The Jupiter Plague

2

From the other side of the mountainous ship there came the distant rumble of engines, an occasional shout and the clank of heavy machinery, but the sounds were dwarfed by the bulk of the spacer. Other than this an unnatural quiet hung over the an port, an oppressive silence, undoubtedly the first time in years without the scream of jets or to.iring of propellers. A flock of starlings settled onto the nearby, churned-up earth, pecking at the suddenly exposed insect life. Overhead a gull drifted in from the ocean on motionless wings, only its head turning quickly, trying to see if the starlings had discovered anything edible. It dipped a sudden wing tip in alarm and swooped away as metal squealed on metal and the great Wright of the outer door of the air lock swung free. “Unload the surgical and medical kits, Killer,” Sam ordered, “then get around to the police and tell them what has happened. Fast!”

The sound of the ambulance died away and the thin whine of an electric motor could be heard inside the ship, growing louder as the massive door, now free of the threads, swung out on its central pivot. As soon as the opening was large enough a jointed metal ladder dropped down, unrolling as it fell, stopping almost at their feet. A man appeared in the opening above them and dangled his legs over the edge, groping for the rungs with his toes, then began a slow and painful descent.

“Is anything wrong?” Sam shouted up to him. “Can we help you?” There was no answer, just the hesitant motion of the man’s arms and legs. “I’d better climb up there and help him down…”

“He’s falling!” Nita screamed.

Ten feet above the ground the spaceman’s hands seemed to lose their strength, they could not hold on. He fell, twisting in the air, landing on his side. The two doctors ran to him.

“Easy,” Sam said. “Free his arm while I roll him onto his back. Careful with it, I think it’s fractured.”

“Look at his face! What is that..”.?“

The man’s skin was pale and covered with swollen red nodules as large as walnuts, some of them were ruptured and suppurating. The same boils were visible at the open neck of his gray space-jumper and on the backs of his hands.

“Furunculosis of some kind,” Sam said slowly. “Though I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. You don’t think—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Nita’s gasp ended it for him. When he raised his head he found himself looking into her widened eyes and saw there the fear that he knew must be mirrored in his own.

“Topholm’s pachyacria,” she said so softly he could barely hear it.

“It might be something like that, we can’t be sure — but we’ll still have to take every precaution.” He remembered what had happened then.

The bacteria that had infected Lieutenant Topholm during the stay of the first expedition on Venus had not produced any symptoms until after the return to Earth. There had not been an epidemic, yet a great number of people had died and there were still men whose feet and hands had to be amputated who could attest to the virulency of the disease. Since that time the quarantine of spaceships had become more strict to avoid any recurrence of alien infection.

Sam was galvanized into sudden motion by the sound of approaching engines; he jumped to his feet and ran toward the returning ambulance, which was being followed by two police cars.

“Stop!” he shouted, standing directly in their path with his arms raised. Brakes squealed as they halted and the police started to climb out. “No— don’t come any closer. It would be better if you backed off at least fifty yards. A man came out of the ship, and he’s sick. He’s going into tight quarantine at once and only Dr. Mendel and myself will remain close to him.”

“You heard the doctor, get them back,” the police captain said hoarsely. The two cars backed up but the ambulance didn’t move.

“I can help you, Doc,” Killer said casually enough, though his face was drained of blood.

“Thanks, Killer, but Dr. Mendel and I can handle this. No one else is going to get exposed until we find out what is wrong with the man. I want you to get back there with the others, then call the hospital and report exactly what has happened so that they can contact public health. I’m bringing the man in — unless they order otherwise — and if I do we’ll need the tight quarantine ward. Then seal off your cab and make sure that your gas closures are screwed down tight. Let me know as soon as you hear anything. Move!”

“You’re the doctor — Doctor.” He managed a crooked smile and began backing up.

Nita had both medical kits open and was strapping a recording telltale to the spaceman’s wrist. “The radius seems to be fractured,” she said without looking up when she heard his footsteps approaching. “Respiration shallow, temperature one hundred and five. He’s still unconscious.”

He kneeled next to her. “You can move away and I’ll take over — there’s no point in having both of us exposed, Nita.”

“Don’t be foolish, I’m as exposed by now as I’ll ever be. But that doesn’t matter — I’m still a physician.”

“Thanks.” His worried face broke into a smile for a brief second. “I can use your help…”

The sick man’s eyes were open and he made a muffled gargled noise deep in his throat. Sam gently opened the spaceman’s jaw with a tongue depressor and examined the inside of his mouth. “Parrot tongue,” he said, looking at the characteristic dry, horny surface produced by severe fever. “And the mucous membranes in the throat seem to be swollen as well.” The man’s eyes were fixed on his face as the throat contracted with effort. “Don’t try to talk, you can’t with a throat like that…”

“Sam — look at his fingers, he’s moving them as if he were writing. He wants to tell us something!”

Sam pushed a heavy marking pen into the man’s hand and held the clipboard up so that he could write. The fingers moved clumsily, leaving a shaking mark: he used his left hand and he was probably right-handed — but his right arm was broken. With a tremendous effort he scrawled the twisting lines onto the paper, but collapsed, unconscious again, before he could finish. Sam eased him slowly back to the ground.

“It says SICK,” Nita said. “Then, it looks like INCH — no, it’s IN, then SHIP. Sick in ship — is that what he meant to write?”

“Sick in ship… sickness in spaceship. He may have been trying to warn us of infection there — or tell us that there are others in there. I’ll have to go see.”

Nita started to say something — then stopped and looked down at the telltale. “His condition hasn’t changed, but he should be in the hospital.”

“We can’t move him until we have orders from the public health people, so make him as comfortable as possible. Don’t try to set his arm, but do put the supporting brace on it. I’m going to look into the ship. Put on isolation gloves before you touch him any more, that will lessen the hazard of accidental infection from those suppurating boils. I’ll do the same thing myself before I climb the ladder.”

The gloves, really elbow-length gauntlets, were made of thin but very tough plastic, and they each pulled on a pair while he inserted filter plugs into his nostrils. Sam slung the medical kit over his shoulder by the carrying strap and quickly climbed the hanging ladder. When he clambered through the threaded, circular opening he found himself in a metal, boxlike room as wide as it was high and featureless except for a large door on the far wall flanked by a telephone unit. It was obviously a space lock, and the inner door should lead into the ship. A control panel was set next to it and Sam pressed the button labeled CYCLE OPEN.

Nothing happened; the controls were dead and the inner door was sealed. Sam tried all the buttons, but there was no response. He turned to the telephone and found a list of numbers mounted next to the screen. There was the ping of a bell when he dialed 211 for the control room and the screen came to life.

“Hello, is there anyone there? I’m calling from the air lock.”

An empty acceleration couch almost filled the screen, and behind it, out of focus, were banked racks of instruments. There was no answer, nor did he see any movement. Sam dialed the engine room next, with the same negative result. After this he went to the top of the list and dialed every number on it, one by one, hearing his voice echo in compartment after compartment. There was no answer. They were all empty. The sick man must have been alone in the ship.

When Sam started back down the ladder he saw that more cars had arrived, but all of them were keeping their distance. A policeman started forward from one of the cars and at the same time an amplified voice boomed out.

“Dr. Bertolli, your hospital wants to talk to you. The officer is bringing you a radiophone; would you please pick it up.”

Sam waved that he heard and, after setting down the medical kit, went to pick up the phone where it had been left midway between the spaceship and the cars. “How is the patient?” he asked Nita when he returned.

“He seems to be losing ground, pulse weaker, breathing shallower and his temperature is still high. Do you think he should have an antipyretic, or antibiotics—?”

“Let me talk to the hospital first.”

An image appeared on the small screen when he switched it on, divided in two for a conference call. On one side was a heavyset, gray-haired man, whom he had never seen before, on the other was the worried face of Dr. McKay, the head of the Department of Tropical Medicine and former head of the team who had developed the treatment of Topholm’s pachyacria.

“We’ve heard about the man from the ship, Dr. Bertolli,” McKay said. “This is Professor Chabel from World Health. Could we see the patient, please.”

“Of course, Doctor.” Sam held the phone so that the pickup was focused on the unconscious spaceman and at the same time gave the readings from the telltale and described what he had found in the ship. He then showed them the message the spaceman had written.

“Are you positive that no one else is in the ship?” Chabel asked.

“I’m not positive, because I couldn’t get in. But I called every compartment that had a phone; no one answered my calls nor did I see anyone — alive or dead — in any of these compartments.”

“You said that you couldn’t operate the space lock controls.”

“The power was off, they seemed to be deactivated.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Chabel said, coming to a decision. “The controls worked when the man came out, so he must have turned them off himself. That, along with his warning about sickness in the ship, is enough reason to act. I’m going to quarantine that spaceship at once and have it sealed and sterilized on the outside. It’s going to be isolated and no one will go near it until we find out what the disease is.”

“Bring him to the hospital,” Dr. McKay said. “All the patients in the tight quarantine ward have been transferred to other hospitals.”

“Should I administer any treatment first?”

“Yes, our experience has been that normal supportive treatment is recommended. Even if the disease is an alien one it can only affect the patient’s body in a limited number of ways. I would suggest antipyrine acetylsalicylate to bring the fever down, and a broad spectrum antibiotic.”

“Megacillin?”

“Fine.”

“We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

Nita was already preparing the injections when he hung up. They were done quickly while the ambulance backed toward them, the rear door gaping open. The first vertijets appeared as Sam was rolling out the stretcher. They must have already been on their way during the phone call and were just waiting for the go-ahead signal from World Health. There were two of them that circled the spaceship slowly, then vanished behind its bulk. A bellowing roar broke out and clouds of dense black smoke appeared.

“What’s happening?” Nita asked.

“Flamethrowers. They’ll cover every inch of the ship with them and the ground around. Every precaution must be taken to see that the infection isn’t spread.”

When Sam turned to latch the door he saw the starling on the ground nearby, dragging its wing in circles. Human beings weren’t the only ones who had suffered when the “Pericles” landed — the bird must have been hit by a piece of flying debris. And there was another bird, injured too, lying on its side with its beak open.