Bolts from the pursuing car struck all around him. Then one struck him. He collapsed.
Calhoun's hands clenched. Automatically, he moved toward the other still figure, to act as a medical man does when somebody is hurt. The grid operator seized his arm. As Calhoun jerked to get free, that second man stirred. His blaster lifted and rasped. The little pellet of ball-lightning grazed Calhoun's side, burning away his uniform down to the skin, just as there was a grating roar of blaster-fire. The second man died.
"Are you crazy?" demanded the grid operator angrily. "He was a para! He was here to try to kill you!"
The police head snapped:
"Get that car sprayed! See if it had equipment to spread contagion! Spray everything it went near! And hurry!"
There was silence as men came from the space-port building. They pushed a tank on wheels before them. It had a hose and a nozzle attached to it. They began to use the hose to make a thick, fog-like, heavy mist which clung to the ground and lingered there. The spray had the biting smell of phenol.
"What's going on here?" demanded Calhoun angrily. "Damnation! What's going on here?"
The Minister for Health said unhappily:
"Why—we've a public-health situation we haven't been able to meet. It appears to be an epidemic of—of—we're not sure what, but it looks like demoniac possession."
II
"I'd like," said Calhoun, "a definition. Just what do you mean by a para?"
Murgatroyd echoed his tone in an indignant, "Chee-chee!"
This was twenty minutes later. Calhoun had gone back into the Med Ship and treated the blaster-burn on his side. He'd changed his clothing from the scorched uniform to civilian clothing. It would not look eccentric here. Men's ordinary garments were extremely similar all over the galaxy. Women's clothes were something else.
Now he and Murgatroyd rode in a ground-car with four armed men of the planetary police, plus the civilian who'd been introduced as the Minister for Health for the planet. The car sped briskly toward the space-port gate. Masses of thick gray fog still clung to the ground where the would-be assassins' car lay on its back and where the bodies of the two dead men remained. The mist was being spread everywhere—everywhere the men had touched ground or where their car had run. Calhoun had some experience with epidemics and emergency measures for destroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitary value of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burning things might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw a naked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might be shown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. People used electricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of the age of fire. So here on Tallien it seemed inevitable that infective material should be sprayed with antiseptics instead of simply set ablaze.
"What," repeated Calhoun doggedly, "is a para?"
The Health Minister said unhappily:
"Paras are—beings that once were sane men. They aren't sane any longer. Perhaps they aren't men any longer. Something has happened to them. If you'd landed a day or two later, you couldn't have landed at all. We normals had planned to blow up the landing-grid so no other ship could land and be lifted off again to spread the—contagion to other worlds. If it is a contagion."
"Smashing the landing-grid," said Calhoun practically, "may be all right as a last resort. But surely there are other things to be tried first!"
Then he stopped. The ground-car in which he rode had reached the space-port gate. Three other ground-cars waited there. One swung into motion ahead of them. The other two took up positions behind. A caravan of four cars, each bristling with blast-weapons, swept along the wide highway which began here at the space-port and stretched straight across level ground toward the city whose towers showed on the horizon. The other cars formed a guard for Calhoun. He'd needed protection before, and he might need it again.
"Medically," he said to the Minister for Health, "I take it that a para is the human victim of some condition which makes him act insanely. That is pretty vague. You say it hasn't been controlled. That leaves everything very vague indeed. How widely spread is it? Geographically, I mean."
"Paras have appeared," said the Minister for Health, "at every place on Tallien Three where there are men."
"It's epidemic, then," said Calhoun professionally. "You might call it pandemic. How many cases?"
"We guess at thirty percent of the population—so far," said the Minister for Health, hopelessly. "But every day the total goes up." He added, "Doctor Lett has some hope for a vaccine, but it will be too late for most."
Calhoun frowned. With reasonably modern medical techniques, almost any sort of infection should be stopped long before there were as many cases as that!
"When did it start? How long has it been running?"
"The first paras were examined six months ago," said the Health Minister. "It was thought to be a disease. Our best physicians examined them. They couldn't agree on a cause, they couldn't find a germ or virus . . ."
"Symptoms?" asked Calhoun crisply.
"Doctor Lett phrased them in medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual food. When it becomes uncontrollable, the patient is mad!"
The ground-cars sped toward the city. A second group of vehicles appeared, waiting. As the four-car caravan swept up to them, one swung in front of the car in which Calhoun and Murgatroyd rode. The others fell into line to the rear. It began to look like a respectable fighting force.
"And after madness?" asked Calhoun.
"Then they're paras!" said the Health Minister. "They crave the incredible. They feed on the abominable. And they hate us normals as—devils out of hell would hate us!"
"And after that again?" said Calhoun. "I mean, what's the prognosis? Do they die or recover? If they recover, in how long? If they die, how soon?"
"They're paras," said the Health Minister querulously. "I'm no physician—I'm an administrator. But I don't think any recover. Certainly none die of it! They stay—what they've become."
"My experience," said Calhoun, "has mostly been with diseases that one either recovers from or dies of. A disease whose victims organize to steal weather rockets and to use them to destroy a ship—only they failed—and who carry on with an assassination-attempt, that doesn't sound like a disease. A disease had no purpose of its own. They had a purpose—as if they obeyed one of their number."
The Minister for Health said uneasily:
"It's been suggested—that something out of the jungle causes what's happened. On other planets there are creatures which drink blood without waking their victims. There are reptiles who sting men. There are even insects which sting men and inject diseases. Something like that seems to have come out of the jungle. While men sleep—something happens to them! They turn into paras. Something native to this world must be responsible. The planet did not welcome us. There's not a native plant or beast that is useful to us. We have to culture soil-bacteria so Earth-type plants can grow here. We don't begin to know all the creatures of the jungle. If something comes out and makes men paras without their knowledge—"
Calhoun said mildly:
"It would seem that such things could be discovered."
The Health Minister said bitterly:
"Not this thing. It is intelligent. It hides! It acts as if on a plan to destroy us! Why—there was a young doctor who said he'd cured a para. But we found him and the former para dead when we went to check his claim. Things from the jungle had killed them! They think! They know! They understand! They're rational, and like devils—"