Calhoun was asking them to abandon all efforts to help themselves, and depend on a Med Service of which most of them had not even ever heard. They couldn't do it. Especially not with the Aesclipus Twenty aground and needing only to be overwhelmed and then extracted from the marsh for their most desperate needs to be fulfilled. They'd only been told of the plague. They didn't have it. They didn't see it, and they were imprisoned because of it. Few of them really believed in it, as Rob did.
So Calhoun was not surprised when the rasping voice cursed him horribly and cut off communication without bothering to reply. It was a refusal.
His expression was wry as he said to Murgatroyd, "He's a disappointed man, Murgatroyd. That's why he's suspicious and angry. But I'm disappointed too. I think he could have found out things for me that I'll have trouble learning myself."
Extra movement in a vision screen drew his eyes to it. A felled and trimmed tree trunk moved from its place toward the Med Ship. It was carried by not less than fifty men, holding to short ropes passed under it. The people of Delhi had no wheeled vehicles to carry so great a load. If they'd owned them, the marsh would have made them useless. However, they did have arms and muscles. By pure brute strength, sweating in their toil, they brought the log slowly down into the valley. Calhoun had never seen the physical strength of fifty men applied to a single effort. Men used engines or machines for such work. This was like those legendary achievements of barbaric kings and pharaohs. Had they been moving stone, had there been whips cracking to urge them on, he'd have felt that he saw the process of the building of the pyramids on Earth, which were still mentioned in primary grade school texts all over the galaxy.
Then he heard the girl Elna and the man Rob coming up from below. Rob said in icy fury, "You're a woman and I'd have had to hurt you to keep you from interfering. It's because you've been listening to him! He persuaded you, but millions would die if this ship lifted off and went to another world! So I'm going to stop his persuading! Sick or well, if I have to hurt him . . ."
"But, Rob!" protested the girl. "Think, if it's true! Think! If there's a Med Service and if it can end the plague for always, think of us! You wouldn't feel that we mustn't marry. You wouldn't think there should be no children to become savages! And we could be so happy . . ."
Calhoun raised his eyebrows. Murgatroyd said, "Chee!" in what happened to seem a very cynical tone. The heads of the man and girl appeared at the top of the stairwell. Rob's eyes were hot and accusing.
"You!" he cried furiously at sight of Calhoun. "This ship in the hands of the fools outside could mean all the human race wiped out! Don't you see it? Nobody must leave Delhi! Nobody! And as a beginning . . ."
They reached the floor of the control-room. Rob's hands clenched and unclenched. He moved slowly toward Calhoun, glaring in a very dramatic fashion.
"You display a very noble character, Rob," said Calhoun with some irony. "Self-sacrificing, too! It must be very satisfying to feel that way! But I almost agree with you. It's true that nobody must leave Delhi. Nobody but me. If you can't agree to that, we'll have to settle it right now!"
He drew the pocket-blaster from under his robe.
IV
The settlement was necessarily on Calhoun's terms. Calhoun had a weapon. Rob didn't. Calhoun wanted to do something. Rob wanted to keep something from being done. Calhoun was an essentially simple person, inclined to think of objective results in completely matter-of-fact terms. Rob reasoned emotionally, with much attention to noble ideals he was unable to compare with reality. Calhoun considered that he had a job to do. So the matter had to be settled as he decided. Rob had a very fine stock of invective and a splendid equipment of scorn. He made use of both in what he obviously considered an especially fine opportunity for stinging speech. But it was only speech. Calhoun listened unmoved.
"All right," he said presently, with some grimness. "That'll be enough. You've got it off your chest. What do you do now? Play along or sulk over it? I have to leave this place, for Med Headquarters. I need, right now, some mud from the swamp outside for what should be obvious reasons. You can get it. Will you?"
Rob ground his teeth. He refused, eloquently. Calhoun shrugged. Elna said, "I'll get it."
She did, while Rob glowered. It was only a matter of cracking the air-lock door and reaching down with a long ladle, while Calhoun watched the vision screens for signs of mob action. He literally wasn't up to the physical effort of getting a mud sample. There were infuriated shoutings from the mob outside. Men hunted for stones to throw. There weren't any, on the surface of a semi-swamp. Elna brought up a ladleful of black stuff with evil-smelling water on top of it. She silently gave it to Calhoun. He put the mud into a centrifuge to separate the solid matter from the water that saturated it. He sat down, to rest while the centrifuge ran. Rob glared at him in the extremely unhappy state of a man with impassioned convictions he couldn't act on. He was doubtless quite capable of dying for the sake of an abstract humanity. The high drama of such an action would certainly help him do it.
The centrifuge delivered pellets of damp soil and a considerable amount of browning, malodorous water. It had been stirred and—as Elna had mentioned—it smelled very badly. The air in the ship was Delhi air, now, and doubtless it reeked also, but not so strongly that one couldn't get used to it. However, getting used to the smell of stirred swamp water was another matter.
Calhoun roused himself. He filled a culture slide almost full of the unpleasant stuff. He put it in the culture microscope which would let him watch living microbes living. A six-inch screen beside it showed the magnified image. He watched.
Without electronic amplification of the image, it was not possible to watch living microscopic creatures at high magnification. For genuinely high optical power, much light would be required on the slide. Beyond a certain point, that light would be lethal to microbes. But electronic amplification made a sharp, clear image of everything in the culture slide. He saw the equivalent of an amoeba. He noted that it seemed furry. He saw the equivalent of rotifers. They spun madly for a certain time, and then stopped and spun as madly in an opposite direction.
Then he saw the spherical, pigmented microscopic spheres he was looking for.
But these microbes did not dance. They did not fission feverishly. They moved, but very slowly. Doubtless, they did multiply, but Calhoun saw no example of it. Save for lack of activity, though, they were twins of the plague organism.
"Ever hear of ecology, Elna?" asked Calhoun. "I think I'm observing a micro-ecological system at work."
The girl shook her head. She looked at Rob. He sat with his arms grandly folded. Calhoun didn't notice. He said, pleased, "Microbes adjust to their environment, like larger things. And like larger things, their numbers in nature depend on very complicated processes. Small animals multiply fast, because they're eaten by larger things. Larger things multiply slowly, because if they multiply too fast they wipe out their food supply and starve. There are some very curious causes for the limitation of animal populations so they won't all starve to death. If this bug I'm looking at is what I think it may be, it's a most interesting example."
The girl did not seem to hear him. She looked at Rob. He ignored her, with conscious tragic dignity. She'd helped Calhoun.