Murgatroyd said, "Chee!"
The girl Elna said uneasily, "They're setting up some sort of—thing made out of the logs."
Calhoun looked. There was no battering ram support being erected. There were two short logs upright, and heavy logs crosswise, and a very long log with numerous cross-pieces fastened to it lying in the disturbed ground. Men were working with ropes. It couldn't make an effective battering ram. However, Calhoun was much too elated to give thought to the engineering feat in progress outside. He wanted to verify what was at once plausible and lacking proof. Proof would be finding a highly volatile liquid or a condensable gas in solution in the swamp water. He most definitely had the equipment for seeking it. He used his swamp-water sample recklessly. He did a reduced-pressure fractionating still-run, which could take a full tablespoon full of swamp water and by precise control of the temperature and pressure draw off dissolved air, dissolved carbon dioxide, dissolved . . .
He got enough of a condensable vapor to be visible under the microscope. With the beautifully exact temperature control he had, he found its boiling point by watching that infinitesimal droplet disappear as vapor, and recondense as a fluid as he sent the temperature up and down, watching through a microscope.
Elna said uneasily, "They're getting ready to do something . . .
Calhoun looked at the screen. Men swarmed about an area twenty or thirty feet from the Med Ship's outer plating. They had ropes fastened here and there. They were arranging themselves in long rows about the ropes. There were hundreds of them preparing to do something with the logs. Away over at the edge of the slanting ground, there was much smoke. Men worked at something involving fire. Men shook their fists at the Med Ship, ready to grasp and haul on the ropes they'd brought and placed.
Calhoun blinked. Then he said, "Clever! That's really a beautiful trick! They're sure we can't lift off, so they're going to take the ship with the minimum of damage . . . That's really brilliant!"
Rob said fiercely, "When are you going to start smashing the ship?"
"I've much more important things to do," said Calhoun. "Much more important!"
Almost hilariously, he threw the G.C. switch and began to calclass="underline" "General call! General call! To repaired lifeboat. Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty calling repaired lifeboat! Top emergency! Come in, repaired lifeboat!"
As he called, he regarded the work outside, which now approached a climax of activity. Men were making sure that ropes lying on the marshy ground were exactly laid to be pulled on. Other men were lining up to haul on those ropes. Leaders arranged them exactly to get the maximum of traction in exactly the proper directions-of-pull. A group of men were bringing something which gave off a thick white smoke. They kept out of the smoke.
"Calling repaired lifeboat! This is urgent! I've found out how the plague works! Calling repaired lifeboat . . ."
A voice said in icy rage, "Well?"
"The plague," said Calhoun, "is a spherical microbe which can't be anything but sluggish in Delhian air, sea, ground, or swamp land, because there's some sort of methane derived compound which inhibits its growth. The compound that makes soil reek when it's disturbed, that you drive out partly when you boil water, that's the stuff that keeps the plague germ inactive. It was in the air you breathed when you kept your boat hidden underwater while two men tried to make it to the spaceport. Do you understand?"
The rasping voice said suspiciously, "What're you telling me for?"
"Because when your two men tried to make it to the spaceport on Lanke, they were breathing air that didn't smell, and didn't hold back the plague germs from multiplying. One man went back when he saw double. Back in your ship the air stopped the germs from multiplying and he got over the plague. When I breathed Delhi air, I got over it. But one man panicked when he found he had the plague. He went to the Health Department and tried to give himself up as a plague victim. He hoped to be carried back to Delhi and to life. But they killed him."
There was a growling sound from the G.C. speaker. Calhoun said, "The Med Service can handle this, but I've got to get to headquarters! There's a mob outside my ship, getting ready to break in. I'll be wrecked! I need somebody to stop the mob from breaking in and wrecking this ship, which is needed to take these facts to Med Service Headquarters. As a matter of common sense, you'd better come here and stop them."
A pause. Then a growled, "We'll be there!"
Calhoun grinned. Murgatroyd said shrilly, "Chee-chee-chee!"
Ordinarily, when Calhoun held conversations over the general communicator phone, it meant that the Med Ship would shortly go aground and people would pet Murgatroyd and feed him sweet cakes and coffee until he almost burst. His small brain made that association again. He began to lick his whiskers and otherwise make himself tidy and irresistible.
Rob said contemptuously, "Are you fool enough to expect him to protect this ship and let you go away in it? He'll never do that! Never!"
"I don't expect him to," said Calhoun mildly. "But he really shouldn't make trips like those to Lanke. It's dangerous! There may be plague on Lanke now, because of it. I expect him to try to get the ship for his own ideas."
"But he's coming . . ."
"Yes," said Calhoun.
He turned to the vision plates again. There were at least eight hundred men lined up beside ropes. There were shoutings and orders and cursings. Under exact instructions, the rope tightened. Men heaved at the ends of the short logs. They rose. They stood up at an angle of forty-five degrees. More shoutings. Enormous, straining efforts . . .
The long log, the heaviest log, the one with the cross-pieces fastened to it, stirred. The shorter logs transferred the flat drag of the ropes to a slanting downward cable, so that the long log went wavering up from the ground. Men with ropes spreading out in every direction balanced it to a sharply vertical position. It stood on end, nearly forty feet long, with cross-pieces by which it could be climbed to its very top.
Now Calhoun observed the spike at its end. It was inches thick and six feet long. It pointed toward the Med Ship. The men with the smoking stuff were halfway across the marsh, now. They kept carefully out of the white vapor the thing they were carrying gave off.
Shoutings, making sure that everything was right.
"What . . ." That was Elna. Rob scowled, but he did not grasp the picture even yet.
The tall pole with the horizontal spike at its end wavered a little, back and forth. A bellowing voice roared . . .
Half the men at the ropes—those that kept the spiked log from falling toward the ship—let go. The other half dragged frantically at the ropes to make it fall on the Med Ship.
It was very well handled. The log crashed into the small ship's plating. The spike went through, as no battering ram could possibly do. Then there were men swarming up the cross-pieces. Those who'd been bringing the smoking stuff ran desperately to arrive at the earliest possible instant. Containers of the strangling white smoke went up.
"Clever!" said Calhoun.
He sniffed. There was an uproar of triumph outside. The citizens of Delhi howled in triumph, and in their movements they stirred up the swampy pools and many were nauseated.
Calhoun sniffed again, and nodded.
"Sulfur," he commented. "They're blowing sulfur smoke in the hole they punched in our hull. In theory, we'll have to open the air-lock doors to get out or strangle. And when we go out they'll come in. Clever!"
The smell of burning sulfur became distinct. It grew strong. Calhoun adjusted a control governing the barometric pressure inside the ship. If by a rise in temperature or for other reasons the pressure in the ship went up, a pump would relieve the extra pressure by compressing it into one of the large air-tanks which carried fourteen times the volume of the Med Ship. Calhoun and Murgatroyd could live for a long time on stored air if the air-renewal system failed.