The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

  “It happened.”

  “But—”

  “There’s Neff,” Thompson spoke. Far down the avenue below them, three figures had appeared, Neff, Fortune, and Ross. Neff tall and slender, Fortune round like a ball, and Ross built square like a block of concrete. Neff saw them on top of the building and beckoned to them. There was urgency in the gesture.

  “They’ve found something,” Thompson said. With Kurkil following him he went hastily out of the building.

  “What is it?”

  “Come and see,” Neff answered. Neff’s face was gray. Fortune and Ross were silent.

  The building in front of which they were standing had been a house once. The architecture resembled nothing they had ever seen on Earth but the purpose of the structure was obvious. Here somebody had lived. Thompson tried to imagine people living here, the husband coming home in the evening to the dinner prepared by the wife, kids running to meet him. His imagination failed.

  “Back here,” Neff said.

  They went around what had been a house into what had been a garden of some kind, a quiet nook where a family might sprawl in peace. “There,” Neff said pointing.

  The three skeletons were huddled together in an alcove in front of what had once been a shrine. They lay facing the shrine as if they had died praying. Above them in a niche in a wall was—

  “An idol,” Kurkil whispered.

  “They died praying to their god,” Thompson said. He was not aware that he had spoken. Three skeletons.…

  The bones indicated a creature very similar to the human in structure. A large, a middle-sized, and a small skeleton.

  “We think the small one is that of a child,” Ross spoke. “We think this was a family.”

  “I see,” Thompson said. “Did you find other skeletons?”

  “Many others. We found them almost everywhere but usually tucked away in corners, as if the people had tried to hide from something.” His voice went suddenly into uneasy silence.

  “Any indication as to the cause of death?”

  “None. It apparently came on quite suddenly. We judge that the inhabitants had some warning. At least we do not seem to find enough skeletons for a city of this size, so we estimate that part of the population fled, or tried to.”

  “I see,” Thompson repeated tonelessly. He caught a vague impression that something had passed before his eyes, like a darting flicker of light, and he caught, momentarily, a fast rustle in the air, as of souls passing. His mind was on the flight of this race, the mass hegira they had attempted in an effort to escape from some menace. What menace? “What do you think caused it?”

  Ross shrugged, a gesture eloquent with a lack of knowledge and of understanding. “War—”

  “No wars were fought on this planet,” Neff spoke quickly. “These cities show no evidence of conflict.”

  “Um,” Thompson said. The four men were looking uneasily at him. They were waiting for him to make up his mind, to decide on a course of action.

  Thompson did not like his own thinking. Something—the blood-brother of death—had been here on this planet, that much was certain. The evidence was everywhere.

  “We will return to the ship,” Thompson said.

  Grant saw them coming, had the lock open for them. His worried face looked out at them. “What gives here?”

  “We don’t know,” Thompson answered. The cat, Buster, pushed forward between Grant’s legs, took a long leap at Thompson’s chest, made a twenty-claw safe landing there. “Hi, old fellow, were you worried about me?”

  They passed through the lock. “Take her up,” Thompson said. “We need a little time to think about this enigma. Maybe we can think better when we’re not so close to it.”

  At his words, relief showed on the faces of the men. “Maybe sometime soon we’ll be heading for home?” Kurkil spoke, grinning hopefully.

  “You can be certain of that,” Thompson said.

  * * * *

  The ship lifted, hung miles high in the air above the silent planet. The group considered the problem.

  “I vote to make a complete investigation,” Grant said. He was full of eager enthusiasm. “There was a race here. Something happened to it. We’ve got to find out what happened because—” He got no further. Slowly the enthusiasm went from his face. “No, that’s not possible,” he ended.

  “There’s no danger of the virus that destroyed this race crossing space to Sol Cluster,” Kurkil spoke. “The distance is too great.”

  “The distance wasn’t too great for us to cross it,” Fortune spoke.

  “Please,” Thompson interrupted. “We can’t use logic on this situation until we have adequate data. The only data we have—” His voice trailed off into silence as his memory presented him with a facsimile of that data—silent, deserted cities, a world going back to vegetation, three skeletons in front of a shrine.

  Abruptly he reached a decision. It was impulsive. “Our tour of exploration is near an end anyhow. We’re leaving. We’re heading back to Sol Cluster. We’ll mark this planet on the star maps for further exploration.”

  The face of every man present brightened as he made the announcement. Sol Cluster! Home! The green world of Earth across the depths of space. In even the thought there was almost enough magic to wipe out the fear of what they’d seen back there on the deserted planet.

  Less than an hour later, the drone of the drivers picked up as the ship, already set on course, began to accelerate in preparation for the jump into hyper-flight. Thompson was in his cabin making a final check of the machine-provided flight data. Buster was in his lap half-asleep. Suddenly the cat jumped from his lap and seemed to pounce on some elusive prey in the room. The cat caught what it was seeking, its jaws crunched, it swallowed.

  Thompson stared at the cat from disbelieving eyes. “Buster, are you dreaming? Did you dream there was a mouse in here?”

  The cat meowed, came toward him, jumped again into his lap and went back to sleep. Thompson returned to his figures. They were correct.

  Over the ship’s communication system came the soft throb of a gong. The warning that the jump was coming. In his lap, Buster awakened, instantly sank twenty claws into Thompson’s clothing. Thompson reached out and took a firm grip on the hand holds on his desk, began to breathe deeply. The gong sounded again. Final warning that the ship was going into hyper-flight. Thompson took as deep a breath as possible, held it.

  The gong went into silence. The ship throbbed. The jump was in progress. Thompson had the dazed impression that every atom in his body tried to turn over at once. For a moment, there was a feeling of intense strain. Then the feeling was gone as the ship and its contents passed into hyper-flight. Thompson began to breathe again. In his lap, Buster relaxed his claw holds, began to purr. Buster was an old hand at taking these jumps.

  “EEEEEEyooow!”

  The eerie scream that came echoing through the ship seemed to lift up every single strand of hair on Thompson’s head. Thompson ran out of the cabin. The scream came again, from the lounge. Thompson entered the lounge just in time to see Kurkil standing in the middle of the room, rip the last remnant of clothing from his body. Revealed under the lights, his skin was turning a vivid green.

  Fortune was trying to approach him. Kurkil was warning the man off.

  “Stay away, stay away. Don’t touch me. You’ll get it.”

  In the split second that was needed for Thompson to take in the situation, the green color flowing over Kurkil’s body deepened in intensity.

  As the color deepened, the screams bubbling on his lips began to die away. He fell slowly, like a man who is coming unhinged one joint at a time.

  He was dead before he hit the floor. Dead so completely that not even a convulsive tremor passed through his body.

  A frozen silence held the lounge. For this was a dream, a nightmare, wild
, distorted imagery.

  Fortune’s hand waved vaguely in the direction of Sol Cluster. “It looks as if we’re not as bug and stress proof as they said we were.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was sitting there in the chair and I thought he was asleep. Then he was screaming and tearing his clothes off.” Ross spread his hands. “I tried to help—”

  “I know,” Thompson said. He was trying to decide what to do. This ship possessed no facilities for handling the dead. Such a contingency had been thought too remote for consideration. Well, there was the ejection port. “Get sheets,” Thompson said. With Fortune and Ross helping, he set about doing what had to be done.

  * * * *

  Later, in the lounge, they met to decide what had to be done. Neff, leaving the drivers on automatic control, came up from the engine room. Grant came forward from the control room. If any danger presented itself, warning bells would call them back to their posts.

  They were a silent and an uneasy group. Only Buster remained unaffected.

  “There seems no doubt that we brought the infection back on board ship with us,” Thompson said.

  He had stated the obvious. It got the answer it deserved. Silence.

  “We also must consider the possibility that another of us, possibly all of us, are infected.”

  No man stirred, no man spoke. Apparently they hoped they had not heard correctly the words that had been spoken. In Thompson’s lap Buster grumbled as if he had understood and did not like what had been said.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “How can we find out what’s causing this disease?”

  Two voices came. Then came Fortune’s voice. “And even if we find out, what can we do about it? They couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “The fact that the race back there couldn’t stop the disease, doesn’t mean we can’t stop it. We’re a different race with a different metabolism and a different body structure—”

  “Kurkil had the same metabolism and the same body structure,” Ross said.

  “We will do what we can,” Thompson spoke flatly. In spite of the fact that these men were supposed to be nerve proof, there was panic in the air. He could sense it, knew that it had to be stopped before it got started. Inwardly he cursed the fact that there was no doctor aboard, but he knew only too well the line of reasoning that had led to the omission of a physician.

  “We have a medical library,” Ross said, tentatively.

  “Yes,” Fortune spoke. “And it tells you exactly how to treat every conceivable form of accident but it doesn’t say a single damned word about infections, and if it did we don’t have any medicine to treat them.

  Again silence fell. In Thompson’s lap, Buster squirmed, dropped to the floor. Tail extended, body low, he moved across the plastic floor as if he were stalking something that lay beyond the open door. “We’ll fumigate anyhow,” Thompson said. “We’ll scour the ship.”

  There was some relief in action. The clothing that had been worn by the landing party went out through the ejection lock. Inside the ship, the floors, walls, and ceilings were scoured by sweating men who worked feverishly. Fumigants were spread in every room.

  With the spreading of the fumigants, spirits began to rise, but even then the signs of stress were still all too obvious. No one knew the incubation period of the virus. Hours only had been needed to bring Kurkil to his death. But days might pass before the virus developed in its next victim.

  Months or even years might pass before they were absolutely sure they were free from any chance of infection.

  By the time the ship reached Sol Cluster, and the automatic controls stopped its hyper-flight, they might all be dead.

  If that happened, the ship’s controls would automatically stop its flight. It would be picked up by the far-ranging screens of the space patrol, a ship would be sent out to board it and bring it in.

  At the thought of what would happen then, Thompson went hastily forward to the control room. Grant, thin-lipped and nervous, was on duty there. Thompson hastily began plotting a new course. Grant watched over his shoulder.

  “Make this change,” Thompson said.

  “But, Captain—” Grant protested. The man’s face had gone utterly white as he realized the implications of this new course. “No. We can’t do that. It’ll mean—”

  “I know what it will mean. And I’m in my right mind, I hope. This course is a precaution, just in case nobody is left alive by the time we reach Sol Cluster.”

  “But—”

  “Make the change,” Thompson ordered bluntly.

  Reluctantly Grant fed the new course into the computers. A throb went through the vessel as the ship shifted in response.

  “We’ll come out of hyper-flight in less than three hours,” Grant spoke. “Heaven help us if this course is not changed before that time.”

  “If this course is not changed before that time, Heaven alone can help us. From now on, you’re not to leave this control room for an instant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With Buster following behind him, Thompson left the control room.

  “Yoooow!” The scream coming from the lounge this time was in a different key and had a different sound. But the meaning was the same as it had been when Kurkil had screamed. Thompson went forward on the run.

  The victim was Ross. Like Kurkil, he was tearing his clothes off. Like Kurkil, he was turning green. When he went down, he did not rise again.

  As he stood staring down at Ross, Thompson had the vague impression of whirring wings passing near him. Whispering wings, as if a soul were taking flight.

  From the engine room Neff appeared. “I heard somebody scream over the intercom. Oh, I see.” His face worked, his jaws moved as if he was trying to speak. But no sound came.

  Fortune emerged from his quarters to look down at Ross. “Our fumigating didn’t work, huh?”

  “Maybe he caught the bug on the planet,” Thompson said. He tried to put conviction into his voice. The effort failed. “Get sheets,” he said.

  * * * *

  There was no prayer. There was no burial ceremony. The body went through the ejection port and disappeared in the vast depths of space.

  Thompson returned to his cabin, slumped down at his desk, Fortune and Neff following.

  Buster meowed. “Okay, pal.” The cat jumped into Thompson’s lap.

  “I guess there’s not much point in trying to kid ourselves any longer,” Fortune said. His voice was dull and flat, without tone and without spirit. A muscle in Neff’s cheek was twitching.

  “I don’t understand you,” Thompson said.

  “Hell, you understand me well enough. The facts are obvious. We’ve either all got the virus, or it’s here in the ship, and we will get it. All we’re doing is waiting to see who goes next. What I want to know is—Who’ll shove the last man through the ejection port?”

  “I don’t know,” Thompson answered.

  “Isn’t there anything else we can do?” The tic in Neff’s cheek was becoming more pronounced.

  “If there is, I don’t know—What the hell, Buster?” The cat which had been lying in his lap, suddenly leaped to the floor. Tail extended, crouched, eyes alert, the cat seemed to be trying to follow the flight of something through the air above him.

  Very vaguely, very dimly, Thompson caught the rustle of wings.

  The actions of the cat, and the sound, sent a wave of utter cold washing over his body.

  Before he could move, the cat leaped upward, caught something in snapping jaws.

  In the same split second Thompson moved. Before Buster had had time to swallow, Thompson had caught him behind the jaws, forcing them shut. On his desk was a bell jar. He lifted it, thrust the cat’s head under it, forced his thumb and forefinger against the jaws of the cat.

  The o
utraged Buster disgorged something. Thompson jerked the cat’s head from under the jar, slammed down the rim. The angry cat snarled at him. Neff and Fortune were staring at him from eyes that indicated they thought he had lost his senses. Thompson paid them no attention. He was too busy watching something inside the bell jar even to notice that they existed.

  He could not see the creature under the jar.

  He knew it could fly but he did not know its shape or size. He could hear it hitting the falls of the jar. And each time it hit the wall, a tiny greenish smudge appeared at the point of impact.

  “What—what the hell have you got there?” Neff whispered.

  “I don’t know for sure. But I think I’ve got the carrier of the virus.”

  “What?”

  “Watch.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Nor can I yet, but I can hear it and I can see the places where it hits the wall of the jar. There’s something under the jar. Something that Buster has been seeing all along.”

  “What?”

  Thompson pointed at the jar. “One or several of those things came into the ship when the lock was open. We couldn’t see them, didn’t know they existed. But Buster saw them. He caught one of them in this cabin soon after we took off. I thought he was playing a game to amuse himself, or—” He broke off. From the back of his mind came a fragment of history, now in the forgotten Dark Ages of Earth, whole populations had been ravaged and destroyed by a fever that was carried by some kind of an insect. Did they have some kind of an insect under his jar?

  Holding his breath, Thompson watched.

  The pounding against the walls of the jar was growing weaker. Then it stopped. On the desk top, a smudge appeared. Wings quavered there, wings that shifted through a range of rainbow colors as they became visible.

  As the flutter of the wings stopped the whole creature became visible. Made up of some kind of exceedingly thin tissue that was hardly visible, it was about as big as a humming bird.

  Silence held the room. Thompson was aware of his eyes coming to focus on the long pointed bill of the creature.

  “Alive it was not visible at all,” Fortune whispered. “Dead, you can see it.” His voice lifted, picked up overtones of terror. “Say an hour or so ago Ross was complaining that something had bit him.”