Plague Ship

Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice of the Solar Queen, Galactic Free Trader spacer, Terra registry, stood in the middle of the ship’s cramped bather while Rip Shannon, assistant Astrogator and his senior in the Service of Trade by some four years, applied gobs of highly scented paste to the skin between Dane’s rather prominent shoulder blades. The small cabin was thickly redolent with spicy odors and Rip sniffed appreciatively.

“You’re sure going to be about the best smelling Terran who ever set boot on Sargol’s soil,” his soft slur of speech ended in a rich chuckle.

Dane snorted and tried to estimate progress over one shoulder.

“The things we have to do for Trade!” his comment carried a hint of present embarrassment. “Get it well in⁠—this stuff’s supposed to hold for hours. It’d better. According to Van those Salariki can talk your ears right off your head and say nothing worth hearing. And we have to sit and listen until we get a straight answer out of them. Phew!” He shook his head. In such close quarters the scent, pleasing as it was, was also overpowering. “We would have to pick a world such as this⁠—”

There was a shadow outline beneath the surface of the metallic water now, but he could not see well because of the distortion of the murky waves. He must wait until he was sure.

Then the thing gave a spurt and, only inches beyond the toes of his boots, a nightmare creature sprang halfway out of the water, pincher claws as long as his own arms snapping at him. Without being conscious of his act, he pressed the stud of the sleep rod, aiming in the general direction of that horror from the sea.

But to his utter amazement the creature did not fall supinely back into watery world from which it had emerged. Instead those claws snapped again, this time scrapping across the top of Dane’s foot, leaving a furrow in material the keenest of knives could not have scored.

“Give it to him!” That was Rip shouting encouragement from his own place farther along the reef.

Dane pressed the firing stud again and again. The claws waved as the monstrosity slavered from a gaping frog’s mouth, a mouth which was fanged with a shark’s vicious teeth. It was almost wholly out of the water, creeping on a crab’s many legs, with a clawed upper limb reaching for him, when suddenly it stopped, its huge head turning from side to side in the sheltering carapace of scaled natural armor. It settled back as if crouching for a final spring⁠—a spring which would push Dane into the ocean.

But that attack never came. Instead the gorp drew in upon itself until it resembled an unwieldy ball of indestructible armor and there it remained.

They did not have to search for Sinbad. Dane coming down to his own section found the cat crouched before the panel of Van Rycke’s cabin, his eyes glued to the thin crack of the door. Dane scooped him up and took him to the small cargo space intended for the safeguarding of choice items of commerce. To his vast surprise Sinbad began fighting wildly as he opened the hatch, kicking and then slashing with ready claws. The cat seemed to go mad and Dane had all he could do to shut him in. When he snapped the panel he heard Sinbad launch himself against the barrier as if to batter his way out. Dane, blood welling in several deep scratches, went in search of first aid. But some suspicion led him to pause as he passed Van Rycke’s door. And when his knock brought no answer he pushed the panel open.

Van Rycke lay on his bunk, his eyes half closed in a way which had become only too familiar to the crew of the Solar Queen. And Dane knew that when he looked for it he would find the mark of the strange plague on the Cargo-master’s body.

“Did you ever think,” Ali cut in, “what would happen if we were wrong⁠—if the Queen really is a plague carrier?”

“I said⁠—we seal the ship⁠—tight,” countered Shannon. “And when we earth it’ll be where we won’t have visitors to infect⁠—”

“And that is where?” Ali, who knew the deserts of Mars better than he did the greener planet from which his stock had sprung, pursued the question.

“Right in the middle of the Big Burn!”

Dane, Terra born and bred, realized first what Rip was planning and what it meant. Sealed off was right⁠—the Queen would be amply protected from investigation. Whether her crew would survive was another matter⁠—whether she could even make a landing there was also to be considered.

The Big Burn was the horrible scar left by the last of the Atomic Wars⁠—a section of radiation poisoned land comprising hundreds of square miles⁠—land which generations had never dared to penetrate. Originally the survivors of that war had shunned the whole continent which it disfigured. It had been close to two centuries before men had gone into the still wholesome land laying to the far west and the south. And through the years, the avoidance of the Big Burn had become part of their racial instinct as they shrank from it. It was a symbol of something no Terran wanted to remember.

For a long moment he was sure that he was not yet awake. And then, as his dazed mind supplied names for what he saw, he knew that Rip had failed. Far from being in the center⁠—or at least well within the perimeter of the dread Big Burn⁠—they must have landed in some civic park or national forest. For the massed green outside, the bright flowers, the bird he sighted as a brilliant flash of wind-coasting color⁠—those were not to be found in the twisted horror left by man’s last attempt to impress his will upon his resisting kind.

Well, it had been a good try, but there was no use expecting luck to ride their fins all the way, and they had had more than their share in the E-Stat affair. How long would it be before the Law arrived to collect them? Would they have time to state their case?

The faint hope that they might aroused him. He reached for the com key and a second later tore the headphones from his appalled ears. The crackle of static he knew⁠—and the numerous strange noises which broke in upon the lanes of communication in space⁠—but this solid, paralyzing roar was something totally new⁠—new, and frightening.

And because it was new and he could not account for it, he turned back to regard the scene on the viewer with a more critical eye. The foliage which grew in riotous profusion was green right enough, and Terra green into the bargain⁠—there was no mistaking that. But⁠—Dane caught at the edge of the Com-unit for support.