The Hate Disease Read online

"if all incoming shipsare greeted with rockets."

  "That's the paras," said the police head, grimly. "They'd rather nothave a Med Service man here."

  * * * * *

  A ground car sped across the spaceport. It came at a headlong pacetoward the group just outside the Med Ship. There was a sudden howl ofa siren by the spaceport gate. A second car leaped as if to interceptthe first. Its siren screamed again. Then bright sparks appeared nearthe first car's windows. Blasters rasped. Incredulously, Calhoun sawthe blue-white of blaster bolts darting toward him. The men about himclawed for weapons. The grid operator said sharply:

  "Get in your ship! We'll take care of this! It's paras!"

  But Calhoun stood still. It was instinct not to show alarm. Actually,he didn't feel it. This was too preposterous! He tried to grasp thesituation and fearfulness does not help at such a time.

  A bolt crackled against the Med Ship's hull just beyond him. Blastersrasped from beside him. A bolt exploded almost at Calhoun's feet.There were two men in the first-moving ground car, and now thatanother car moved to head them off, one fired desperately and theother tried to steer and fire at the same time. The siren-sounding carsend a stream of bolts at them. But both cars jounced and bounced.There could be no marksmanship under such conditions.

  But a bolt did hit. The two-man car dipped suddenly to one side. Itsfore part touched ground. It slued around, and its rear part lifted.It flung out its two passengers and with an effect of greatdeliberation it rolled over end for end and came to a stop upsidedown. Of its passengers, one lay still. The other struggled to hisfeet and began to run--toward Calhoun. He fired desperately, again andagain----

  Bolts from the pursuing car struck all round him. Then one struck him.He collapsed.

  Calhoun's hands clenched. Automatically, he moved toward the otherstill figure, to act as a medical man does when somebody is hurt. Thegrid operator seized his arm. As Calhoun jerked to get free, thatsecond man stirred His blaster lifted and rasped. The little pellet ofball-lightning grazed Calhoun's side, burning away his uniform down tothe skin, just as there was a grating roar of blaster fire. The secondman died.

  "Are you crazy?" demanded the grid operator angrily. "He was a para!He was here to try to kill you!"

  The police head snapped:

  "Get that car sprayed! See if it had equipment to spread contagion!Spray everything it went near! And hurry!"

  There was silence as men came from the spaceport building. They pusheda tank on wheels before them. It had a hose and a nozzle attached toit. They began to use the hose to make a thick, foglike, heavy mistwhich clung to the ground and lingered there. The spray had the bitingsmell of phenol.

  "What's going on here?" demanded Calhoun angrily. "Damnation! What'sgoing on here?"

  The Minister for Health said unhappily:

  "Why ... we've a public-health situation we haven't been able to meet.It appears to be an epidemic of ... of ... we're not sure what, but itlooks like demoniac possession."

  II

  "I'd like," said Calhoun, "a definition. Just what do you mean by apara?"

  Murgatroyd echoed his tone in an indignant, "_Chee-chee!_"

  This was twenty minutes later. Calhoun had gone back into the Med Shipand treated the blaster burn on his side. He'd changed his clothingfrom the scorched uniform to civilian garb. It would not lookeccentric here. Men's ordinary garments were extremely similar allover the galaxy. Women's clothes were something else.

  Now he and Murgatroyd rode in a ground car with four armed men of theplanetary police, plus the civilian who'd been introduced as theMinister for Health for the planet. The car sped briskly toward thespaceport gate. Masses of thick gray fog still clung to the groundwhere the would-be assassins' car lay on its back and where the bodiesof the two dead men remained. The mist was being spreadeverywhere--everywhere the men had touched ground or where their carhad run.

  Calhoun had some experience with epidemics and emergency measures fordestroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitaryvalue of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burningthings might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw anaked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might beshown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. But people usedelectricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of theage of fire. So here on Tallien it seemed inevitable that infectivematerial should be sprayed with antiseptics instead of simply setablaze.

  "What," repeated Calhoun doggedly, "is a para?"

  The Health Minister said unhappily:

  "Paras are ... beings that once were sane men. They aren't sane anylonger. Perhaps they aren't men any longer. Something has happened tothem. If you'd landed a day or two later, you couldn't have landed atall. We normals had planned to blow up the landing grid so no othership could land and be lifted off again to spread the ... contagion toother worlds. If it is a contagion."

  "Smashing the landing grid," said Calhoun practically, "may be allright as a last resort. But surely there are other things to be triedfirst!"

  Then he stopped. The ground car in which he rode had reached thespaceport gate. Three other ground cars waited there. One swung intomotion ahead of them. The other two took up positions behind. Acaravan of four cars, each bristling with blast weapons, swept alongthe wide highway which began here at the spaceport and stretchedstraight across level ground toward the city whose towers showed onthe horizon. The other cars formed a guard for Calhoun. He'd neededprotection before, and he might need it again.

  "Medically," he said to the Minister for Health, "I take it that apara is the human victim of some condition which makes him actinsanely. That is pretty vague. You say it hasn't been controlled.That leaves everything very vague indeed. How widely spread is it?Geographically, I mean."

  "Paras have appeared," said the Minister for Health, "at every placeon Tallien Three where there are men."

  "It's epidemic, then," said Calhoun professionally. "You might call itpandemic. How many cases?"

  "We guess at thirty per cent of the population--so far," said theMinister for Health, hopelessly. "But every day the total goes up." Headded: "Dr. Lett has some hope for a vaccine, but it will be too latefor most."

  Calhoun frowned. With reasonably modern medical techniques, almost anysort of infection should be stopped long before there were as manycases as that!

  "When did it start? How long has it been running?"

  "The first paras were examined six months ago," said the HealthMinister. "It was thought to be a disease. Our best physiciansexamined them. They couldn't agree on a cause, they couldn't find agerm or a virus...."

  "Symptoms?" asked Calhoun crisply.

  "Dr. Lett phrased them in medical terms," said the Minister forHealth. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability ordepression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent.If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness andsecretiveness--strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a cravingfor--unusual food. When it becomes uncontrollable, the patient ismad!"

  * * * * *

  The ground cars sped toward the city. A second group of vehiclesappeared, waiting. As the four-car caravan swept up to them, one swungin front of the car in which Calhoun and Murgatroyd rode. The othersfell into line to the rear. It began to look like a respectablefighting force.

  "And after madness?" Calhoun asked.

  "Then they're paras!" said the Health Minister. "They crave theincredible. They feed on the abominable. And they hate us normalsas--devils out of hell would hate us!"

  "And after that again?" said Calhoun. "I mean, what's the prognosis?Do they die or recover? If they recover, in how long? If they die, howsoon?"

  "They're paras!" said the Health Minister querulously. "I'm nophysician! I'm an administrator! But I don't think any recover.Certainly none die of it! They stay--what they've become."

  "My experience," said Calh
oun, "has been mostly with diseases that oneeither recovers from or dies of. A disease whose victims organize tosteal weather rockets and to use them to destroy a ship--only theyfailed--and who carry on with an assassination attempt ... thatdoesn't sound like a disease! A disease has no purpose of its own.They had a purpose--as if they obeyed one of their number."

  The Minister for Health said uneasily:

  "It's been suggested--that something out of the jungle causes what'shappened. On other planets there are creatures who drink blood withoutwaking their victims. There are