The Fourth Murray Leinster Read online

  It was natural enough. There were vague and commonplace noises, together making an indefinite hum. Fans circulated the ship’s purified and reinvigorated air. Service motors turned in remote parts of the hull. Cooks and bakers moved about in the kitchens. Nobody could tell by any physical sensation that the Star Queen was not in overdrive, except in the control room.

  There the stars could be seen. They were unthinkably remote. The ship was light-years from any place where humans lived. She did not drive. Her skipper had a family on Cassim. He would not land a plague ship which might destroy them. The executive officer had a small son. If his return meant that small son’s death as well as his own, he would not return. All through the ship, the officers who had to know the situation recognized that if chlorophage had gotten into the Star Queen, the ship must not land anywhere. Nobody could survive. Nobody must attempt it.

  So the huge liner hung in the emptiness between the stars, waiting until it could be known definitely that chlorophage was aboard or that with absolute certainty it was absent. The question was up to Doctor Nordenfeld.

  He had isolated himself with Kathy in the ship’s hospital compartment. Since the ship was built it had been used once by a grown man who developed mumps, and once by an adolescent boy who developed a raging fever which antibiotics stopped. Health measures for space travel were strict. The hospital compartment had only been used those two times.

  On this voyage it had been used to contain an assortment of botanical specimens from a planet seventy light-years beyond Regulus. They were on their way to the botanical research laboratory on Cassim. As a routine precaution they’d been placed in the hospital, which could be fumigated when they were taken out. Now the doctor had piled them in one side of the compartment, which he had divided in half with a transparent plastic sheet. He stayed in that side. Kathy occupied the other.

  She had some flowering plants to look at and admire. They’d come from the air room and she was delighted with their coloring and beauty. But Doctor Nordenfeld had put them there as a continuing test for chlorophage. If Kathy carried that murderous virus on her person, the flowering plants would die of it—probably even before she did.

  It was a scrupulously scientific test for the deadly stuff. Completely sealed off except for a circulator to freshen the air she breathed, Kathy was settled with toys and picture books. It was an improvised but well-designed germproof room. The air for Kathy to breathe was sterilized before it reached her. The air she had breathed was sterilized as it left her plastic-sided residence. It should be the perfection of protection for the ship—if it was not already too late.

  The vision-phone buzzed. Doctor Nordenfeld stirred in his chair and flipped the switch. The Star Queen’s skipper looked at him out of the screen.

  “I’ve cut the overdrive,” said the skipper. “The passengers haven’t been told.”

  “Very sensible,” said the doctor.

  “When will we know?”

  “That we can go on living? When the other possibility is exhausted.”

  “Then, how will we know?” asked skipper stonily.

  Doctor Nordenfeld ticked off the possibilities. He bent down a finger. “One, her father took great pains. Maybe he did manage an aseptic transfer from a germ-free room to Altaira. Kathy may not have been exposed to the chlorophage. If she hasn’t, no bleached spots will show up on the air-room foliage or among the flowering plants in the room with her. Nobody in the crew or among the passengers will die.”

  He bent down a second finger. “It is probably more likely that white spots will appear on the plants in the air room and here, and people will start to die. That will mean Kathy brought contagion here the instant she arrived, and almost certainly that Altaira will become like Kamerun—uninhabited. In such a case we are finished.”

  He bent down a third finger. “Not so likely, but preferable, white spots may appear on the foliage inside the plastic with Kathy, but not in the ship’s air room. In that case she was exposed, but the virus was incubating when she came on board, and only developed and spread after she was isolated. Possibly, in such a case, we can save the passengers and crew, but the ship will probably have to be melted down in space. It would be tricky, but it might be done.”

  The skipper hesitated. “If that last happened, she—”

  “I will take whatever measures are necessary,” said Doctor Nordenfeld. “To save your conscience, we won’t discuss them. They should have been taken on Altaira.”

  He reached over and flipped off the phone. Then he looked up and into the other part of the ship’s hospital space. Kathy came out from behind a screen, where she’d made ready for bed. She was beaming. She had a large picture book under one arm and a doll under the other.

  “It’s all right for me to have these with me, isn’t it, Doctor Nordenfeld?” she asked hopefully. “I didn’t have any picture books but one, and it got worn out. And my doll—it was dreadful how shabby she was!”

  The doctor frowned. She smiled at him. He said, “After all, picture books are made to be looked at and dolls to be played with.”

  She skipped to the tiny hospital bed on the far side of the presumably virusproof partition. She climbed into it and zestfully arranged the doll to share it. She placed the book within easy reach.

  She said, “I think my father would say you were very nice, Doctor Nordenfeld, to look after me so well.”

  “No-o-o-o,” said the doctor in a detached voice. “I’m just doing what anybody ought to do.”

  She snuggled down under the covers. He looked at his watch and shrugged. It was very easy to confuse official night with official day, in space. Everybody else was asleep. He’d been putting Kathy through tests which began with measurements of pulse and respiration and temperature and went on from there. Kathy managed them herself, under his direction.

  He settled down with one of the medical books he’d brought into the isolation section with him. Its title was Decontamination of Infectious Material from Different Planets. He read it grimly.

  * * * *

  The time came when the Star Queen should have come out of overdrive with the sun Circe blazing fiercely nearby, and a green planet with ice caps to be approached on interplanetary drive. There should have been droning, comforting drive noises to assure the passengers—who naturally could not see beyond the ship’s steel walls—that they were within a mere few million miles of a world where sunshine was normal, and skies were higher than ship’s ceilings, and there were fascinating things to see and do.

  Some of the passengers packed their luggage and put it outside their cabins to be picked up for landing. But no stewards came for it. Presently there was an explanation. The ship had run under maximum speed and the planetfall would be delayed.

  The passengers were disappointed but not concerned. The luggage vanished into cabins again.

  The Star Queen floated in space among a thousand thousand million stars. Her astrogators had computed a course to the nearest star into which to drive the Star Queen, but it would not be used unless there was mutiny among the crew. It would be better to go in remote orbit around Circe III and give the news of chlorophage on Altaira, if Doctor Nordenfeld reported it on the ship.

  Time passed. One day. Two. Three. Then Jensen called the hospital compartment on vision-phone. His expression was dazed. Nordenfeld saw the interior of the control room behind Jensen. He said, “You’re a passenger, Jensen. How is it you’re in the control room?”

  Jensen moistened his lips. “The skipper thought I’d better not associate with the other passengers. I’ve stayed with the officers the past few days. We—the ones who know what’s in prospect—we’re keeping separate from the others so—nobody will let anything out by accident.”

  “Very wise. When the skipper comes back on duty, ask him to call me. I’ve something interesting to tell him.”

  “He’s—checking something now,” said Jensen. His voice was thin and reedy. “The—air officer reports there are white patches o
n the plants in the air room. They’re growing. Fast. He told me to tell you. He’s—gone to make sure.”

  “No need,” said Nordenfeld bitterly.

  He swung the vision-screen. It faced that part of the hospital space beyond the plastic sheeting. There were potted flowering plants there. They had pleased Kathy. They shared her air. And there were white patches on their leaves.

  “I thought,” said Nordenfeld with an odd mirthless levity, “that the skipper’d be interested. It is of no importance whatever now, but I accomplished something remarkable. Kathy’s father didn’t manage an aseptic transfer. She brought the chlorophage with her. But I confined it. The plants on the far side of that plastic sheet show the chlorophage patches plainly. I expect Kathy to show signs of anemia shortly. I’d decided that drastic measures would have to be taken, and it looked like they might work, because I’ve confined the virus. It’s there where Kathy is, but it isn’t where I am. All the botanical specimens on my side of the sheet are untouched. The phage hasn’t hit them. It is remarkable. But it doesn’t matter a damn if the air room’s infected. And I was so proud!”

  Jensen did not respond.

  Nordenfeld said ironically, “Look what I accomplished! I protected the air plants on my side See? They’re beautifully green! No sign of infection! It means that a man can work with chlorophage! A laboratory ship could land on Kamerun and keep itself the equivalent of an aseptic-environment room while the damned chlorophage was investigated and ultimately whipped! And it doesn’t matter!”

  Jensen said numbly, “We can’t ever make port. We ought—we ought to—”

  “We’ll take the necessary measures,” Nordenfeld told him. “Very quietly and very efficiently, with neither the crew nor the passengers knowing that Altaira sent the chlorophage on board the Star Queen in the hope of banishing it from there. The passengers won’t know that their own officials shipped it off with them as they tried to run away…. And I was so proud that I’d improvised an aseptic room to keep Kathy in! I sterilized the air that went in to her, and I sterilized—”

  Then he stopped. He stopped quite short. He stared at the air unit, set up and with two pipes passing through the plastic partition which cut the hospital space in two. He turned utterly white. He went roughly to the air machine. He jerked back its cover. He put his hand inside.

  Minutes later he faced back to the vision-screen from which Jensen looked apathetically at him.

  “Tell the skipper to call me,” he said in a savage tone. “Tell him to call me instantly he comes back! Before he issues any orders at all!”

  He bent over the sterilizing equipment and very carefully began to disassemble it. He had it completely apart when Kathy waked. She peered at him through the plastic separation sheet.

  “Good morning, Doctor Nordenfeld,” she said cheerfully.

  The doctor grunted. Kathy smiled at him. She had gotten on very good terms with the doctor, since she’d been kept in the ship’s hospital. She did not feel that she was isolated. In having the doctor where she could talk to him at any time, she had much more company than ever before. She had read her entire picture book to him and discussed her doll at length. She took it for granted that when he did not answer or frowned that he was simply busy. But he was company because she could see him.

  Doctor Nordenfeld put the air apparatus together with an extremely peculiar expression on his face. It had been built for Kathy’s special isolation by a ship’s mechanic. It should sterilize the used air going into Kathy’s part of the compartment, and it should sterilize the used air pushed out by the supplied fresh air. The hospital itself was an independent sealed unit, with its own chemical air freshener, and it had been divided into two. The air freshener was where Doctor Nordenfeld could attend to it, and the sterilizer pump simply shared the freshening with Kathy. But—

  But the pipe that pumped air to Kathy was brown and discolored from having been used for sterilizing, and the pipe that brought air back was not. It was cold. It had never been heated.

  So Doctor Nordenfeld had been exposed to any contagion Kathy could spread. He hadn’t been protected at all. Yet the potted plants on Kathy’s side of the barrier were marked with great white splotches which grew almost as one looked, while the botanical specimens in the doctor’s part of the hospital—as much infected as Kathy’s could have been, by failure of the ship’s mechanic to build the sterilizer to work two ways: the stacked plants, the alien plants, the strange plants from seventy light-years beyond Regulus—they were vividly green. There was no trace of chlorophage on them. Yet they had been as thoroughly exposed as Doctor Nordenfeld himself!

  The doctor’s hands shook. His eyes burned. He took out a surgeon’s scalpel and ripped the plastic partition from floor to ceiling. Kathy watched interestedly.

  “Why did you do that, Doctor Nordenfeld?” she asked.

  He said in an emotionless, unnatural voice, “I’m going to do something that it was very stupid of me not to do before. It should have been done when you were six years old, Kathy. It should have been done on Kamerun, and after that on Altaira. Now we’re going to do it here. You can help me.”

  * * * *

  The Star Queen had floated out of overdrive long enough to throw all distance computations off. But she swung about, and swam back, and presently she was not too far from the world where she was now many days overdue. Lift-ships started up from the planet’s surface. But the Star Queen ordered them back.

  “Get your spaceport health officer on the vision-phone,” ordered the Star Queen’s skipper. “We’ve had chlorophage on board.”

  There was panic. Even at a distance of a hundred thousand miles, chlorophage could strike stark terror into anybody. But presently the image of the spaceport health officer appeared on the Star Queen’s screen.

  “We’re not landing,” said Doctor Nordenfeld. “There’s almost certainly an outbreak of chlorophage on Altaira, and we’re going back to do something about it. It got on our ship with passengers from there. We’ve whipped it, but we may need some help.”

  The image of the health officer aground was a mask of horror for seconds after Nordenfeld’s last statement. Then his expression became incredulous, though still horrified.

  “We came on to here,” said Doctor Nordenfeld, “to get you to send word by the first other ship to the Patrol that a quarantine has to be set up on Altaira, and we need to be inspected for recovery from chlorophage infection. And we need to pass on, officially, the discovery that whipped the contagion on this ship. We were carrying botanical specimens to Cassim and we discovered that they were immune to chlorophage. That’s absurd, of course. Their green coloring is the same substance as in plants under Sol-type suns anywhere. They couldn’t be immune to chlorophage. So there had to be something else.”

  “Was—was there?” asked the health officer.

  “There was. Those specimens came from somewhere beyond Regulus. They carried, as normal symbiotes on their foliage, microörganisms unknown both on Kamerun and Altaira. The alien bugs are almost the size of virus particles, feed on virus particles, and are carried by contact, air, and so on, as readily as virus particles themselves. We discovered that those microörganisms devoured chlorophage. We washed them off the leaves of the plants, sprayed them in our air-room jungle, and they multiplied faster than the chlorophage. Our whole air supply is now loaded with an airborne antichlorophage organism which has made our crew and passengers immune. We’re heading back to Altaira to turn loose our merry little bugs on that planet. It appears that they grow on certain vegetation, but they’ll live anywhere there’s phage to eat. We’re keeping some chlorophage cultures alive so our microörganisms don’t die out for lack of food!”

  The medical officer on the ground gasped. “Keeping phage alive?”

  “I hope you’ve recorded this,” said Nordenfeld. “It’s rather important. This trick should have been tried on Kamerun and Altaira and everywhere else new diseases have turned up. When there’s a bug on one p
lanet that’s deadly to us, there’s bound to be a bug on some other planet that’s deadly to it! The same goes for any pests or vermin—the principle of natural enemies. All we have to do is find the enemies!”

  There was more communication between the Star Queen and the spaceport on Circe III, which the Star Queen would not make other contact with on this trip, and presently the big liner headed back to Altaira. It was necessary for official as well as humanitarian reasons. There would need to be a health examination of the Star Queen to certify that it was safe for passengers to breathe her air and eat in her restaurants and swim in her swimming pools and occupy the six levels of passenger cabins she contained. This would have to be done by a Patrol ship, which would turn up at Altaira.

  The Star Queen’s skipper would be praised by his owners for not having driven the liner into a star, and the purser would be forgiven for the confusion in his records due to off-schedule operations of the big ship, and Jensen would find in the ending of all terror of chlorophage an excellent reason to look for appreciation in the value of the investments he was checking up. And Doctor Nordenfeld….

  He talked very gravely to Kathy. “I’m afraid,” he told her, “that your father isn’t coming back. What would you like to do?”

  She smiled at him hopefully. “Could I be your little girl?” she asked. Doctor Nordenfeld grunted. “Hm … I’ll think about it.”

  But he smiled at her. She grinned at him. And it was settled.

  THIRD PLANET

  Originally published in Worlds of Tomorrow, April 1963.