did not bunk in thesame section, their fields of labor were totally different, they had nospecial food or drink tastes in common, they were not even of the samerace. Frank Mura was one of the few descendants of a mysterious (or nowmysterious) people who had had their home on a series of islands in oneof Terra's seas, islands which almost a hundred years before had beenswallowed up in a series of world-rending quakes--Japan was the ancientname of that nation. While Karl Kosti had come from the once thicklypopulated land masses half the planet away which had borne thegeographical name of "Europe." No, all the way along the two victims hadonly very general meeting points--they both shipped on the Solar Queenand they were both of Terran birth.
Tau stirred and sat up, blinking bemusedly at Dane, then pushed back hiswiry black hair and assumed a measure of alertness. Dane dropped the nowpurring cat in the Medic's lap and in a few sentences outlined hissuspicion. Tau's hands closed about Sinbad.
"There's a chance in that--" He looked a little less beat and he drankthirstily from the mug Dane gave him for the second time. Then he hurriedout with Sinbad under one arm--bound for his lab.
Dane slicked up the galley, trying to put things away as neatly as Murakept them. He didn't have much faith in the Sinbad lead, but in this caseeverything must be checked out.
When the Medic did not appear during the rest of the ship's day Dane wasnot greatly concerned. But he was alerted to trouble when Ali came inwith an inquiry and a complaint.
"Seen anything of Craig?"
"He's in the lab," Dane answered.
"He didn't answer my knock," Ali protested. "And Weeks says he hasn'tbeen in to see Karl all day--"
That did catch Dane's attention. Had his half hunch been right? Was Tauon the trail of a discovery which had kept him chained to the lab? But itwasn't like the Medic not to look in on his patients.
"You're sure he isn't in the lab?"
"I told you that he didn't answer my knock. I didn't open the panel--"But now Ali was already in the corridor heading back the way he had come,with Dane on his heels, an unwelcome explanation for that silence in boththeir minds. And their fears were reinforced by what they heard as theyapproached the panel--a low moan wrung out of unbearable pain. Danethrust the sliding door open.
Tau had slipped from his stool to the floor. His hands were at his headwhich rolled from side to side as if he were trying to quiet some agony.Dane stripped down the Medic's under tunic. There was no need to make acareful examination, in the hollow of Craig Tau's throat was thetell-tale red b
lotch.
"Sinbad!" Dane glanced about the cabin. "Did Sinbad get out past you?" hedemanded of the puzzled Ali.
"No--I haven't seen him all day--"
Yet the cat was nowhere in the tiny cabin and it had no concealed hidingplace. To make doubly sure Dane secured the panel before they carried Tauto his bunk. The Medic had blacked out again, passed into the lethargicsecond stage of the malady. At least he was out of the pain whichappeared to be the worst symptom of the disease.
"It must be Sinbad!" Dane said as he made his report directly to CaptainJellico. "And yet--"
"Yes, he's been staying in Van's cabin," the Captain mused. "And you'vehandled him, he slept on your bunk. Yet you and Van are all right. Idon't understand that. Anyway--to be on the safe side--we'd better findand isolate him before--"
He didn't have to underline any words for the grim-faced men wholistened. With Tau--their one hope of fighting the disease gone--they hada black future facing them.
They did not have to search for Sinbad. Dane coming down to his ownsection found the cat crouched before the panel of Van Rycke's cabin, hiseyes glued to the thin crack of the door. Dane scooped him up and tookhim to the small cargo space intended for the safeguarding of choiceitems of commerce. To his vast surprise Sinbad began fighting wildly ashe opened the hatch, kicking and then slashing with ready claws. The catseemed to go mad and Dane had all he could do to shut him in. When hesnapped the panel he heard Sinbad launch himself against the barrier asif to batter his way out. Dane, blood welling in several deep scratches,went in search of first aid. But some suspicion led him to pause as hepassed Van Rycke's door. And when his knock brought no answer he pushedthe panel open.
Van Rycke lay on his bunk, his eyes half closed in a way which had becomeonly too familiar to the crew of the Solar Queen. And Dane knew that whenhe looked for it he would find the mark of the strange plague on theCargo-master's body.