Calhoun said suddenly, "You speak of new people parachuted down. Why are they sent here?"
Her lips compressed.
"Some have the plague, not many. A case turns up now and then, they say, leftover infection, maybe, from the plague they had on Lanke . . . from the other planets . . ."
"Yes," said Calhoun. "The other planets! Which ones?"
She named three, besides Lanke. They were the three whose names and courses he'd offered to the cobbled spaceboat he'd encountered in space. They were the three colonized worlds closest to Lanke. If they sent unwilling colonists to Delhi, which they could not ever hope to leave, it was simple enough to understand that the men in the freakish ship wouldn't accept Calhoun's suggestion of them for destinations.
"How'd they get into the picture? It was Lanke that had the plague, wasn't it—and hid it?"
The girl shrugged.
"People were sent here later, from the other planets; they say that the government of Lanke got frightened, years and years ago, that another nearby planet might try to colonize Delhi as they'd tried to do. And it might get the plague, and it might re-infect Lanke. So as a state secret, it told the nearest planets why they mustn't explore Delhi. They checked on it. One of them sent a research team to try to make Delhi usable, because there are minerals here. But they couldn't do anything, and they couldn't go home. So for a while supplies were dropped to them. They lived all right, but they couldn't leave. Presently, it occurred to somebody that Delhi would be a good place to send life prisoners, criminals. So they did. Then they sent political offenders, it was very discreetly done—now . . ."
"Now what?"
"It's said that the crime rate on the four planets is very low," she told him bitterly, "because professional criminals—disappear. It saves the cost of some prisons and guards and the expense of a free criminal class to the others. So we're the sweepings of the four planets. Some of us were accused of having the plague when—we didn't. Naturally, it's all very secret!"
She looked at him defiantly. Calhoun nodded.
"That's quite possible," he admitted. "In any case it would be told, and the people who told it would believe it."
The girl looked at him with angry eyes and compressed lips.
"Some of us," said Rob severely, "accept the facts. We aren't all wrapped up in our own tragedies. Some of us think of our inevitable obligation to humanity at large. So we won't try to leave, and spread the plague!"
Rob frowned portentously. There was friction between these two. The girl clenched her hands. The sledge-hammer struck again, and again, and again. There was likely to be a quarrel between the man and the girl who between them had quite probably saved Calhoun's life. So he said dryly, "Swinging that sledge must be fatiguing. In fact the whole situation outside seems unfortunate. I'll change it."
He moved certain switches. He adjusted a dial. He pressed a button.
A pencil-thin flame shot down from between the Med Ship's landing-fins. It was pure, blue-white incandescence. It was the ship's emergency rocket, on which it had landed and by which it would have to take off again. For an instant the flame splashed out between the fins, and it was so bright that the daylight nearby seemed darkened by contrast. Then the flame bored down. In solid stone the Aesclipus Twenty could melt and boil away bed-rock to a depth of eighty feet. Here, in saturated meadow soil, enormous clouds of steam and smoke arose. Steam-loosened mud flew about. It looked as if the Med Ship squatted on a monstrous arc-flame which was blasting away the marsh on which it rested.
The flame cut off. It had burned for ten seconds or less, developing—under control from the pilot's chair—something less than one-eighth of its maximum power. The ship hadn't stirred.
"I suspect," said Calhoun, "that they think I tried to lift off then and couldn't.. But maybe they'll think I could make a battering-ram crew very uncomfortable, close to the ship as they'd have to work."
He watched the running figures below. There was no longer a crowd gathered about the Med Ship. Those nearest were in headlong flight. The red-headed man who'd been swinging the sledge crashed a way through those fleeing ahead of him. The roar of the rockets had stopped. Some fleeing men began to glance around them as they ran.
Then the mob ceased to flee. It formed a circle three hundred yards across, two thousand human beings facing inward. Some of them shook clenched fists. The outside microphones brought in a babbling, yapping noise that was not great in volume but appalling in the fury it expressed.
"They're not thinking straight," said Calhoun. "There are two thousand of them. Even if they could land somewhere and not die of the plague or carry it, even if they could, how many would this ship carry? How many could its air-renewer supply?" Then he said in a different tone to the girl, "You said that not everybody who's parachuted down to Delhi has the plague. Why else should they be dropped here?"
She said fiercely, "It's a way to get rid of people! It's politics! It's crooked! Anybody can be accused of having the plague. Sometimes they do have it. But sometimes they haven't. My father didn't have it, and he was sent here. Rob's grandfather didn't, and he was too. There are others!"
Calhoun nodded. He said thoughtfully, "That may be true, because there was opportunity for it. But, true or not, people would believe it. And I guess, too, that you tell each other that the plague's worn itself out. Nobody has it here. Nobody who's landed here ever gets it. If they have it when they come, they're cured immediately. I was! So how could they give it to anybody else?"
"Yes!" said the girl passionately. "That's it! How could we? Rob says we have to stay here! Here where the food has no taste, and the water . . . Where we're made nauseated when we plow the ground to grow food! Where . . . Rob says we shouldn't marry and shouldn't have children because they'd be doomed in advance to become savages! He says . . ."
Rob said unhappily, "I think that's true, Elna."
"How could it be true? How could a disease that nobody can have be carried by anybody?"
Calhoun stirred in the pilot's chair.
"I think," he said apologetically, "that I have to get back to my cabin. The plague I had has made me ridiculously weak. But I have to admit, Elna, that I caught the plague from a man who left Delhi and went to Lanke and immediately developed the plague. Rob is right. Nobody must leave Delhi, but me. I have to get some help from Med Service Headquarters. Nobody else must leave. Nobody!"
Rob helped him into his cabin again. He sank gratefully down on his bunk. The girl Elna came in minutes later with another bowl of broth. Her expression was equal parts rebellion and despair. Calhoun was suddenly so sleepy that the spoon fell from his fingers. Rob supported him while Elna fed him, spoonful by spoonful. He was totally asleep the instant she'd finished.
Elna waked him by shaking his shoulder, he didn't know how long afterward. Murgatroyd made shrill protests. Calhoun waked easily and completely, and on the instant he knew that a surprising amount of strength had come back to him. With less than a desperate effort he actually sat up. He swung his feet over the side of the bunk. He became confident that he could walk, if in a wobbly fashion. However, he still wasn't up to rough-and-tumble exercise.
"Rob's gone down," said Elna desperately, "to start smashing up the ship's drive so it can't possibly be repaired!"
"Go tell him," said Calhoun, "that the drive-units from the lifeboat just back from Lanke can be used in this ship. They'll smash the quarantine. Wrecking my drive won't stop them. Anyhow the crowd outside will tear us all to small bits—including you and including Rob—if they break in and find the ship's been smashed after landing. Tell him to come up and I'll give him better instructions."