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36

The final plan, everyone agreed, was eminently dislikable, but it was the best they could do. There had been a suggestion from Skolnik to evacuate just one deck, whichever one the parasite was known to be on; that had obvious attractions, but it quickly became clear that it was unworkable. For one thing, it would have meant new lifeboat assignments for people who happened to be on that deck at the time but were normally assigned elsewhere; for another, it would have meant closing elevators and stairways in order to keep people from wandering out of the area; and, finally, it would have been an unusual procedure which would very likely alert the parasite that something was up.

In the end they went back to the original idea, with refinements. A boat drill would be announced. In order to guard against the possibility of confining staff members on the boat that carried the parasite, they would be reassigned to passenger lifeboats. After the passengers had boarded, there would be a thorough sweep to round up any stragglers; that would take the best part of three hours, during which time the parasite, if it was on one of the boats, would probably reveal itself. At that point the sweep could be abandoned; if not, it would go on to conclusion. At the end of the procedure, everyone in the passenger section, passengers and crew alike, would be in the lifeboats except for the duty officer and Bliss himself; a skeleton crew of kitchen staff, security people and essential members of other departments; the patients in hospital; McNulty, and the current shift of nurses.

The lottery was Skolnik’s idea, improved on and elaborated by Jim Islip, the entertainment director. “It isn’t enough to appeal to their civic duty,” he said. “Don’t misunderstand me, there are a lot of good people here, and they’ll volunteer. But that’s grim, and we don’t want to be grim. Let’s do it this way—_:we’ll hold a drawing every afternoon in the forward Main Deck lobby, televised all over the vessel, with cash prizes for the winners. They’ll get baskets of fruit and flowers delivered to their staterooms, and we’ll post their names and photographs, and publish them in the Journal, and believe me, we’ll get more people signing up that way than we would by telling them it’s their duty.”

“How much cash?” Erik Seaver wanted to know.

“For these people, it’ll have to be substantial or it won’t mean anything. I’d say two thousand dollars for the first name drawn, fifteen hundred for the second, a thousand for the third, then five hundred apiece for all the rest.”

“You’re talking about seven thousand a day," Seaver said.

“I know it, but this isn’t a time to count pennies. The lottery has to work, and more than that, we’ve got to improve morale—make people see this as a kind of fun thing. If we don’t, we’re going to lose more than seven thousand a day just in vandalism.”

Then there was a discussion about the recovered patients. “I see a problem here,” McNulty said. “So far, nobody has ever been infected twice. Now, I don’t know what that means. It could mean just that the parasite has so many people to choose from, there’s no reason for it to take the same host a second time. But it could mean that it can’t take a person twice, because of acquired immunity, or for some other reason that we don’t know.”

“What’s the difference?” Bernstein asked.

“Well, it could happen that we’ll wind up with recovered patients on the lifeboat, and they’ll be stuck there. We can’t take them off, because we still don’t know if the parasite can reinfect them or not, and if they can’t get off by getting infected, how do they get off?”

“What about just excusing them from the drill in the first place?”

“I’d be afraid to risk it. If we leave them on board, and it turns out that the parasite is in one of them, we’d have to start all over.”

“We’ve got the same problem, only more so,” said Schaffer, “with the rest of the people we leave on board. My kitchen people, security, et cetera, including all of us here.”

“Let’s take one problem at a time,” Bliss said. “About the recovered patients, Doctor, I think I see a solution. After we find out which lifeboat the parasite is aboard, we clear out all the rest. The lifeboats are in pairs, two opening from each bay. We can seal off that bay satisfactorily, I think, and then transfer any recovered patients into the next boat. As soon as the next person collapses, we’ll know where we are, and then we can let the recovered patients go. Mr. Young?”

“I can run you up a good sturdy barrier,” said the carpentry chief. “Put a door in it, and a lock on the door. No problem there.”

“Good. Any problem with security, then, Mr. Lundgren?”

“No, with a barrier there’s no reason we can’t handle it.”

“All right, now about the rest of us, I think that’s a bit simpler. Let’s agree that we’ll go on drill alert at fifteen hundred hours in two days’ time, but the drill won’t be announced until you tell me, Doctor, that you’ve just had a fresh victim. If, by any bad luck, anyone on the reserve list happened to be in the same corridor or lobby as the victim, we’ll make a last-minute substitution. Does that seem satisfactory to all of you? Good; then will you all please make up reserve lists, with standbys noted, and have them on my desk by oh nine hundred tomorrow?”

Really, Bliss thought afterward, he had handled that rather well. It was just possible that he was going to get through this without disgracing himself.