The Andre Norton MEGAPACK ®. Andre Norton
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upon the droning voice in his ears, but he could not control his thoughts nor—his fears.
At a touch on his arm he started so wildly that he jerked the cord loose from the reader and sat up, somewhat shamefaced, to greet Tau. At the Medic’s orders he stripped for one of the most complete examinations he had ever undergone outside a quarantine port. It included an almost microscopic inspection of the skin on his neck and shoulders, but when Tau had done he gave a sigh of relief.
“Well, you haven’t got it—at least you don’t show any signs yet,” he amended his first statement almost before the words were out of his mouth.
“What were you looking for?”
Tau took time out to explain. “Here,” his fingers touched the small hollow at the base of Dane’s throat and then swung him around and indicated two places on the back of his neck and under his shoulder blades. “Kosti and Mura both have red eruptions here. It’s as if they have been given an injection of some narcotic.” Tau sat down on the jump seat while Dane dressed. “Kosti was dirt-side—he might have picked up something—”
“But Mura—”
“That’s it!” Tau brought his fist down on the edge of the bunk. “Frank hardly left the ship—yet he showed the first signs. On the other hand you are all right so far and you were off ship. And Ali’s clean and he was with you on the hunt. We’ll just have to wait and see.” He got up wearily. “If your head begins to ache,” he told Dane, “you get back here in a hurry and stay put—understand?”
As Dane learned all the other members of the crew were given the same type of inspection. But none of them showed the characteristic marks which meant trouble. They were on course for Terra—but—and that but must have loomed large in all their minds—once there would they be allowed to land? Could they even hope for a hearing? Plague ship—Tau must find the answer before they came into normal space about their own solar system or they were in for such trouble as made a broken contract seem the simplest of mishaps.
Kosti and Mura were in isolation. There were volunteers for nursing and Tau, unable to be in two places at once, finally picked Weeks to look after his crewmate in the engineering section.
There was doubling up of duties. Tau could no longer share with Mura the care of the hydro garden so Van Rycke took over. While Dane found himself in charge of the galley and, while he did not have Mura’s deft hand at disguising the monotonous concentrates to the point they resembled fresh food, after a day or two he began to experiment cautiously and produced a stew which brought some short words of appreciation from Captain Jellico.
They all breathed a sigh of relief when, after three days, no more signs of the mysterious illness showed on new members of the crew. It became routine to parade before Tau stripped to the waist each morning for the inspection of the danger points, and the Medic’s vigilance did not relax.
In the meantime neither Mura nor Kosti appeared to suffer. Once the initial stages of headaches and blackouts were passed, the patients lapsed into a semi-conscious state as if they were under sedation of some type. They would eat, if the food was placed in their mouths, but they did not seem to know what was going on about them, nor did they answer when spoken to.
Tau, between visits to them, worked feverishly in his tiny lab, analyzing blood samples, reading the records of obscure diseases, trying to find the reason for their attacks. But as yet his discoveries were exactly nothing. He had come out of his quarters and sat in limp exhaustion at the mess table while Dane placed before him a mug of stimulating caf-hag.
“I don’t get it!” The Medic addressed the table top rather than the amateur cook. “It’s a poison of some kind. Kosti went dirt-side—Mura didn’t. Yet Mura came down with it first. And we didn’t ship any food from Sargol. Neither did he eat any while we were there. Unless he did and we didn’t know about it. If I could just bring him to long enough to answer a couple of questions!” Sighing he dropped his weary head on his folded arms and within seconds was asleep.
Dane put the mug back on the heating unit and sat down at the other end of the table. He did not have the heart to shake Tau into wakefulness—let the poor devil get a slice of bunk time, he certainly needed it after the fatigues of the past four days.
Van Rycke passed along the corridor on his way to the hydro, Sinbad at his heels. But in a moment the cat was back, leaping up on Dane’s knee. He did not curl up, but rubbed against the young man’s arm, finally reaching up with a paw to touch Dane’s chin, uttering one of the soundless, mews which were his bid for attention.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Dane fondled the cat’s ears. “You haven’t got a headache—have you?” In that second a wild surmise came into his mind. Sinbad had been planet-side on Sargol as much as he could, and on ship board he was equally at home in all their cabins—could he be the carrier of the disease?
A good idea—only if it were true, then logically the second victim should have been Van, or Dane—whereas Sinbad lingered most of the time in their cabins—not Kosti. The cat, as far as he knew, had never shown any particular fondness for the jetman and certainly did not sleep in Karl’s quarters. No—that point did not fit. But he would mention it to Tau—no use overlooking anything—no matter how wild.
It was the sequence of victims which puzzled them all. As far as Tau had been able to discover Mura and Kosti had nothing much in common except that they were crewmates on the same spacer. They did not bunk in the same section, their fields of labor were totally different, they had no special food or drink tastes in common, they were not even of the same race. Frank Mura was one of the few descendants of a mysterious (or now mysterious) people who had had their home on a series of islands in one of Terra’s seas, islands which almost a hundred years before had been swallowed up in a series of world-rending quakes—Japan was the ancient name of that nation. While Karl Kosti had come from the once thickly populated land masses half the planet away which had borne the geographical name of “Europe.” No, all the way along the two victims had only very general meeting points—they both shipped on the Solar Queen and they were both of Terran birth.
Tau stirred and sat up, blinking bemusedly at Dane, then pushed back his wiry black hair and assumed a measure of alertness. Dane dropped the now purring cat in the Medic’s lap and in a few sentences outlined his suspicion. Tau’s hands closed about Sinbad.
“There’s a chance in that—” He looked a little less beat and he drank thirstily from the mug Dane gave him for the second time. Then he hurried out with Sinbad under one arm—bound for his lab.
Dane slicked up the galley, trying to put things away as neatly as Mura kept them. He didn’t have much faith in the Sinbad lead, but in this case everything must be checked out.
When the Medic did not appear during the rest of the ship’s day Dane was not greatly concerned. But he was alerted to trouble when Ali came in with an inquiry and a complaint.
“Seen anything of Craig?”
“He’s in the lab,” Dane answered.
“He didn’t answer my knock,” Ali protested. “And Weeks says he hasn’t been in to see Karl all day—”
That did catch Dane’s attention. Had his half hunch been right? Was Tau on the trail of a discovery which had kept him chained to the lab? But it wasn’t like the Medic not to look in on his patients.
“You’re sure he isn’t in the lab?”
“I told you that he didn’t answer my knock. I didn’t open the panel—” But now Ali was already in the corridor heading back the way he had come, with Dane on his heels, an unwelcome explanation for that silence in both their minds. And their fears were reinforced by what they heard as they approached the panel—a low moan wrung out of unbearable pain. Dane thrust the sliding door open.
Tau had slipped from his stool to the floor. His hands were at his head which rolled from side to side as if he were trying to quiet some agony. Dane stripped down the Medic’s under tunic. There was no need to make acareful examination, in the hollow