The Hate Disease Part 4

Calhoun seated himself at the control desk. He threw switches there. He momentarily touched a b.u.t.ton. There was a slight shock and the beginning of a roar outside. It cut off. Calhoun looked at the vision plates showing outside. There was swirling smoke and steam. There were men running in headlong flight, leaving their ground cars behind them.

"A slight touch of emergency rocket," said Calhoun. "They've run away. Now we end the plague on Tallien Three."

The grid operator was still dazed by the continued absence of any indication that he might ever become a para. He said unsteadily: "Sure! Sure! But how?"

"Wood smoke," said Calhoun. "Emergency rockets. Roofs! There's been no wood smoke in the air on this planet because there are no forest fires and people don't burn fuel. They use electricity. So we start the largest production of wood smoke that we find convenient, and the population of a certain modified butyl mercaptan molecule will be reduced. Down to a normal level. Immediately!"

The emergency rocket bellowed thunderously and the little Med s.h.i.+p rose.

There have been, of course, emergency measures against contagion all through human history. There was a king of France, on Earth, who had all the lepers in his kingdom killed. There have been s.h.i.+ps and houses burned to drive out plague, and quarantines which simply interfered with human beings were countless. Calhoun's measure on Tallien was somewhat more dramatic than most, but it had good justification.

He set fire to the planet's capital city. The little Med s.h.i.+p swept over the darkened buildings. Her emergency rockets made thin pencils of flame two hundred feet long. She touched off roofs to the east, and Calhoun rose to see which way the wind blew. He descended and touched here and there....

Thick, seemingly suffocating ma.s.ses of wood smoke flowed over the city. They were not actually strangling, but they created panic. There was fighting in Government Center, but it stopped when the mysterious stuff--not one man in a hundred had ever seen burning wood or smelled its smoke--the fighting stopped and all men fled when a choking, reeking blanket rolled over the city and lay there.

It wasn't a great fire, considering everything. Less than ten per cent of the city burned, but ninety-odd per cent of the paras in it ceased to be paras. More, they had suddenly regained an invincible aversion to the smell of butyl mercaptan--even a modified butyl mercaptan--and it was promptly discovered that no normal who had smelled wood smoke became a para. So all the towns and even individual farmhouses would hereafter make sure that there was pungent wood smoke to be smelled from time to time by everybody.

But Calhoun did not wait for such pleasant news. He could not look for grat.i.tude. He'd burned part of the city. He'd forced paras to stop being paras and become ashamed. And those who hadn't become paras wanted desperately to forget the whole matter as soon as possible. They couldn't, but grat.i.tude to Calhoun would remind them. He took appropriate action.

With the grid operator landed again, and after the grid was operable once more and had sent the Med s.h.i.+p a good five planetary diameters into s.p.a.ce--some few hours after the s.h.i.+p was in overdrive again--Calhoun and Murgatroyd had coffee together. Murgatroyd zestfully licked his emptied tiny mug, to get the last least taste of the beverage. He said happily, "Chee!" He wanted more.

"Coffee," said Calhoun severely, "has become a habit with you, Murgatroyd! If this abnormal appet.i.te develops too far, you might start yawning at me, which would imply that your desire for it was uncontrollable. A yawn caused by what is called a yen has been known to make a man dislocate his jaw. You might do that. You wouldn't like it!"

Murgatroyd did not reply.

"You don't believe it, eh?" said Calhoun. Then he said: "Murgatroyd, I'm going to spend odd moments all the rest of my life wondering about what happens to Dr. Lett! They'll kill him, somehow. But I suspect they'll be quite gentle with him. There's no way to imagine a punishment that would really fit! Isn't that more interesting than coffee?"

"Chee! Chee! Chee!" said Murgatroyd insistently.

"It wasn't wise to stay and try to make an ordinary public-health inspection. We'll send somebody else when things are back to normal."

"Chee!!!" said Murgatroyd loudly.

"Oh, all right!" said Calhoun. "If you're going to be emotional about it, pa.s.s you cup!"

He reached out his hand, Murgatroyd put his tiny mug in it. Calhoun refilled it. Murgatroyd sipped zestfully.

The Med s.h.i.+p Esclipus Twenty went on in overdrive, back toward sector headquarters of the Interstellar Medical Service.