this was a long, detailed and exceedingly dull description of the step-by-step procedure followed by a Confederation exploratory ship making a first landing on a barren planet. There was a description of the atmosphere, the soil surface, the land masses and major water bodies. Physically, the planet was a desert, hot and dry, and barren of vegetation excepting in two or three areas of jungle along the equator. “The planet is inhabited by numerous small unintelligent animal species which seem well-adapted to the semi-arid conditions. Of higher animals and mammals only two species were discovered, and of these the most highly developed was an erect biped with an integrated central nervous system and the intelligence level of a Garvian drachma.”
“How small is that?” Jack said.
“Idiot-level,” Dal said glumly. “I.Q. of about 20 on the human scale. I guess the explorers weren’t much impressed; they didn’t even put the planet down for a routine colonization survey.”
“Well, something has happened down there since then. Idiots can’t build interstellar radios.” Jack turned to Tiger. “Are you getting them?”
Tiger nodded. A voice was coming over the speaker, hesitant and apologetic, using the common tongue of the Galactic Confederation. “How soon can you come?” the voice was asking clearly, still with the sound of great reticence. “There is not much time.”
“But who are you?” Tiger asked. “What’s wrong down there?”
“We are sick, dying, thousands of us. But if you have other work that is more pressing, we would not want to delay you—”
Jack shook his head, frowning. “I don’t get this,” he said. “What are they afraid of?”
Tiger spoke into the microphone again. “We will be glad to help, but we need information about you. You have our position—can you send up a spokesman to tell us your problem?”
A long pause, and then the voice came back wearily. “It will be done. Stand by to receive him.”
Tiger snapped off the radio receiver and looked up triumphantly at the others. “Now we’re getting somewhere. If the people down there can send a ship out with a spokesman to tell us about their troubles, we’ve got a chance to sew up a contract, and that could mean a Star for every one of us.”
“Yes, but who are they?” Dal said. “And where were they when the Confederation ship was here?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, “but I’ll bet you both that we have quite a time finding out.”
“Why?” Tiger said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we’d better be very careful here,” Jack said darkly. “I don’t know about you, but I think this whole business has a very strange smell.”
*
There was nothing strange about the Bruckian ship when it finally came into view. It was a standard design, surface-launching interplanetary craft, with separated segments on either side suggesting atomic engines. They saw the side jets flare as the ship maneuvered to come in alongside the Lancet.
Grapplers were thrown out to bind the emissary ship to the Lancet’s hull, and Jack threw the switches to open the entrance lock and decontamination chambers. They had taken pains to describe the interior atmosphere of the patrol ship and warn the spokesman to keep himself in a sealed pressure suit. On the intercom viewscreens they saw the small suited figure cross from his ship into the Lancet’s lock, and watched as the sprays of formalin washed down the outside of the suit.
Moments later the creature stepped out of the decontamination chamber. He was small and humanoid, with tiny fragile bones and pale, hairless skin. He stood no more than four feet high. More than anything else, he looked like a very intelligent monkey with a diminutive space suit fitting his fragile body. When he spoke the words came through the translator in English; but Dal recognized the flowing syllables of the universal language of the Galactic Confederation.
“How do you know the common tongue?” he said. “There is no record of your people in our Confederation, yet you use our own universal language.”
The Bruckian nodded. “We know the language well. My people dread outside contact—it is a racial characteristic—but we hear the Confederation broadcasts and have learned to understand the common tongue.” The space-suited stranger looked at the doctors one by one. “We also know of the good works of the ships from Hospital Earth, and now we appeal to you.”
“Why?” Jack said. “You gave us no information, nothing to go on.”
“There was no time,” the creature said. “Death is stalking our land, and the people are falling at their plows. Thousands of us are dying, tens of thousands. Even I am infected and soon will be dead. Unless you can find a way to help us quickly, it will be too late, and my people will be wiped from the face of the planet.”
Jack looked grimly at Tiger and Dal. “Well,” he said, “I guess that answers our question, all right. It looks as if we have a plague planet on our hands, whether we like it or not.”
The Incredible People
Slowly and patiently they drew the story from the emissary from the seventh planet of 31 Brucker.
The small, monkey-like creature was painfully shy; he required constant reassurance that the doctors did not mind being called, that they wanted to help, and that a contract was not necessary in an emergency. Even at that the spokesman was reluctant to give details about the plague and about his stricken people. Every bit of information had to be extracted with patient questioning.
By tacit consent the doctors did not even mention the strange fact that this very planet had been explored by a Confederation ship eight hundred years before and no sign of intelligent life had been found. The little creature before them seemed ready to turn and bolt at the first hint of attack or accusation. But bit by bit, a picture of the current situation on the planet developed.
Whoever they were and wherever they had been when the Confederation ship had landed, there was unquestionably an intelligent race now inhabiting this lonely planet in the outer reaches of the solar system of 31 Brucker. There was no doubt of their advancement; a few well-selected questions revealed that they had control of atomic power, a working understanding of the nature and properties of contra-terrene matter, and a workable star drive operating on the same basic principle as Earth’s Koenig drive but which the Bruckians had never really used because of their shyness and fear of contact with other races. They also had an excellent understanding, thanks to their eavesdropping on Confederation interstellar radio chatter, of the existence and functions of the Galactic Confederation of worlds, and of Hospital Earth’s work as physician to the galaxy.
But about Bruckian anatomy, physiology or biochemistry, the little emissary would tell them nothing. He seemed genuinely frightened when they pressed him about the physical make-up of his people, as though their questions were somehow scraping a raw nerve. He insisted that his people knew nothing about the nature of the plague that had stricken them, and the doctors could not budge him an inch from his stand.
But a plague had certainly struck.
It had begun six months before, striking great masses of the people. It had walked the streets of the cities and the hills and valleys of the countryside. First three
