He crept close to the control-building. No voices, but there was movement inside. Presently he peered in a window.
The grid operator who'd been the first man to greet him on his landing, now moved about the interior of the building. He pushed a tank on wheels. With a hose attached to it, he sprayed. Mist poured out and splashed away from the side-walls. It hung in the air and settled on the desks, the chairs, and on the control-board with its dials and switches. Calhoun had seen the mist before. It had been used to spray instead of burning the bodies of the two men who'd tried to murder him, and their wrecked ground-car, and everywhere that the car was known to have run. It was a decontaminant spray; credited with the ability to destroy the contagion that made paras out of men.
Calhoun saw the grid operator's face. It was resolute beyond expression, but it was very, very bitter.
Calhoun went confidently to the door and knocked on it. A savage voice inside said:
"Go away! I just found out I'm a para!"
Calhoun opened the door and walked inside. Murgatroyd followed. He sneezed as the mist reached his nostrils.
"I've been treated," said Calhoun, "so I'll be a para right along with you, after whatever the development period is. Question: can you fix the controls so nobody else can use the grid?"
The grid operator stared at him numbly. He was deathly pale. He did not seem able to grasp what Calhoun had said.
"I've got to do some work on the para condition," Calhoun told him. "I need to be undisturbed in the ship, and I need a patient further along toward being a para than I am. It'll save time. If you'll help, we may be able to beat the thing. If not, I've still got to disable the grid."
The grid operator said in a savage, unhuman voice:
"I'm a para. I'm trying to spray everything I've touched. Then I'm going to go off somewhere and kill myself—"
Calhoun drew his blaster. He adjusted it again to non-lethal intensity.
"Good man!" he said approvingly. "I'll have a similar job to do if I'm not a better medical man than Lett! Will you help me?"
Murgatroyd sneezed again. He said plaintively:
"Chee!"
The grid operator looked down at him, obviously in a state of shock. No ordinary sight or sound could have gotten through to his consciousness. But Murgatroyd was a small, furry animal with long whiskers and a hirsute tail and a habit of imitating the actions of humans. He sneezed yet again and looked up. There was a handkerchief in Calhoun's pocket. Murgatroyd dragged it out and held it to his face. He sneezed once more and said, "Chee!" and returned the handkerchief to its place. He regarded the grid operator disapprovingly. The operator was shocked out of his despair. He said shakenly:
"What the devil—" Then he stared at Calhoun. "Help you? How can I help anybody? I'm a para!"
"Which," said Calhoun, "is just what I need. I'm Med Service, man! I've got a job to do with what they call an epidemic. I need a para who's willing to be cured. That's you! Let's get this grid fixed so it can't work and—"
There was a succession of loud clicks from a speaker-unit on the wall. It was an emergency-wave, unlocking the speaker from its off position. Then a voice:
"All citizens attention! The Planetary President is about to give you good news about the end of the para epidemic!"
A pause. Then a grave and trembling voice came out of the speaker:
"My fellow-citizens, I have the happiness to report that a vaccine completely protecting normals against the para condition, and curing those already paras, has been developed. Doctor Lett, of the planetary health service, has produced the vaccine which is already in small-scale production and will shortly be available in large quantities, enough for everyone! The epidemic which has threatened every person on Tallien Three is about to end! And to hasten the time when every person on the planet will have the vaccine in the required dosage and at the required intervals, Doctor Lett has been given complete emergency authority. He is empowered to call upon every citizen for any labor, any sum, any sacrifice that will restore our afflicted fellow-citizens to normality, and to protect the rest against falling a victim to this intolerable disease. I repeat: a vaccine has been found which absolutely prevents anyone from becoming a para, and which cures those who are paras now. And Doctor Lett has absolute authority to issue any orders he feels necessary to hasten the end of the epidemic and to prevent its return. But the end is sure!"
The speaker clicked off. Calhoun said wryly:
"Unfortunately, I know what that means. The President has announced the government's abdication in favor of Doctor Lett, and that the punishment for disobeying Lett is—madness."
He drew a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders.
"Come along! Let's get to work!"
IV
As it happened, the timing was critical, though Calhoun hadn't realized it. There were moving lights on the highway to the city at the moment Calhoun and the grid operator went into the Med Ship and closed the airlock door behind them. The lights drew nearer. They raced. Then ground-cars came rushing through the gate of the space-port and flung themselves toward the wholly peaceful little Med Ship where it stood seeming to yearn toward the sky. In seconds they had it ringed about, and armed men were trying to get inside. But Med Ships land on very many planets, with very many degrees of respect for the Interstellar Medical Service. On some worlds there is great integrity displayed by space-port personnel and visitors. On others there is pilfering, or worse. So Med Ships are not easily broken into.
They spent long minutes fumbling unskillfully at the outer airlock door. Then they gave it up. Two car-loads of men went over to the control-building, which now was dark and silent. Its door was not locked. They went in.
There was consternation. The interior of the control-building reeked of antiseptic spray—the spray used when a para was discovered. In some cases, the spray a para used when he discovered himself. But it was not reassuring to the men just arrived from Government Center. Instead of certifying to their safety, it told of horrifying danger. Because despite a broadcast by the planetary president, terror of paras was too well-established to be cured by an official statement.
The men who'd entered the building stumbled out and stammered of what they'd smelled inside the building. Their companions drew back, frightened by even so indirect a contact with supposed contagion. They stayed outside, while a man who hadn't entered used the police-car's communicator to report to the headquarters of the planetary police.
The attempt to enter the ship was known inside, of course. But Calhoun paid no attention. He emptied the pockets of the garments he'd worn into the city. There were the usual trivia a man carries with him. But there was also a blaster—set for low-power bolts—and a small thick-glass phial of a singular grayish fluid, and a plastic container.
He was changing to other clothing when he heard the muttering report, picked up by a ship-receiver turned to planetary police wave-length. It reported affrightedly that the Med Ship could not be entered, and the grid's control-building was dark and empty and sprayed as if to destroy contagion. The operator was gone.
Another voice snapped orders in reply. The highest authority had given instructions that the Med Ship man now somewhere in the capitol city must be captured, and his escape from the planet must be prevented at all costs. So if the ship itself could not be entered and disabled, get the grid working and throw it away. Throw it out to space! Whether there was contagion in the control-building or not, the ship must be made unusable to the Med Ship man!