Calhoun nodded. He said thoughtfully, "That may be true, because there was opportunity for it. But, true or not, people would believe it. And I guess, too, that you tell each other that the plague's worn itself out. Nobody has it here. Nobody who's landed here ever gets it. If they have it when they come, they're cured immediately. I was! So how could they give it to anybody else?"
"Yes!" said the girl passionately. "That's it! How could we? Rob says we have to stay here! Here where the food has no taste, and the water . . . Where we're made nauseated when we plow the ground to grow food! Where . . . Rob says we shouldn't marry and shouldn't have children because they'd be doomed in advance to become savages! He says . . ."
Rob said unhappily, "I think that's true, Elna."
"How could it be true? How could a disease that nobody can have be carried by anybody?"
Calhoun stirred in the pilot's chair.
"I think," he said apologetically, "that I have to get back to my cabin. The plague I had has made me ridiculously weak. But I have to admit, Elna, that I caught the plague from a man who left Delhi and went to Lanke and immediately developed the plague. Rob is right. Nobody must leave Delhi, but me. I have to get some help from Med Service Headquarters. Nobody else must leave. Nobody!"
Rob helped him into his cabin again. He sank gratefully down on his bunk. The girl Elna came in minutes later with another bowl of broth. Her expression was equal parts rebellion and despair. Calhoun was suddenly so sleepy that the spoon fell from his fingers. Rob supported him while Elna fed him, spoonful by spoonful. He was totally asleep the instant she'd finished.
Elna waked him by shaking his shoulder, he didn't know how long afterward. Murgatroyd made shrill protests. Calhoun waked easily and completely, and on the instant he knew that a surprising amount of strength had come back to him. With less than a desperate effort he actually sat up. He swung his feet over the side of the bunk. He became confident that he could walk, if in a wobbly fashion. However, he still wasn't up to rough-and-tumble exercise.
"Rob's gone down," said Elna desperately, "to start smashing up the ship's drive so it can't possibly be repaired!"
"Go tell him," said Calhoun, "that the drive-units from the lifeboat just back from Lanke can be used in this ship. They'll smash the quarantine. Wrecking my drive won't stop them. Anyhow the crowd outside will tear us all to small bits—including you and including Rob—if they break in and find the ship's been smashed after landing. Tell him to come up and I'll give him better instructions."
She searched his face briefly and hurried away. He heard her footsteps clattering down the metal stair to the lower parts of the Med Ship. Murgatroyd said, "Chee?"
"Of course not!" said Calhoun severely. "We are members of the Interstellar Medical Service. We can't let a situation like this keep on! I should be able to stand up, now, and do something about it. Let's try!"
He found a handhold, and with arms and legs working together he got to a standing position. He was still uncertain in his steps, and his expression went wry. Finally, he got across the cabin. He opened a closet and found a robe. He put it on. He made his way unsteadily into the control-room. He opened another cupboard and brought out a blaster, almost a miniature, for the pocket. He adjusted the strength of its bolt and put it out of sight under his robe. He went dizzily to the pilot's seat at the control-board. He threw the G.C. switch.
"General call!" he said into the transmitter. "General call! Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty calling repaired spaceboat or any other ship. General call!"
He waited, blinking at the vision screens. There were still very many people outside. A good proportion seemed to be laboring where the trees of the nearby mountainside ceased to grow because the ground was too marshy for their kind. He saw a disturbance. A chopped through tree trunk fell.
"General call," he repeated patiently. "General call. Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty calling repaired . . ."
A rasping voice interrupted. It was a familiar voice to Calhoun. He'd heard it during that improbable encounter of two ships in between-the-stars. Now it said unpleasantly, "You followed us, eh? What for?"
"Clinical information," said Calhoun. "One man of your crew didn't come back to Delhi with you. He had the plague. In fact, I got it from him. He's dead now, by the way. Why didn't the rest of you get it?"
The voice growled, "What're you asking me for?"
"I'm landed on Delhi, in a swamp," said Calhoun. "It looks like I can't lift off, because I'm mired here. There's a crowd—a mob—outside, trying to contrive a way to break into my ship so they can take it over, dig it out, and lift off for somewhere else. After they break in I'm not likely to get much information. Information like the information that tells me you hid your boat underwater while somebody went to figure out the chances of seizing a ship there by surprise and getting aloft on emergency rockets. That was the idea, wasn't it?"
The harsh voice was very harsh when it demanded, "Who told you that?"
"Never mind," said Calhoun. "But you didn't send only one man. How many?"
A pause. The other voice said cagily, "There were two. But one began to see double and came back."
"Which," Calhoun observed, "was proof that when people from Delhi land on another planet they develop the plague. You'd stopped believing in that. But it was so. It pretty well killed the idea of seizing a ship without warning, picking up a crew on Delhi and moving on to seize yet other ships and break the quarantine to small and quivering bits. Right?"
The voice grated, "What are you driving at?"
"I'd like some cooperation," said Calhoun. "You know you can't work that scheme now! You've promised to break the quarantine by force. Now you're afraid to admit it can't be done. Right?"
"What—are—you—driving—at?" rasped the voice.
"I'm Med Service," said Calhoun. "Tell me what you know about the plague, tell your followers to leave my ship alone and to gather information and biological specimens I ask for. Then we'll have the Med Service taking over as it should have done a hundred years ago. Shortly, there'll be no more plague and no more quarantine."
Silence. What Calhoun proposed was sound sense, but it was not the sort of sound sense that people would accept. The Med Service was not a reality to the people of Delhi, and the quarantine was, and was moreover the deliberate act of the nearby occupied worlds. They were imprisoned on a world which stank, and when its surface was disturbed it reeked, and even drinking water had to be boiled before it could endurably be drank. They could have no modern tools, lest they contrive some way to damage its enemies. They could have no science, because they had to be kept imprisoned. Men will not endure such conditions, necessary or not.
Calhoun said evenly, "I know I'm asking a lot. There's a mob outside my ship now, contriving some way to break into it and seize it, so they can raid a spaceport somewhere and seize other ships to repeat and spread their revolt, and the plague. But you know it won't work. You can leave Delhi a thousand times over, but if you take the plague with you . . . it's no good!"
Silence. Calhoun, waiting, shook his head to himself. Delhi had had a century of isolation and hopelessness, and the arrival of other hopeless prisoners only reminded them of the intolerable nature of the lives they lived. Under such conditions men forget what they don't want to remember, and somehow come to believe everything they wish to be true. They'd developed a blind irrational belief that their imprisonment was unnecessary. They'd developed an unreasoned, impassioned faith in possible escape. They'd rebuilt a shattered spaceboat, learning the functions of the apparatus they rebuilt as they rebuilt it. They'd set out to accomplish the impossible.