Ole Doc Methuselah (17 page)

“I
won't cooperate,” said Garth flatly. Nobody would catch him risking any of his
valuable equipment.

“Admiral,”
said Lionel MacBeth, Council president, “I think it
has
been foolish of
us. We sent the vessel away in a senseless panic amongst ourselves, trying to
save this system without regard to others. The best we can do is—”

“It
was done without my advice,” said Garth, “but I'd do it myself if it was to be
done again. The red death got away from three Army doctors”—and he glowered at
the Army—“who were trying to be humane about a camp full of it. I've
investigated. The
Star of Space
could get nowhere. She's branded. She
had very little fuel after a run from Spica—”

“She
had five hundred light-years of fuel left!” said Ole Doc.

Garth
bristled. This was too much from a pill roller. “What do you know about fuel?”

Hippocrates
said, “You keep quiet!” and looked mad. Fuel indeed. Didn't he know whole
volumes about fuel and engines? Whole libraries? And didn't his brain belong to
Ole Doc? Of course his master knew about fuels!

Ole
Doc said, “I ion-beamed New Earth of Spica.” He pulled out his message log.
“The
Star of Space
was trying out delphi particles. She took her
original weight in them. She'd have an excess of five hundred light-years above
her normal reserve. She could go anywhere this side of the Hub. And when she
gets where she is going, she is going to try to hide her plight. Why hasn't a
general galactic alarm gone out?”

This
was news to the Council. The
Star of Space
should have been completely
out of fuel. Two or three nervous coughs sounded and here and there beads of
perspiration began to grow.

Garth
was silent. He was thinking.

“You'll
have to act!” said Ole Doc. “I demand you throw out a net to intercept her,
that you alert all navies to comb space, that you alarm any place she might try
to land and that, in conclusion, you hold her at bay until I or another UMS Soldier
can get there and take charge.”

Seventeen
heads nodded quick assent and then all attention went to Garth. Control and
communication were naval functions.

Garth
took out a cigar. He inspected it. He threw the frayed one away and replaced it
with the fresh one. He bit the end, spat, tilted the cheroot up and looked
contemptuously at Ole Doc.

“The
warning will be heeded and you probably deserve some thanks for calling this to
my attention. It is now in naval hands. With the permission of the Council I
shall give my orders.”

They
gave it quickly enough.

Garth
rose, shrugged into a spacecoat and started to leave.

“May
I ask,” said Ole Doc, “just what orders you are going to give?”

“All
space navies will be ordered to an emergency standing. Patrols will search
their sectors. All Navy bases will be alerted. And wherever found or whenever
seen, the
Star of Space
is to be blown out of existence with some
well-placed shots. Good day.”

The
door closed behind him.

Ole
Doc got up slowly.

“You
abide by this?” he demanded of the Council.

They
were uncomfortable.

“You
do not see that if this ship is disintegrated we will have lost all possible
chance of locating the source, type, course and treatment of that plague?”

They
saw that but they were still uncomfortable.

“You,”
said Ole Doc, “are a pack of fools!” And when he had slammed the door behind him
and strode off down the hall, Hippocrates was positive now about that adrenaline.
Ole Doc was mad!

 

The
first contact came when the
Morgue
was off the Carmack System and was
announced as being within the Smith Empire on a planet called Skinner's Folly.

Ole
Doc had guessed five years wrong and he muttered about it as the
Morgue
skimmed along under
gyro
control.

“We'll
never make it,” said Ole Doc. “That confounded System Police will get there
and wreck everything. I know the Smith Empire!”

Hippocrates
served soup in the lovely salon. The murals had been very specially constructed
by an Old Seattle artist named Boyd who had been extremely grateful for having
his life saved one afternoon when Ole Doc walked by a Venusian
grog shop
. The murals showed a tree of life growing all
around the four walls of the room depicting the evolution of man and there were
many trillionaires and kings who would have paid a planet's ransom for a
duplicate. Nobody but a Soldier of Light could have kept Boyd sober that long,
however.

“Monkey
stage,” said Ole Doc, glaring at a gibbon who was gibbering in a lifelike
manner, three-dimensional and moving, it seemed, in a tree. “Few of them ever
get beyond the monkey stage. Give 'em fleas to pick and they're convinced
they're solving all the problems of the world.”

“Too
much adrenaline. This afternoon when I fix,” said Hippocrates, testing the
coffee for temperature before he served it, “I cut down adrenaline.”

“You'll
cut down nothing, you gypsum freak! I feel fine. I haven't
felt this mad in a hundred years. It does a man good to feel good and mad at
something once in a while. It's therapy, that's what it is.”

“I
cut down adrenaline,” said Hippocrates. “You got bad habits. You fall in love
with women and sometimes you get mad. You drink, too,” he added, spitefully
setting out the muscatel.

“I'll
fall in love and I'll get drunk—”

“‘Love
is the ambition of the failed man,”' primly quoted Hippocrates. “‘There is
nothing,'” he continued, phonograph-recordwise, “‘so nauseous under all the
suns and stars as a gusty-sighing lover, painted like a clown, exchanging
spittle with a predatory female under the delusion that he is most nobly
discharging the highest injunctions of a divine—”'

“You
heathen!” said Ole Doc. “That gibbon has more sense.”

“He
can't make chicken soup,” wisely countered Hippocrates. “That is enough wine.
At 4:15 you be ready for treatment. Not so much adrenaline.”

Ole
Doc rose and looked at the telltale instruments in the cabin bulkhead. He wrote
a few figures on his cuff which told him that they would be landing at
Skinner's Folly by six. He went forward and tried to connect with an ion beam
which would permit him to communicate with the Smith Empire. The Smith Dynasty,
however, had been a very economical one and kept few beams going, depending
more upon its staff of inventors than upon what was already practical and in
use elsewhere.

At
4:15 he suffered himself to be stripped and placed before a battery of ray
rods, impatiently submitting to the critical ministrations of his slave. From
some incalculable system not yet discovered, Hippocrates was about as much
affected by these powerful rays as a piece of lead.

The
little slave found a tiny scar and that had to be fixed. He saw an off-color
hair and the whole follicle system had to be treated. He fussed and clucked
over a metabolism meter until he had what he thought was just right and then he
shut off the rays.

“You
skimped the adrenaline!” said Ole Doc, and before Hippocrates could interfere,
he shot on the rheostat which blazed out with adrenal catalyst and flashed it
off again. Self-righteously, he began to haul on his clothes.

Hippocrates
began to quote long sections of “The Anatomy and the Gland” in a defeated tone
of voice.

“Get
back there and get to work!” said Ole Doc.

Hippocrates
went. But he didn't go to work. He took down a tome from the library and read a
long chapter on “The Reduction of Adrenal Secretion,” paying particular
attention to the section “Foods Which Inhibit Adrenal Fluid.” He read the
lists, thus memorizing them at a glance, and made note of what to add to his
stores when they reached Skinner's Folly.

But
they did not arrive in time. When Ole Doc came to Garciaville, the capital city
of the planet, the System Police had been there about six hours before.

From
a cocky young reporter who was almost humble talking to a Soldier of Light, Ole
Doc learned that the System Police, acting under advices from the emperor,
Smith III, had undertaken and accomplished an unsavory mission.

At
the bleak little town of Placer, the
Star of Space
had put in, landing
at the Tri-System emergency field. The once great liner had made no pretense of
its state but had appealed to the mayor of Placer. There was no quarantine
there since no intra-galaxy traffic ever dignified the place. But the mayor had
known his dangers and he had immediately ordered the liner on.

The
speakers of the great ship were not functioning and a communication had been
wrapped around the handle of a wrench and thrown out of the vessel. This the
mayor had read. His pity had been greatly aroused and he had communicated
hurriedly with Emperor Smith III without permitting the remaining people or the
sick to disembark.

Smith
had answered abruptly and to the point. He had advices from the Galactic
Admiral of this eventuality.

It
had taken two days for a runner to come from Placer to the outside. And it had
taken two days to get back; due to the fifty-thousand-foot peaks around the
village, no atmosphere craft cared to brave the currents. A System Police
spacecraft had gone in and for four days had examined the situation, carefully
keeping a cordon around the
Star of Space.

Suddenly
the mayor of Placer had come down with spots in his mouth and his temperature
had begun to rise.

The
mayor had talked to many people in the village. He had talked to the System
Police ship officers.

The
Star of Space
had listened to the System Police band and had the
decision of Emperor Smith when it was given. The liner, with its cargo of
misery and death, had immediately taken off with destination unknown.

Two
naval vessels had come in before the System Police craft could leave.

Twenty-inch
rocket rifles had bored into the village of Placer. For five minutes the naval
vessels had scorched the place.

When
they left, a thousand people were dead, the once pleasant and rich valley a
charred wreck. The passes were sealed through the peaks and a plague cross was
painted on a dozen square miles from the air.

That
was the end of Placer.

Ole
Doc stood on the plain before the peaks and watched the rising smoke beyond. He
had been late because he had not been promptly informed.

A
thousand guiltless human beings had died.

Plague
still lived in this galaxy.

It
was no use to rail at Garth or excommunicate Emperor Smith.

Ole
Doc went back to the
Morgue
and began anew the anxious search. Next time
he had to be in at the end.

A
lot depended upon it.

 

The
Morgue
cometed along at orbiting speed, automatically avoiding debris
pockets, skipping over a dark mass here and bypassing a dead star there. Ole
Doc had calculated, on the basis of information received from the Spica System,
which included a list of passengers with countries—at fourteen dollars a word,
high space rates priority—that he had a sixty percent chance of being somewhere
near the next landing place of the
Star of Space.

He
had pounded the key ceaselessly in an effort to drum up the ship herself, but
either he was on a course diverging faster than he could contact ion beams or
the
Star of Space
had no communications operator left alive. Ole Doc
gave it up, not because a naval flagship had tried to shut him off and bawl him
out, but because he had suddenly shifted his plans.

He
had to find that ship. He had to find her or the UMS would be slaving on this
disease for the next thousand years, for such are the depths of space that
unknown systems and
backwash
towns can harbor something for
centuries without notifying anyone else. The method of this notification would
be grim.

Ever
since the first adoption of the standard military and naval policy of
“sterilization,” the UMS had had its grief. When men found they could take a
herd of innocent bacteria, treat it with mutatrons and achieve effectively
horrible and cure-resistant diseases, the military had had no patience with
sick people.

The
specific incident which began the practice was the operation against Holloway
by the combined Grand Armies of the Twin Galaxies wherein sown disease germs by
the attackers had been re-mutated by the defenders to nullify the vaccine in
the troops. The Grand Armies, as first offenders, had gone unsuspectingly into
the Holloway Galaxy to be instantly chopped down by the millions, by what they
comfortably supposed was harmless to them. With an entire galaxy in quarantine,
with millions of troops dead—to say nothing of two billion civilians—the Grand
Armies had never been able to recover and reassemble for transshipment to their
own realms but had been relegated to the quarantine space, a hundred percent
casualty insofar as their own governments were concerned.