The Hate Disease

The Med Ship Esclipus Twenty rode in overdrive while her ship's company drank coffee. Calhoun sipped at a full cup of strong brew, while Murgatroyd the tormal drank from the tiny mug suited to his small, furry paws. The astrogation unit showed the percentage of this overdrive hop covered up to now, and the needle was almost around to the stop pin.

There'd been a warning gong an hour ago, notifying that the end of overdrive journeying approached. Hence the coffee. When breakout came, the overdrive field must collapse and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship's keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion. She should be somewhere near the sun Tallien. She should then swim toward that sol-type sun and approach Tallien's third planet out at the less-than-light-speed rate necessary for solar-system travel. And presently she should signal down to ground and Calhoun set about the purpose of his three-week journey in overdrive.

His purpose was a routine checkup on public health on Tallien Three. Calhoun had lately completed five such planetary visits, with from one to three weeks of overdrive travel between each pair. When he left Tallien Three he'd head back to Sector Headquarters for more orders about the work of the Interstellar Medical Service.

Murgatroyd zestfully licked his empty cup to get the last least drop of coffee. He said hopefully:

"Chee?" He wanted more.

"I'm afraid," said Calhoun, "that you're a sybarite, Murgatroyd. This impassioned desire of yours for coffee disturbs me."

"Chee!" said Murgatroyd, with decision.

"It's become a habit," Calhoun told him severely. "You should taper off. Remember, when anything in your environment becomes a normal part of your environment, it becomes a necessity. Coffee should be a luxury, to be savored as such, instead of something you expect and resent being deprived of."

Murgatroyd said impatiently:

"Chee-chee!"

"All right, then," said Calhoun, "if you're going to be emotional about it! Pass your cup."

He reached out and Murgatroyd put the tiny object in his hand. He refilled it and passed it back.

"But watch yourself," he advised. "We're landing on Tallien Three. It's just been transferred to us from another sector. It's been neglected. There's been no Med Service inspection for years. There could be misunderstandings."

Murgatroyd said, "Chee!" and squatted down to drink.

Calhoun looked at a clock and opened his mouth to speak again, when a taped voice said abruptly:

"When the gong sounds, breakout will be five seconds off."

There was a steady, monotonous tick, tock, tick, tock, like a metronome. Calhoun got up and made a casual examination of the ship's instruments. He turned on the vision screens. They were useless in overdrive, of course, Now they were ready to inform him about the normal cosmos as soon as the ship returned to it. He put away the coffee things. Murgatroyd was reluctant to give up his mug until the last possible lick. Then he sat back and elaborately cleaned his whiskers.

Calhoun sat down in the control chair and waited.

"Bong!" said the loud-speaker, and Murgatroyd scuttled under a chair. He held on with all four paws and his furry tail. The speaker said, "Breakout in five seconds ... four ... three ... two ... one ..."

There was a sensation as if all the universe had turned itself inside out, and Calhoun's stomach tried to follow its example. He gulped, and the feeling ended, and the vision screens came alight. Then there were ten thousand myriads of stars, and a sun flaming balefully ahead, and certain very bright objects nearby. They would be planets, and one of them showed as a crescent.

Calhoun checked the solar spectrum as a matter of course. This was the sun Tallien. He checked the brighter specks in view. Three were planets and one a remote brilliant star. The crescent was Tallien Three, third out from its sun and the Med Ship's immediate destination. It was a very good breakout; too good to be anything but luck. Calhoun swung the ship for the crescent planet. He matter-of-factly checked the usual items. He was going in at a high angle to the ecliptic, so meteors and bits of stray celestial trash weren't likely to be bothersome. He made other notes, to kill time.

He reread the data sheets on the planet. It had been colonized three hundred years before. There'd been trouble establishing a human-use ecological system on the planet because the native plants and animals were totally useless to humankind. Native timber could be used in building, but only after drying-out for a period of months. When growing or green it was as much water-saturated as a sponge. There had never been a forest fire here, not even caused by lightning!

There were other oddities. The aboriginal microorganisms here did not attack wastes of introduced terrestrial types. It had been necessary to introduce scavenger organisms from elsewhere. This and other difficulties made it true that only one of the world's five continents were human-occupied. Most of the land surface was strictly as it had been before the landing of men—impenetrable jungles of spongelike flora, dwelt in by a largely unknown useless fauna. Calhoun read on. Population ... government ... health statistics.... He went through the list.

He had time to kill, so he rechecked his course and speed relative to the planet. He and Murgatroyd had dinner. Then he waited until the ship was near enough to report in.

"Med Ship Esclipas Twenty calling ground," he said when the time came. He taped his own voice as he made the call. "Requesting co-ordinates for landing. Our mass is fifty tons. Repeat, five-oh tons. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection."

He waited while his taped voice repeated and re-repeated the call. An incoming voice said sharply:

"Calling Med Ship! Cut your signal! Do not acknowledge this call! Cut your signal! Instructions will follow. But cut your signal!"

Calhoun blinked. Of all possible responses to a landing call, orders to stop signaling would be least likely. But after an instant he reached over and stopped the transmission of his voice. It happened to end halfway through a syllable.

Silence. Not quite silence, of course, because there was the taped record of background noise which went on all the time the Med Ship was in space. Without it, the utter absence of noise would be sepulchral.

The voice from outside said:

"You cut off. Good! Now listen! Do not—repeat, do not!—acknowledge this call or respond to any call from anyone else! There is a drastic situation aground. You must not—repeat, must not—fall into the hands of the people now occupying Government Center. Go into orbit. We will try to seize the spaceport so you can be landed. But do not acknowledge this call or respond to any answer from anyone else! Don't do it! Don't do it!"

There was a click, and somehow the silence was clamorous. Calhoun rubbed his nose reflectively with his finger. Murgatroyd, bright-eyed, immediately rubbed his nose with a tiny dark digit. Like all tormals, he gloried in imitating human actions, as parrots and parakeets imitate human speech. But suddenly a second voice called in, with a new and strictly professional tone:

"Calling Med Ship!" said this second voice. "Calling Med Ship! Spaceport Tallien Three calling Med Ship Esclipus Twenty! For landing, repair to co-ordinates—"

The voice briskly gave specific instructions. It was a strictly professional voice. It repeated the instructions with precision.

Out of sheer habit, Calhoun said, "Acknowledge." Then he added sharply: "Hold it! I've just had an emergency call—"

The first voice interrupted stridently:

"Cut your signal, you fool! I told you not to answer any other call! Cut your signal!"

The strictly professional other voice said coldly:

"Emergency call, eh? That'll be paras. They're better organized than we thought, if they picked up your landing request! There's an emergency, all right! It's the devil of an emergency—it looks like devils! But this is the spaceport. Will you come in?"

"Naturally," said Calhoun. "What's the emergency?"

"You'll find out...." That was the professional voice. The other snapped angrily, "Cut your signal!" The professional voice again: "... you land. It's not...." "Cut your signal, you fool! Cut it...." The other voice again.

There was confusion. The two voices spoke together. Each was on a tight beam, while Calhoun's call was broadcast. The voices could not hear each other, but each could hear Calhoun.

"Don't listen to them! There's...." "to understand, but...." "Don't listen! Don't...." "... When you land."

Then the voice from the spaceport stopped, and Calhoun cut down the volume of the other. It continued to shout, though muffled. It bellowed, as if rattled. It mouthed commands as if they were arguments or reasons. Calhoun listened for fully five minutes. Then he said carefully into his microphone:

"Med Ship Esclipus Twenty calling spaceport. I will arrive at given co-ordinates at the time given. I suggest that you take precautions if necessary against interference with my landing. Message ends."

He swung the ship around and aimed for the destination with which he'd been supplied—a place in emptiness five diameters out, with the center of the sun's disk bearing so-and-so and the center of the planet's disk bearing so-and-thus. He turned the communicator volume down still lower. The miniature voice shouted and threatened in the stillness of the Med Ship's control room. After a time Calhoun said reflectively:

"I don't like this, Murgatroyd! An unidentified voice is telling us—and we're Med Ship personnel, Murgatroyd!—who we should speak to and what we should do. Our duty is plainly to ignore such orders. But with dignity, Murgatroyd! We must uphold the dignity of the Med Service!"

Murgatroyd said skeptically:

"Chee?"

"I don't like your attitude," said Calhoun, "but I'll bear in mind that you're often right."

Murgatroyd found a soft place to curl up in. He draped his tail across his nose and lay there, blinking at Calhoun above the furry half-mask.

The little skip drove on. The disk of the planet grew large. Presently it was below. It turned as the skip moved, and from a crescent it became a half-circle and then a gibbous near-oval shape. In the rest of the solar system nothing in particular happened. Small and heavy inner planets swam deliberately in their short orbits around the sun. Outer, gas-giant planets floated even more deliberately in larger paths. There were comets of telescopic size, and there were meteorites, and the sun Tallien sent up monstrous flares, and storms of improbable snow swept about in the methane atmosphere of the greater gas giant of this particular celestial family of this sun and its satellites. But the cosmos in general paid no attention to human activities or usually undesirable intentions. Calhoun listened, frowning, to the agitated, commanding voice. He still didn't like it.

Suddenly, it cut off. The Med Ship approached the planet to which it had been ordered by Sector Headquarters now some months ago. Calhoun examined the nearing world via electron telescope. On the hemisphere rolling to a position under the Med Ship he saw a city of some size, and he could trace highways, and there were lesser human settlements here and there. At full magnification he could see where forests had been cut away in wedges and half-squares, with clear spaces between them. This indicated cultivated ground, cleared for human use in the invincibly tidy-minded manner of men.

Presently he saw the landing grid near the biggest city—that half-mile-high, cagelike wall of intricately braced steel girders. It tapped the planet's ionosphere for all the power that this world's inhabitants could use, and applied the same power to lift up and let down the ships of space by which communication with the rest of humanity was maintained. From this distance, though, even with an electron telescope, Calhoun could see no movement of any sort. There was no smoke, because electricity from the grid provided all the planet's power and heat, and there were no chimneys. The city looked like a colored map, with infinite detail but nothing which stirred.

A tiny voice spoke. It was the voice of the spaceport.

"Calling Med Ship. Grid locking on. Right?"

"Go ahead," said Calhoun. He turned up the communicator.

The voice from the ground said carefully:

"Better stand by your controls. If anything happens down here you may need to take emergency action."

Calhoun raised his eyebrows. But he said:

"All set."

He felt the cushiony, fumbling motions as force fields from the landing grid groped for the Med Ship and centered it in their complex pattern. Then there came the sudden solid feeling when the grid locked on. The Med Ship began to settle, at first slowly but with increasing speed, toward the ground below.

It was all very familiar. The shape of the continents below him were strange, but such unfamiliarity was commonplace. The voice from the ground said matter-of-factly:

"We think everything's under control, but it's hard to tell with these paras. They got away with some weather rockets last week and may have managed to mount war heads on them. They might use them on the grid, here, or try for you."

Calhoun said:

"What are paras?"

"You'll be briefed when you land," said the voice. It added: "Everything's all right so far, though."

The Esclipus Twenty went down and down and down. The grid had locked on at forty thousand miles. It was a long time before the little ship was down to thirty thousand and another long time before it was at twenty. Then more time to reach ten, and then five, and one thousand, and five hundred. When solid ground was only a hundred miles below and the curve of the horizon had to be looked for to be seen, the voice from the ground said:

"The last hundred miles is the tricky part, and the last five will be where it's tight. If anything does happen, it'll be there."

Calhoun watched through the electron telescope. He could see individual buildings now, when he used full magnification. He saw infinitesimal motes which would be ground cars on the highways. At seventy miles he cut down the magnification to keep his field of vision wide. He cut the magnification again at fifty and at thirty and at ten.

Then he saw the first sign of motion. It was an extending thread of white which could only be smoke. It began well outside the city and leaped up and curved, evidently aiming at the descending Med Ship. Calhoun said curtly:

"There's a rocket coming up. Aiming at me."

The voice from the ground said:

"It's spotted. I'm giving you free motion if you want to use it."

The feel of the ship changed. It no longer descended. The landing-grid operator was holding it aloft, but Calhoun could move it in evasive action if he wished. He approved the liberty given him. He could use his emergency rockets to dodge. A second thread of smoke came streaking upward.

Then other threads of white began just outside the landing grid. They rushed after the first. The original rockets seemed to dodge. Others came up. There was an intricate pattern formed by the smoke trails of rockets rising and other rockets following, and some trails dodging and others closing in. Calhoun carefully reminded himself that it was not likely that there'd be atomic war heads. The last planetary wars had been fought with fusion weapons, and only the crews of single ships survived. The planetary populations didn't. But atomic energy wasn't much used aground, these days. Power for planetary use could be had more easily from the upper, ionized limits of atmospheres.

A pursuing rocket closed in. There was a huge ball of smoke and a flash of light, but it was not brighter than the sun. It wasn't atomic flame. Calhoun relaxed. He watched as every one of the first-ascended rockets was tracked down and destroyed by another. The last, at that, was three-quarters of the way up.

The Med Ship quivered a little as the force fields tightened again. It descended swiftly. It came to ground. Figures came to meet Calhoun as, with Murgatroyd, he went out of the air lock. Some were uniformed. All wore the grim expression and harried look of men under long-continued strain.

The landing-grid operator shook hands first.

"Nice going! It could be lucky that you arrived. We normals need some luck!"

He introduced a man in civilian clothes as the planetary Minister for Health. A man in uniform was head of the planetary police. The others weren't introduced.

"We worked fast after your call came!" said the grid operator. "Things are lined up for you, but they're bad!"

"I've been wondering," admitted Calhoun dryly, "if all incoming ships are greeted with rockets."

"That's the paras," said the police head, grimly. "They'd rather not have a Med Service man here."

A ground car sped across the spaceport. It came at a headlong pace toward the group just outside the Med Ship. There was a sudden howl of a siren by the spaceport gate. A second car leaped as if to intercept the first. Its siren screamed again. Then bright sparks appeared near the first car's windows. Blasters rasped. Incredulously, Calhoun saw the blue-white of blaster bolts darting toward him. The men about him clawed 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 the situation and fearfulness does not help at such a time.

A bolt crackled against the Med Ship's hull just beyond him. Blasters rasped from beside him. A bolt exploded almost at Calhoun's feet. There were two men in the first-moving ground car, and now that another car moved to head them off, one fired desperately and the other tried to steer and fire at the same time. The siren-sounding car send 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. Its fore part touched ground. It slued around, and its rear part lifted. It flung out its two passengers and with an effect of great deliberation it rolled over end for end and came to a stop upside down. Of its passengers, one lay still. The other struggled to his feet and began to run—toward Calhoun. He fired desperately, again and again——

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

Calhoun's hands clenched. Automatically, he moved toward the other still figure, to act as a medical man does when somebody is hurt. The grid operator seized his arm. As Calhoun jerked to get free, that second man stirred His blaster lifted and rasped. The little pellet of ball-lightning grazed Calhoun's side, burning away his uniform down to the skin, just as there was a grating roar of blaster fire. The second man 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 pushed a tank on wheels before them. It had a hose and a nozzle attached to it. They began to use the hose to make a thick, foglike, heavy mist which clung to the ground and lingered there. The spray had the biting smell of phenol.

"What's going on here?" demanded Calhoun angrily. "Damnation! What's going 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 it looks like demoniac possession."

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

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

This was twenty minutes later. Calhoun had gone back into the Med Ship and treated the blaster burn on his side. He'd changed his clothing from the scorched uniform to civilian garb. It would not look eccentric here. Men's ordinary garments were extremely similar all over the galaxy. Women's clothes were something else.

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

Calhoun had some experience with epidemics and emergency measures for destroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitary value of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burning things might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw a naked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might be shown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. But people used electricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of the age of fire. So here on Tallien it seemed inevitable that infective material should be sprayed with antiseptics instead of simply set ablaze.

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

The Health Minister said unhappily:

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

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

Then he stopped. The ground car in which he rode had reached the spaceport gate. Three other ground cars waited there. One swung into motion ahead of them. The other two took up positions behind. A caravan of four cars, each bristling with blast weapons, swept along the wide highway which began here at the spaceport and stretched straight across level ground toward the city whose towers showed on the horizon. The other cars formed a guard for Calhoun. He'd needed protection before, and he might need it again.

"Medically," he said to the Minister for Health, "I take it that a para is the human victim of some condition which makes him act insanely. 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 place on Tallien Three where there are men."

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

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

Calhoun frowned. With reasonably modern medical techniques, almost any sort of infection should be stopped long before there were as many cases as that!

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

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

"Symptoms?" asked Calhoun crisply.

"Dr. Lett phrased them in medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual food. When it becomes uncontrollable, the patient is mad!"

The ground cars sped toward the city. A second group of vehicles appeared, waiting. As the four-car caravan swept up to them, one swung in front of the car in which Calhoun and Murgatroyd rode. The others fell into line to the rear. It began to look like a respectable fighting force.

"And after madness?" Calhoun asked.

"Then they're paras!" said the Health Minister. "They crave the incredible. They feed on the abominable. And they hate us normals as—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, how soon?"

"They're paras!" said the Health Minister querulously. "I'm no physician! 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 Calhoun, "has been mostly with diseases that one either recovers from or dies of. A disease whose victims organize to steal weather rockets and to use them to destroy a ship—only they failed—and who carry on with an assassination attempt ... that doesn'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's happened. On other planets there are creatures who drink blood without waking their victims. There are reptiles who sting men. There are even insects which sting men and inject diseases. Something like that seems to have come out of the jungle. While men sleep—something happens to them! They turn into paras. Something native to this world must be responsible. The planet did not welcome us. There's not a native plant or beast that is useful to us! We have to culture soil-bacteria so Earth-type plants can grow here! We don't begin to know all the creatures of the jungle! If something comes out and makes men paras without their knowledge——"

Calhoun said mildly:

"It would seem that such things could be discovered."

The Health Minister said bitterly:

"Not this thing! It is intelligent! It hides! It acts as if on a plan to destroy us! Why ... there was a young doctor who said he'd cured a para! But we found him and the former para dead when we went to check his claim! Things from the jungle had killed them! They think! They know! They understand! They're rational, and like devils——"

A third group of ground cars appeared ahead, waiting. Like the others, they were filled with men holding blast rifles. They joined the procession—the rushing, never-pausing group of cars from the spaceport. The highway had obviously been patrolled against a possible ambush or road block. The augmented combat group went on.

"As a medical man," said Calhoun carefully, "I question the existence of a local, nonhuman rational creature. Creatures develop or adapt to fit their environment. They change or develop to fit into some niche, some special place in the ecological system which is their environment. If there is no niche and no room for a specific creature in an environment, there is no such creature there! And there cannot be a place in any environment for a creature which will change it. It would be a contradiction in terms! We rational humans change the worlds we occupy! Any rational creature will! So a rational animal is as nearly impossible as any creature can be. It's true that we've happened, but—another rational race? Oh, no!"

Murgatroyd said:

"Chee!"

The city's towers loomed higher and taller above the horizon. Then, abruptly, the fast-moving cavalcade came to the edge of the city and plunged into it.

It was not a normal city. The buildings were not eccentric. All planets, but very new ones, show local architectural peculiarities, so it was not odd to see all windows topped by triple arches, or quite useless pilasters in the brick walls of apartment buildings. These would have made the city seem only individual. But it was not normal. The streets were not clean. Two windows in three had been smashed. In placed Calhoun saw doors that had been broken in and splintered, and never repaired. That implied violence unrestrained. The streets were almost empty. Occasional figures might be seen on the sidewalks before the speeding ground cars, but the vehicles never passed them. Pedestrians turned corners or dodged into doorways before the cavalcade could overtake them.

The buildings grew taller. The street level remained empty of humans, but now and again, many stories up, heads peered out of windows. Then high-pitched yellings came from aloft. It was not possible to tell whether they were yells of defiance or derision or despair, but they were directed at the racing cars.

Calhoun looked quickly at the faces of the men around him. The Minister for Health looked at once heartbroken and embittered. The head of the planetary police stared grimly ahead. Screechings and howlings echoed and re-echoed between the building walls. Objects began to fall from the windows: bottles, pots and pans. Chairs and stools twirled and spun, hurtling downward. Everything that was loose and could be thrown from a window came down, flung by the occupants of those high dwellings. With them came outcries which were assuredly cursings.

It occurred to Calhoun that there had been a period in history when mob-action invariably meant flames. Men burned what they hated and what they feared. They also burned religious offerings to divers bloodthirsty deities. It was fortunate, he reflected wryly, that fires were no longer a matter of common experience, or burning oil and flaming missiles would have been flung down on the ground cars.

"Is this unpopularity yours?" he asked. "Or do I have a share in it? Am I unwelcome to some parts of the population?"

"You're unwelcome to paras," said the police head coldly. "Paras don't want you here. Whatever drives them is afraid the Med Service might make them no longer paras. And they want to stay the way they are." His lips twisted. "They aren't making this uproar, though. We gathered everybody we were sure wasn't ... infected into Government Center. These people were left out. We weren't sure about them. So they consider we've left them to become paras and they don't like it!"

Calhoun frowned again. This confused everything. There was talk of infection, and talk of unseen creatures come out of the jungle, making men paras and then controlling them as if by demoniac possession. There were few human vagaries, though, that were not recorded in the Med Service files. Calhoun remembered something, and wanted to be sick. It was like an infection, and like possession by devils, too. There would be creatures not much removed from fields involved, anyhow.

"I think," he said, "that I need to talk to your counter-para researchers. You have men working on the problem?"

"We did," said the police head, grimly. "But most of them turned para. We thought they'd be more dangerous than other paras, so we shot them. But it did no good. Paras still turn up, in Government Center, too! Now we only send paras out the south gate. They doubtless make out—as paras."

For a time there was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved sharply, ran up on the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to splinters where the car should have been. The car went down to the pavement once more and rushed on.

The street ended. A high barrier of masonry rose up at a cross street. It closed the highway and connected the walls of apartment buildings on either hand. There was a gate in it, and the leading car drew off to one side and the car carrying Calhoun and Murgatroyd ran through, and there was a second barrier ahead, but this was closed. The other cars filed in after it, Calhoun saw that windows in these apartment buildings had been bricked up. They made a many-storied wall shutting off all that was beyond them.

Men from the barrier went from car to car of the escort, checking men who had been the escort for Calhoun. The Minister for Health said jerkily:

"Everybody in Government Center is examined at least once each day to see if they're turning para or not. Those showing symptoms are turned out the south gate. Everybody, myself included, has to have a fresh certificate every twenty-four hours."

The inner gate swung wide. The car carrying Calhoun went through. The buildings about them ended. They were in a huge open space that must once have been a park in the center of the city. There were structures which could not possibly be other than government buildings. But the population of this world was small. They were not grandiose. There were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily together to house a sudden influx of people.

And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and children played and women watched them. There were some—not many—men in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were uniformed and hastily going here or there. And though the children played gaily, there were few smiles to be seen on adult faces.

"I take it," said Calhoun, "that this is Government Center, where you collected everybody in the city you were sure was normal. But they don't all stay normal. And you consider that it isn't exactly an infection but the result of something that's done to them by—Something."

"Many of our doctors thought so," said the Minister for Health. "But they've turned para. Maybe the ... Things got at them because they were close to the truth."

His head sank forward on his chest. The police head said briefly:

"When you want to go back to your ship, say so and we'll take you. If you can't do anything for us, you'll warn other planets not to send ships here."

The ground car braked before one of those square, unornamented buildings which are laboratories everywhere in the galaxy. The Minister for Health got out. Calhoun followed him, Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder. The ground car went away and Calhoun followed into the building.

There was a sentry by the door, and an officer of the police. He examined the Minister's one-day certificate of health. After various vision-phone calls, he passed Calhoun and Murgatroyd. They went a short distance and another sentry stopped them. A little farther, and another sentry.

"Tight security," said Calhoun.

"They know me," said the Minister heavily, "but they are checking my certificate that as of morning I wasn't a para."

"I've seen quarantines before," said Calhoun, "but never one like this! Not against disease!"

"It isn't against disease," said the Minister, thinly. "It's against Something intelligent ... from the jungle ... who chooses victims by reason for its own purposes."

Calhoun said very carefully:

"I won't deny more than the jungle."

Here the Minister for Health rapped on a door and ushered Calhoun through it. They entered a huge room filled with the complex of desks, cameras, and observing and recording instruments that the study of a living organism requires. The setup for study of dead things is quite different. Here, halfway down the room's length, there was a massive sheet of glass that divided the apartment into two. On the far side of the glass there was, obviously, an aseptic environment room now being used as an isolation chamber.

A man paced up and down beyond the glass. Calhoun knew he must be a para because he was cut off in idea and in fact from normal humanity. The air supplied to him could be heated almost white-hot and then chilled before being introduced into the aseptic chamber for him to breath, if such a thing was desired. Or the air removed could be made incandescent so no possible germ or its spores could get out. Wastes removed would be destroyed by passage through a carbon arc after innumerable previous sterilizing processes. In such rooms, centuries before, plants had been grown from antiseptic-soaked seeds and chicks hatched from germ-free eggs, and even small animals delivered by aseptic Caesarean section to live in an environment in which there was no living microorganism. From rooms like this men had first learned that some types of bacteria outside the human body were essential to human health. But this man was not a volunteer for such research.

He paced up and down, his hands clenching and unclenching. When Calhoun and the Minister for Health entered the outer room, he glared at them. He cursed them, though inaudibly because of the sheet of glass. He hated them hideously because they were not as he was; because they were not imprisoned behind thick glass walls through which his every action and almost his every thought could be watched. But there was more to his hatred than that. In the midst of fury so great that his face seemed almost purple, he suddenly yawned uncontrollably.

Calhoun blinked and stared. The man behind the glass wall yawned again and again. He was helpless to stop it. If such a thing could be, he was in a paroxysm of yawning, though his eyes glared and he beat his fists together. The muscles controlling the act of yawning worked independently of the rage that should have made yawning impossible. And he was ashamed, and he was infuriated, and he yawned more violently than seemed possible.

"A man's been known to dislocate his jaw, yawning like that," said Calhoun detachedly.

A bland voice spoke behind him.

"But if this man's jaw is dislocated, no one can help him. He is a para. We cannot join him."

Calhoun turned. He found himself regarded with unctuous condescension by a man wearing glittering thick eyeglasses—and a man's eyes have to be very bad if he can't wear contacts—and a uniform with a caduceus at his collar. He was plump. He was beaming. He was the only man Calhoun had so far seen on this planet whose expression was neither despair nor baffled hate and fury.

"You are Med Service," the beaming man observed zestfully. "Of the Interstellar Medical Service, to which all problems of public health may be referred! But here we have a real problem for you! A contagious madness! A transmissible delusion! An epidemic of insanity! A plague of the unspeakable!"

The Minister for Health said uneasily:

"This is Dr. Lett. He was the greatest of our physicians. Now he is nearly the last."

"Agreed," said the bland man, as zestfully as before. "But now the Interstellar Medical Service sends someone before whom I should bow! Someone whose knowledge and experience and training is so infinitely greater than mine that I become abashed! I am timid! I am hesitant to offer an opinion before a Med Service man!"

It was not unprecedented for an eminent doctor to resent the implied existence of greater skill or knowledge than his own. But this man was not only resentful. He was derisive.

"I came here," said Calhoun politely, "on what I expected to be a strictly routine visit. But I'm told there's a very grave public health situation here. I'd like to offer any help I can give."

"Grave!" Dr. Lett laughed scornfully. "It is hopeless for poor planetary doctors like myself! But not, of course, for a Med Ship man!"

Calhoun shook his head. This man would not be easy to deal with. Tact was called for. But the situation was appalling.

"I have a question," said Calhoun ruefully. "I'm told that paras are madmen, and there's been mention of suspicion and secretiveness which suggests schizo-paranoia and—so I have guessed—the term para for those affected in this way."

"It is not any form of paranoia," said the planetary doctor, contemptuously. "Paranoia involves suspicion of everyone. Paras despise and suspect only normals. Paranoia involves a sensation of grandeur, not to be shared. Paras are friends and companions to each other. They co-operate delightedly in attempting to make normals like themselves. A paranoiac would not want anyone to share his greatness!"

Calhoun considered, and then agreed.

"Since you've said it, I see that it must be so. But my question remains. Madness involves delusions. But paras organize themselves. They make plans and take different parts in them. They act rationally for purposes they agree on—such as assassinating me. But how can they act rationally if they have delusions? What sort of delusions do they have?"

The Minister for Health said thinly:

"Only what horrors out of the jungles might suggest! I ... I cannot listen, Dr. Lett. I cannot watch, if you intend to demonstrate!"

The man with thick glasses waved an arm. The Minister for Health went hastily out. Dr. Lett made a mirthless sound.

"He would not make a medical man! Here is a para in this aseptic room. He is an unusually good specimen for study. He was my assistant and I knew him when he was sane. Now I know him as a para. I will show you his delusion."

He went to a small culture oven and opened the door. He busied himself with something inside. Over his shoulder he said with unction:

"The first settlers here had much trouble establishing a human-use ecology on this world. The native plants and animals were useless. They had to be replaced with things compatible with humans. Then there was more trouble. There were no useful scavengers—and scavengers are essential! The rat is usually dependable, but rats do not thrive on Tallien. Vultures—no. Of course not. Carrion beetles ... Scarabeus beetles ... The flies that produce maggots to do such good work in refuse disposal.... None thrive on Tallien Three! And scavengers are usually specialists, too. But the colony could not continue without scavengers! So our ancestors searched on other worlds, and presently they found a creature which would multiply enormously and with a fine versatility upon the wastes of our human cities. True, it smelled like an ancient Earth-animal called skunk—butyl mercaptan. It was not pretty—to most eyes it is revolting. But it was a scavenger and there was no waste product it would not devour."

Dr. Lett turned from the culture oven. He had a plastic container in his hand. A faint, disgusting odor spread from it.

"You ask what the delusions of para may be?" he grinned derisively. He held out the container. "It is the delusion that this scavenger, this eater of unclean things, this unspeakable bit of slimy, squirming flesh—paras have the delusion that it is the most delectable of foodstuffs!"

He thrust the plastic container under Calhoun's nose. Calhoun did not draw in his breath while it remained there. Dr. Lett said in mocking admiration:

"Ah! You have the strong stomach a medical man should have! The delusion of the para is that these squirming, writhing objects are delightful! Paras develop an irresistible craving for them! It is as if men on an Earth-like world develop an uncontrollable hunger for vultures and rats and—even less tolerable things. These scavengers—paras eat them! So normal men would rather die than become paras!"

Calhoun gagged in purely instinctive revulsion. The things in the plastic container were gray and small. Had they been still, they might have been no worse to look at than raw oysters in a cocktail. But they squirmed. They writhed.

"I will show you," said Dr. Lett amiably.

He turned to the glass plate which divided the room into halves. The man behind the thick glass now pressed eagerly against it. He looked at the container with a horrible, lustful desire. The thick-eyeglassed man clucked at him, as if at a caged animal one wishes to soothe. The man beyond the glass yawned hysterically. He seemed to whimper. He could not take his eyes from the container in the doctor's hands.

"So!" said Dr. Lett.

He pressed a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside it. The door closed. It could be sterilized before the door on the other side would open, but now it was arranged to sterilize itself to prevent contagion from coming out.

The man behind the glass uttered inaudible cries. He was filled with beastly, uncontrollable impatience. He cried out at the mechanism of the contagion-lock as a beast might bellow at the opening through which food was dropped into its cage.

That lock opened, inside the glass-walled room. The plastic container appeared. The man leaped upon it. He gobbled its contents, and Calhoun was nauseated. But as the para gobbled, he glared at the two who—with Murgatroyd—watched him. He hated them with a ferocity which made veins stand out upon his temples and fury empurple his skin.

Calhoun felt that he'd gone white. He turned his eyes away and said squeamishly:

"I have never seen such a thing before."

"It is new, eh?" Said Dr. Lett in a strange sort of pride. "It is new! I ... even I!... have discovered something that the Med Service does not know!"

"I wouldn't say the Service doesn't know about similar things," said Calhoun slowly. "There are ... sometimes ... on a very small scale ... dozens or perhaps hundreds of victims ... there are sometimes similar irrational appetites. But on a planetary scale ... no. There has never been a ... an epidemic of this size."

He still looked sick and stricken. But he asked:

"What's the result of this ... appetite? What does it do to a para? What change in ... say ... his health takes place in a man after he becomes a para?"

"There is no change," said Dr. Lett blandly. "They are not sick and they do not die because they are paras. The condition itself is no more abnormal than ... than diabetes! Diabetics require insulin. Paras ... something else. But there is prejudice against what paras need! It is as if some men would rather die than use insulin and those who did use it became outcasts! I do not say what causes this condition. I do not object if the Minister for Health believes that jungle creatures creep out and ... make paras out of men." He watched Calhoun's expression. "Does your Med Service information agree with me?"

"No-o-o," said Calhoun. "I'm afraid it inclines to the idea of a monstrous cause, but it really isn't much like diabetes."

"But it is!" insisted Lett. "Everything digestible, no matter how unappetizing to a modern man, has been a part of the regular diet of some tribe of human savages! Even prehistoric Romans ate dormice cooked in honey! Why should the fact that a needed substance happens to be found in a scavenger...."

"The Romans didn't crave dormice," said Calhoun. "They could eat them or leave them alone."

The man behind the thick glass glared at the two in the outer room. He hated them intolerably. He cried out at them. Blood vessels in his temples throbbed with his hatred. He cursed them.

"I point out one thing more," said Dr. Lett. "I would like to have the co-operation of the Interstellar Medical Service. I am a citizen of this planet and not without influence. But I would like to have my work approved by the Med Service. I submit that in some areas on ancient Earth, iodine was put into the public water-supply systems to prevent goiters and cretinism. Fluorine was put into drinking water to prevent caries. On Tralee the public water supply has traces of zinc and cobalt added. These are necessary trace elements. Why should you not concede that here there are trace elements or trace compounds needed——"

"You want me to report that," said Calhoun, flatly. "I couldn't do it without explaining—a number of things. Paras are madmen, but they organize. A symptom of privation is violent yawning. This ... condition appeared only six months ago. This planet has been colonized for three hundred years. It could not be a naturally needed trace compound."

Dr. Lett shrugged, eloquently and contemptuously.

"Then you will not report what all this planet will certify," he said curtly. "My vaccine——"

"You would not call it a vaccine if you thought it supplied a deficiency—a special need of the people of Tallien. Could you give me a small quantity of your ... vaccine?"

"No," said Dr. Lett blandly. "I am afraid you are not willing to be co-operative. The little of my vaccine that is available is needed for high officials, who must be protected from the para condition at all costs. I am prepared to make it on a large scale, though, for the whole population. I will see, then, that you have as much of it as you need."

Calhoun seemed to reflect.

"No," he admitted, "I'm not ready to co-operate with you, Dr. Lett. I have a very uncomfortable suspicion. I suspect that you carry a small quantity of your vaccine with you all the time. That you cannot bear the idea of being without it if you should need it. I say that because it is a symptom of other ... similar conditions. Of other ... abnormal appetites."

Dr. Lett had been bland and grinning in mockery. But the amusement left his face abruptly.

"Now ... what do you mean by that?" he demanded.

Calhoun nodded his head toward the para behind the glass wall.

"That poor devil nearly yawned his head off before you gave him his diet of scavengers, Dr. Lett. Do you ever yawn like that ... so you make sure you've always your vaccine with you to stop it? Aren't you a para, Dr. Lett? In fact, aren't you the ... monstrous cause of ... paras?"

Murgatroyd cried "Chee! Chee! Chee!" in great agitation, because Dr. Lett had snatched up a dissecting scalpel and crouched to leap upon Calhoun. But Calhoun said:

"Easy, Murgatroyd! He won't do anything regrettable!"

He had a blaster in his hand, bearing directly upon the greatest and most skillful physician on Tallien Three. And Dr. Lett did not do anything regrettable. But his eyes burned with the fury of a madman.

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