Mulgrave, president of s.p.a.ceways Intergalactic, Inc., owner of the Star of s.p.a.ce came and looked on.
At 10:72 sidereal galaxy time, Conway took the dis- patcher"s mike and ordered the ship away.
There were protests. Conway did not answer or repeat his order. Slowly the protests, the pleas vanished. Sullen- ness marked the ship then. For a long while nothing stirred. But at 11:24 a converter began to whine. At 11:63 the tubes gave a warning blast. At 11:67 the Star of s.p.a.ce lifted from her cradle, hovered and then slowly rose s.p.a.cewards, doomed.
Ole Doc Methuselah arrived on Earth at 19:95 five days after. He arrived and Earth knew it. Ole Doc was mad. Ole Doc was so mad that he by-pa.s.sed quarantine and control and landed square before the hangar, goug- ing big chunks of dirt up with the Morgue"s landing blast.
A dispatcher came racing on a scooter to know what and why and he had his mouth open to become a very mad dispatcher when he saw the crossed ray rods. They were on the nose of the golden ship and they meant something. The same insignia was on the gorget at Ole Doc"s throat.
The ray rods of pharmacy. The ray rods of the Universal Medical Society which, above all others, ruled the universe of medicine, said what it pleased, did what it pleased when it pleased and if it pleased. It owed allegiance to no
government because it had been born to take the deadly secrets of medicine out of the hands of governments. The dispatcher shut his mouth.
Hippocrates leaped down, making a minor earthquake, although he was only a meter tall, and the dispatcher, at the sight of this four-armed antennaed nightmare, quickly yanked the scooter out of the way.
Not even glaring, Hippocrates went to the cab line, grabbed a b.u.mper and pulled. He intended to coax the driver into entering the forbidden field of the ramp but the only result was the loud breaking off of the b.u.mper.
There was an argument, but it wasn"t very long. Three minutes later a cowed driver had the can beside the Morgue.
Ole Doc swung down. He looked about twenty-five even if he was nine hundred and six, that being the medical privilege and secret of any one of the seven hundred society members, and when the sun struck his gold cloak and flashed from his boots, the dispatcher, again about to protest the actions of this ship, hurriedly drew back. He was looking at a Soldier of Light and it not only awed him, it paralyzed him. He would tell his friends and children about this for the next fifty years.
Ole Doc said: "s.p.a.ceway Control Building!"
The driver gave a terrified glance at Hippocrates and shot the cab half again past its governor.
Ole Doc got down and went in so fast his cape stood out straight. He found Conway on the ninety-eighth floor in a magnificent office full of communications equipment and s.p.a.ce charts.
Conway was bovine and leaden. He did not have fast reactions. He was a cop. He saw Ole Doc, thought of revolution, grabbed a b.u.t.ton to bawl out a receptionist for not announcing and then stared straight into two very angry blue eyes and found that his hand had been swatted hard away from that buzzer.
"You listen to me!" cried Ole Doc. "You imbecile! You ... you- Good Catfish! You haven"t the discernment of a two-year-old kid! You . . . you flat foot! Do you know what you"ve done? Do you know what ought to happen to you? Do you know where you"ll wind up when I"m through with this? If you-"
Conway"s bullish ire had risen and was about to det- onate. He leaped up to have room for his rage and then,
just as he was beginning to level a finger he saw the ray rods on the gold gorget.
"You . . . you"re the U.M.S.," said Conway, idiotically holding the pose which meant rage but stammering like a schoolkid. Abruptly he collapsed into his chair. Weakly and with great attention he listened to the detailed faults of police and control systems in general, Conway in par- ticular and Conway"s children and parents and grandpar- ents. Conway learned some pretty terrible things about himself, including his personal appearance and the slightly sub-quality of his wits. Conway would probably go around being an illegitimate imbecile for days afterwards.
". . . and," said Ole Doc, "if you don"t locate that ship in twenty-four hours I"ll yellow ticket this whole system.
I"ll yellow ticket Mars and Jupiter. I"ll yellow ticket this whole condemned galaxy! You won"t move a ship. You won"t move a cruiser or a battleship or a tramp! And won"t even move a lifeboat for more years than I"ve got patience. And," he concluded illogically, "I"ve got plenty of that!"
"What . . . what-?" begged Conway, the mighty Con- way.
"Find me the Star of s.p.a.ce. Find that ship so whoever is on her can be saved. Find her before she lands and infects an entire planet, a system and a galaxy. Find her before you kill off millions, billions, quadrillions-" Ole Doc sat down and wiped his face. Hippocrates let go of the burly police receptionist with a warning wave of a ringer and came in.
"You get excited," said Hippocrates. "Very bad. Take this!"
Ole Doc reached for the pill and then, seeing it com- pletely, struck it aside and leaped up to face the wilted Conway.
"Have the Grand Council in here in ten minutes. I don"t care if they"re in China or digging clams at the North Pole. Have them in here or have trouble!" Ole Doc stamped out, found a seat in a garden looking over New Chicago, and composed himself as well as he could to wait. But his eyes kept straying to the blue heavens and he kept pounding a palm with a fist and swearing sharply.
Hippocrates came back in nine minutes. "Grand Coun- cil ruling Earth a.s.sembled now. You speak. But don"t you get so excited. Five days to your next treatment. Very bad."
Ole Doc went in. His metal boot soles chewed bits out of the rug. Eighteen men sat in that room, eighteen important men whose names meant law on doc.u.ments, whose whims decided the policies of nations and whose intercession, arbitration or command ruled utterly the two and one half billion people of Earth. The Army officers were imposingly medalled. The Marine commander was grim. The Navy operations chief was hard, staunch, im- portant. The civilians might have appeared to be the most powerful men there, they were so quiet and dignified. But it was actually the naval officer who ranked them all. He commanded, by planetary seniority and the right of Earth"s conquests, the combined s.p.a.ce navies of the galaxy whenever "the greater good of the majority of the systems" was threatened.
They were grave and quiet when Ole Doc entered. They blinked a bit uncertainly when he threw his helmet down on Conway"s desk. And when he spoke, they came very much to life.
"You," said Ole Doc, "are a pack of fools!"
There came an instant protest against this indiginity.
Loudest was that of Galactic Admiral Garth. He was a black-jowled, cigar-smoking man of six feet five, a power- ful if not brilliant fighter, and he objected to being called a fool.
"You have let h.e.l.l loose through the systems!" cried Ole Doc above their voices. "You"ve sent a cargo of death away where it can infect trillions of beings! That may be dramatic but by all that"s holy, it"s the truth!"
"Hold on there!" said Admiral Garth, heard because he could shake ports loose with his voice. "No confounded pill roller can come in here and talk to me like that!"
It stopped the babbling. Most of the people there were frightened for a moment Those who had been merchants knew the yellow tickets. Those who only nominally governed saw whole nations cut off. The Army saw its strength cut to nothing because it could not be shipped and the Navy in the person of Galactic Admiral Garth saw somebody trying to stop his operations of fleets and he alone stayed mad.
"The Star of s.p.a.ce was sent away from here," said Ole Doc, spitting every word, "without medical a.s.sistance or supplies. She was rotten with disease but she got no cordon, no quarantine. She got dismissal! She went out into s.p.a.ce
low on supplies and fuel, riddled with disease, hating you and all humanity.
"Further, even though you were in communication with that ship, you did not find out the details, the exact, priceless details of that disease. You did not discover from whence she thought she received the disease or establish which pa.s.senger or crewman from what part of the Uni- verse first grew ill. And you failed, utterly failed to find out where she intended to go!
"That"s why you are fools! You should have provided her with an escort at least! But no! You, the men who supposedly monopolize all the wits on Earth, the Earth which rules the galaxy, you let the Star of s.p.a.ce go away from here to murder-yes, murder!-possibly millions and millions of human beings. Perhaps billions. Perhaps trillions! I cannot exaggerate the folly of your action.
Completely beyond the base-hearted wickedness which re- fused that ship the help she needed, you will be evil and sinful in the eyes of all men.
"I am publishing this matter to s.p.a.ce. The Universal Medical Society can cure anything but stupidity, and where they find that, in government, they must leave it alone!"
He sat down suddenly on the edge of the desk and glowered at them.
Hippocrates in the doorway was wondering whether or not he had put too much adrenalin into Ole Doc the last rejuvenation treatment and had about concluded that this was the answer.
Galactic Admiral Garth clamped an angry blue jaw on a frayed cigar. Pill roller, his att.i.tude said. He"d never needed a doctor in his life and when he did he"d take a naval surgeon. Disease, bah! Every one knew that disease warfare had almost ruined mankind. The stuff was deadly, it said so in the texts. Therefore, a diseased ship should be launched as far away from humanity as possible and left to rot. It was good sense. n.o.body could fight a disease when science could make new, incurable ones at every rumor of war. It had said so in the texts for a long time, for several hundred years in fact. That made it true.
"I won"t co-operate," said Garth flatly. n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 be- long to Ole Doc? Of course his master knew about fuels!