"I'm not going to try an analysis," he observed. "It would be silly to try to do anything so complicated if I only need to identify something. Which I hope is all I do need!"
He brought out an extremely small vacuum device. He cleaned the garments he'd just removed, drawing every particle of dust from them. The dust appeared in a transparent tube which was part of the machine.
"I was sprayed with something I suspect the worst of," he added. "The spray left dust behind. I think it made sure that anybody who left Government Center would surely be a para. It's another reason for haste."
The grid operator ground his teeth again. He did not really hear Calhoun. He was deep in a private hell of shame and horror.
The inside of the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the unspeakable because he could not help himself, but he was mad with rage and shame over what he had become. Calhoun could become like that—
The loud-speaker tuned to outside frequencies muttered again. Calhoun turned up its volume.
"Calling Headquarters!" panted a voice. "There's a mob of paras forming in the streets in the Mooreton quarter! They're raging! They heard the President's speech and they swear they'll kill him! They won't stand for a cure! Everybody's got to turn para! They won't have normals on the planet! Everybody's got to turn para or be killed!"
The grid operator looked up at the speaker. The ultimate of bitterness appeared on his face. He saw Calhoun's eyes on him and said savagely:
"That's where I belong!"
Murgatroyd headed straight for his cubbyhole and crawled into it.
Calhoun got out a microscope. He examined the dried glass plates from the vacuum drier. The fractionator turned itself off and he focused on and studied the slide it yielded. He inspected a sample of the dust he'd gotten from the garments that had been sprayed at the south gate. The dust contained common dust particles and pollen particles and thread particles and all sorts of microscopic debris. But throughout all the sample he saw certain infinitely tiny crystals. They were too small to be seen separately by the naked eye, but they had a definite crystalline form. And the kind of crystals a substance makes are not too specific about what the substance is, but they tell a great deal about what it cannot be. In the fractionator slide he could get more information—the rate-of-diffusion of a substance in solution ruled out all but a certain number of compounds that it could be. The two items together gave a definite clue.
Another voice from the speaker:
"Headquarters! Paras are massing by the north gate! They act ugly! They're trying to force their way into Government Center! We'll have to start shooting if we're to stop them! What are our orders?"
The grid operator said dully:
"They'll wreck everything. I don't want to live because I'm a para, but I haven't acted like one yet. Not yet! But they have! So they don't want to be cured! They'd never forget what they've done. They'd be ashamed!"
Calhoun punched keys on a very small computer. He'd gotten an index-of-refraction reading on crystals too small to be seen except through a microscope. That information, plus specific gravity, plus crystalline form, plus rate of diffusion in a fractionator, went to the stores of information in the computer's memory banks somewhere between the ship's living quarters and its outer skin.
A voice boomed from another speaker, tuned to public-broadcast frequency:
"My fellow-citizens, I appeal to you to be calm! I beg you to be patient! Practice the self-control that citizens owe to themselves and their world, I appeal to you...."
Outside in the starlight the Med Ship rested peacefully on the ground. Around and above it the grid rose like geometric fantasy to veil most of the starry sky. Here in the starlight the ground-car communicators gave out the same voice. The same message. The President of Tallien Three made a speech. Earlier, he'd made another. Earlier still he'd taken orders from the man who was already absolute master of the population of this planet.
Police stood uneasy guard about the Med Ship because they could not enter it. Some of their number who had entered the control building now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in the landing grid's upper levels.
At the horizon there was a faint glow. Street lights still burned in the planet's capitol city, but though buildings rose against the sky no lights burned in them. It was not wise for anybody to burn lights that could be seen outside their dwellings. There were police, to be sure. But they were all in Government Center, marshaled there to try to hold a perimeter formed by bricked-up apartment buildings. But most of the city was dark and terribly empty save for mobs of all sizes but all raging. Nine-tenths of the city was at the mercy of the paras. Families darkened their homes and, terrified, hid in corners and in closets, listening for outcries or the thunderous tramping of madmen at their doors.
In the Med Ship the loud-speaker went on:
"I have told you," said the rounded tones of the Planetary President—but his voice shook, "I have told you that Dr. Lett has perfected and is making a vaccine which will protect every citizen and cure every para. You must believe me, my fellow-citizens. You must believe me! To paras, I promise that their fellows who were not afflicted with the same condition will forget! I promise that no one will remember what... what has been done in delirium! What has taken place—and there have been tragedies—will be blotted out. Only be patient now! Only...."
Calhoun went over his glass slides again while the computer stood motionless, apparently without life. But he had called for it to find, in its memory banks, an organic compound of such-and-such a crystalline form, such-and-such a diffusion rate, such-and-such a specific gravity, and such-an-such a refractive index. Men no longer considered that there was any effective limit to the number of organic compounds that were possible. The old guess at half a million different substances was long exceeded. It took time even for a computer to search all its microfilmed memories for a compound such as Calhoun had described.
He paced restlessly while the computer consulted its memory with faint whirrings of cooling blowers, and occasional chucklings as memory cubes full of exceedingly complex stereomolecules of recorded information were searched.
"Maybe," Calhoun said, "this isn't so much a new disease as a modification of a very old one. The very ancient Hate Disease—for the most important symptom of this particular malady is the hate it's stirred up. I've seen a number of sick planets—but the hate index on this one earns it a record score." He paused for a moment as the computer did an extra-special burping chuckle, and slipped in an entire new case of memory cubes. "Hm-m-m ... if what we're looking for is a vaccine against hate we'd really have something.
"But I'm afraid not. That's too happy an outcome. We'll just call this Hate Disease, Tallien Three strain. It's standard practice," Calhoun continued, "to consider that everything that can happen, does. Specifically, that any compound that can possibly exist, sooner or later must be formed in nature. We're looking for a particular one. It must have been formed naturally at some time or another, but never before has it appeared in quantity enough to threaten a civilization. Why?"