A third group of ground-cars appeared ahead, waiting. Like the others, they were filled with men holding blast-rifles. They joined the procession; the rushing, never-pausing group of cars from the space-port. The highway had obviously been patrolled against a possible ambush or road-block. The augmented combat group went on.
"As a medical man," said Calhoun carefully, "I question the existence of a local, non-human rational creature. Creatures develop or adapt to fit their environment. They change or develop to fit into some niche, some special place in the ecological system which is their environment. If there is no niche, no room for a specific creature in an environment, there is no such creature there. And there cannot be a place in any environment for a creature which will change it. It would be a contradiction in terms! We rational humans change the worlds we occupy. Any rational creature will. So a rational animal is as nearly impossible as any creature can be. It's true that we've happened, but—another rational race? Oh, no!"
Murgatroyd said:
"Chee!"
The city's towers loomed higher and taller above the horizon. Then, abruptly, the fast-moving cavalcade came to the edge of the city and plunged into it.
It was not a normal city. The buildings were not eccentric. All planets but very new ones show local architectural peculiarities, so it was not odd to see all windows topped by triple arches, or quite useless pilasters in the brick walls of apartment-buildings. These would have made the city seem only individual. But it was not normal. The streets were not clean. Two windows in three had been smashed. In places Calhoun saw doors that had been broken in and splintered, and never repaired. That implied violence unrestrained. The streets were almost empty. Occasional figures might be seen on the sidewalks before the speeding ground-cars, but the vehicles never passed them. Pedestrians turned corners or dodged into doorways before the cavalcade could overtake them.
The buildings grew taller. The street-level remained empty of humans, but now and again, many storeys up, heads peered out of windows. Then high-pitched yellings came from aloft. It was not possible to tell whether they were yells of defiance or derision or despair, but they were directed at the racing cars.
Calhoun looked quickly at the faces of the men around him. The Minister for Health looked at once heart-broken and embittered. The head of the planetary police stared grimly ahead. Screechings and howlings echoed and reechoed between the building-walls. Objects began to fall from the windows. Bottles. Pots and pans. Chairs and stools twirled and spun, hurtling downward. Everything that was loose and could be thrown from a window came down, flung by the occupants of those high dwellings. With them came outcries which were assuredly cursings.
It occurred to Calhoun that there had been a period in history when mob-action invariably meant flames. Men burned what they hated and what they feared. They also burned religious offerings to divers bloodthirsty deities. It was fortunate, he reflected wryly, that fires were no longer a matter of common experience, or burning oil and flaming missiles would have been flung down on the ground-cars.
"Is this unpopularity yours?" he asked. "Or do I have a share in it? Am I unwelcome to some parts of the population?"
"You're unwelcome to paras," said the police head coldly. "Paras don't want you here. Whatever drives them is afraid the Med Service might make them no longer paras. And they want to stay the way they are." His lips twisted. "They aren't making this uproar, though. We gathered everybody we were sure wasn't—infected into Government Center. These people were left out. We weren't sure about them. So they consider we've left them to become paras and they don't like it!"
Calhoun frowned again. This confused everything. There was talk of infection, and talk of unseen creatures come out of the jungle, making men paras and then controlling them as if by demoniac possession. There were few human vagaries, though, that were not recorded in the Med Service files. Calhoun remembered something, and wanted to be sick. It was like an infection, and like possession by devils too. There would be creatures not much removed from fiends involved, anyhow.
"I think," he said, "that I need to talk to your counter-para researchers. You have men working on the problem?"
"We did," said the police head, grimly. "But most of them turned para. We thought they'd be more dangerous than other paras, so we shot them. But it did no good. Paras still turn up, in Government Center too. Now we only send paras out the south gate. They doubtless make out—as paras."
For a time there was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved sharply, ran upon the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to splinters where the car should have been. The car went down on the pavement once more and rushed on.
The street ended. A high barrier of masonry rose up at a cross-street. It closed the highway and connected the walls of apartment-buildings on either hand. There was a gate in it, and the leading cars drew off to one side and the car carrying Calhoun and Murgatroyd ran through, and there was a second barrier ahead, but this was closed. The other cars filed in after it, Calhoun saw that windows in these apartment-buildings had all been bricked up. They made a many-storeyed wall shutting off all that was beyond them.
Men from the barrier went from car to car of the escort, checking the men who had been the escort for Calhoun. The Minister for Health said jerkily:
"Everybody in Government Center is examined at least once each day to see if they're turning para or not. Those showing symptoms are turned out the south gate. Everybody, myself included, has to have a fresh certificate every twenty-four hours."
The inner gate swung wide. The car carrying Calhoun went through. The buildings about them ended. They were in a huge open space that must once have been a park in the center of the city. There were structures which could not possibly be other than government buildings. But the population of this world was small. They were not grandiose. There were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily together to house a sudden influx of people.
And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and children played and women watched them. There were some—not many—men in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were uniformed and hastily going here or there. And though the children played gaily, there were few smiles to be seen on adult faces.
The ground-car braked before one of those square, unornamented buildings which are laboratories everywhere in the galaxy. The Minister for Health got out. Calhoun followed him, Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder. The ground-car went away and Calhoun followed into the building.
There was a sentry by the door, and an officer of the police. He examined the Minister's one-day certificate of health. After various vision-phone calls, he passed Calhoun and Murgatroyd. They went a short distance and another sentry stopped them. A little further, and another sentry.
"Tight security," said Calhoun.
"They know me," said the Minister heavily, "but they are checking my certificate that as of this morning I wasn't a para."
"I've seen quarantines before," said Calhoun, "but never one like this! Not against disease!"
"It isn't against disease," said the Minister, thinly. "It's against Something intelligent—from the jungles—who chooses victims by reason for its own purposes."