E.C Tubb - Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

"And if I don't?" The engineer scowled as steel flashed in Dumarest's hand. "You'd cut me, is that it? You'd use that knife. Well, mister, two can play at that game."

A rod stood in a tool rack, a long, curved bar used to ease the generator on its mountings in case of adjustment or repair. A thing too long for easy handling, but deadly in its potential. The engineer tore it free, lifted it, sent it whining towards Dumarest's head. Ducking he felt the wind of its passage stir his hair. As the engineer lifted the bar for a second blow Dumarest darted in, smashing his fist against the engineer's jaw, sending him staggering back. He struck again, his fist weighed with the hilt of the knife, bringing down the blade so that the point pricked the skin of one cheek.

"I'm not playing. Start anything like that again and I'll finish it."

"You-"

"Pick him up. Move!"

The handler was in a bad condition. He breathed with difficulty, chest heaving, throat swollen, face covered with sweat. Dumarest slashed open his tunic with his knife, the reason he had drawn it in the first place. A gesture the engineer had misunderstood.

From where he stood at the cabin door the man said, "How bad is he?"

"Bad enough. Do you know if he's allergic to anything?" Dumarest frowned at the negative answer. "What has he been eating lately?"

"Some fish we had in cans."

"Did you eat the same?"

"No, I don't like fish." The engineer leaned forward. "Is that what's wrong with him? Bad food?"

It was barely possible, but one symptom could be masking another. Fabric parted as Dumarest ran the edge of his knife down the undershirt and exposed the naked chest. It was adorned with a suggestive tattoo, writhing lines and smears of color which made it difficult to see the actual state of the skin.

Impatiently he sliced through the belt and bared the stomach. It was covered with minute ebon blotches.

"Two down and seven to go," said Charl Tao when he heard the news. "A lucky number, Earl. Seven is supposed to hold a special significance. It has magical properties and is the number of the openings to the body; two ears, two nostrils, a mouth, the anus and the urethra." He ended, dully, "I learned that at school."

Information of no value. Dumarest crossed the floor of the salon and helped himself to a cup of basic from the spigot. It was a thick liquid, laced with vitamins, heavy with protein, sickly with glucose. A single cup would provide a spaceman with sufficient energy for a day.

"Aside from the significance of numbers have you learned anything else?"

"Little. The steward would have been in close contact with Harmond. It was part of his job to aid him in small ways. And he was a close friend of the handler."

Which meant that both would have been exposed early to the disease. In that case it was to be expected that both should fall sick before the others.

"The incubation period?"

"It's anyone's guess, Earl." Charl lifted hands and shoulders in a shrug. "A few days, at least, but how many is impossible to tell. I simply haven't the data. And it could vary with each individual. Harmond may have succumbed quickly because of the infection present from his wound. It would have lowered his resistance. The handler was probably the first to be contaminated."

But he wasn't the first to die. Fren Harmond did that, his life slipping away as he lay locked in drugged unconsciousness. Dumarest wrapped the body in plastic, heaved the dead man, his bedding, all he had owned in the way of clothing to the evacuation port. Grimly he watched as the apparatus cycled, lamps flashing as the contents of the cubicle were blasted into the void.

A man dead who would probably have still been alive if they hadn't left Hoghan as they had.

One who would at least have had a chance.

On the Varden there was no chance. The ship held no vaccines, no medicines, no skilled aid. No instruments to determine the nature of the invisible killer. Nothing to give a clue as to how it could be defeated. Survival now depended strictly on the make-up of the individual: the strength of resistance-factors, antibiotic generation, the ability to combat the virus, to meet the challenge, to live.

A gamble in which none knew their chances and could only guess at the odds.

* * * * *

Allia Mertrony rocked back on her heels from where she knelt before the polished disc, her head buzzing, echoes ringing in her ears, the pounding of her heart a clenched fist beating within her chest. Before her incense rose in coiling plumes, the last of her supply. No matter, it had been enough. Her prayers had been answered. Lars, long dead and long waiting, had stirred and sent her a message.

He was waiting. He was impatient. When would she come?

And God too was waiting.

But long to be in his presence as she did, the Prime Directive must be obeyed. To live while it was possible. To extend existence until it could be extended no further. Then, and only then, could she join Lars and go to her reward.

To die. To rest. Suicide was forbidden and though old she had no ills. But the joy of life had long since left her and, aside from prayer, she lived but to sleep and eat. Fear had gone now that she had been reassured. Her faith was strong.

And good deeds remained to be done.

"Mad!" Charl Tao shook his head as he entered the salon. Nodding to Dumarest and Dephine he drew basic, sipped, made a face, then forced it down.

"Who is mad? Me?" Dephine stared her anger. "I'm fed up with being cooped in a cabin. All right, so it's crazy to mix, but what difference does it make now?"

"None," he said mildly. "But I wasn't talking about you, my dear. I was talking about the old woman. She's turned into a nurse. I left her washing the handler, tending him, crooning like a mother over a child."

"How is he?"

"Fever high. Profuse sweating which is to be expected at such a temperature. Headaches, shivers, pains in the joints." Charl added, slowly, "He's also delirious."

Dephine said, sharply, "Raving, you mean?"

"By now he must be far gone in hallucination. The crisis, I think. Either he will begin to recover in the next few hours or he will die."

"The warning symptoms," said Dumarest. "Have you isolated them yet?"

"I can make a guess, Earl, no more. The handler complained of headaches and nausea a day before he collapsed. However he had been drinking heavily and so the symptoms could have had another cause. But a few hours before he was stricken he did complain of double-vision. It could mean nothing, Earl."

Dumarest said, quietly, "You're wrong, Charl. The engineer complained of that very thing when I saw him last. He also said he felt sick. I told him to lie down and try and get some sleep. If we find blotches on him-"

They were scattered over his shoulders and upper torso, flecks like blackheads which would grow into ebon flowers rimmed with scarlet.

"Help me!" His hands lifted, groping. "My eyes! I can't see! Help me!"

Charl straightened from his examination and shook his head, baffled.

"The eyes don't seem to be affected, but without instruments I can't be sure. And even then my experience is too limited to arrive at a conclusion. A part of incipient hallucination, perhaps? A psychosomatic syndrome?"

"How so?"

"See no evil therefore it doesn't exist. See no illness and it cannot threaten. An escape from unpleasant reality. Was he afraid?"

Dumarest nodded, looking about the cabin, seeing the garish pictures pasted to the bulkheads. Colorful depictions of longed-for pleasures, exaggerated interwindings of shapely limbs, scenes of a vague, dream-like unreality. Visible proof that the engineer had not only imagination but an earthy mind. An imagination which had now turned against him, magnifying his pain.

As the man groaned Dumarest felt a sudden chill, the touch of something against which he had no conscious defense. An enemy which naked steel could neither cow nor defeat. A thing as intangible as a thought, as destructive as a fanatic's ambition.

"I burn!" The engineer writhed in a paroxysm of agony, twisting on the bunk, rearing, his back bent like a bow, hands clenched until the nails dug into his palms. "The pain! Dear God, the pain!"

"Another variable, Earl." Charl shook his head in baffled irritation. "His sensory apparatus appears to have been affected. Usually in men of his type the pain level is inordinately high but now it seems to have been lowered to an incredible extent."

"Could the virus be generating some form of nerve-poison?"

"How can I tell? It's possible in which case it would account for the sudden onset of pain. There hasn't been time for extensive tissue-damage. But if that is the case then why weren't the others affected in the same way?"

"Maybe they were," said Dumarest. "Harmond was drugged until he died, remember?"

"And the handler could be suffering as much in his delirium as the engineer in his physical anguish." Charl nodded, his eyes thoughtful. "In each case it is obvious that the sensory apparatus has been affected by the virus and it could be mere chance which dictates the course the disease will take. If others are affected they could either go insane or-" He winced as the engineer screamed again, a hoarse, rasping, animal-like sound. "Earl!"

The screaming died as Dumarest fired drugs into the tormented body. He checked the load of the hypogun as the engineer sank into merciful oblivion. It had taken a heavy dose-too heavy if it was to be maintained. The supply of drugs was limited and the more he took the less there would be for others.

If others came to need it? If they did and none was available?

Dumarest looked at his hands thinking of Dephine.

Chapter Seven

The lamps flashed, the port cycled, Allia Mertrony went to meet her God. A small, aged, withered woman who had spent the last few days of her life bringing ease to others. Standing before the port, Dumarest hoped she would find what she had sought. Hoped even more that never again would he have to void the shell of a human being into space.

That never again would he have to watch a woman die.

The lights were too bright, hurting his eyes and misting his vision so that in dancing haloes he saw again the thin, shrunken features, the ugly blotches, the eyes, the final radiant smile. Her faith had been strong and she had died happy. Now she would drift for eternity or be drawn by gravitational attraction into a sun and disintegrate in a final puff of glory. A minute flame which would, perhaps, warm some future flower, grace some unknown sky.

Fanciful imagery which had no place in a ship which had become a living tomb.

Tiredly Dumarest walked from the port and through the vessel, a journey he had made too often now. Harmond had been the first, then the engineer closely followed by the handler, then the old woman. He frowned, trying to remember how many were left. Four? Five? Five-but for how long?

He stumbled and saved himself from falling by catching at the bulkhead, breathing deeply for a moment before straightening and continuing the journey. Fatigue robbed his limbs of strength and caused his joints to ache. Too many days without sleep, too many screams to be quelled with the diminishing store of drugs. Charl Tao had helped but now he lay supine on his bunk, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling of his cabin, drugged with his own compounds, ebon flowers blooming on his face and chest and hands.

Haw Mayna was insane.

He sat cross-legged on the deck of the salon, a lamp burning before him, a sliver of steel in his hand. A thin-bladed knife which he heated to redness in the flame and then held firm against the blotches which marked his naked body. Each touch accompanied by the smoke and stench of burning meat.