"Calling repaired lifeboat! This is urgent! I've found out how the plague works! Calling repaired lifeboat . . ."
A voice said in icy rage, "Well?"
"The plague," said Calhoun, "is a spherical microbe which can't be anything but sluggish in Delhian air, sea, ground, or swamp land, because there's some sort of methane derived compound which inhibits its growth. The compound that makes soil reek when it's disturbed, that you drive out partly when you boil water, that's the stuff that keeps the plague germ inactive. It was in the air you breathed when you kept your boat hidden underwater while two men tried to make it to the spaceport. Do you understand?"
The rasping voice said suspiciously, "What're you telling me for?"
"Because when your two men tried to make it to the spaceport on Lanke, they were breathing air that didn't smell, and didn't hold back the plague germs from multiplying. One man went back when he saw double. Back in your ship the air stopped the germs from multiplying and he got over the plague. When I breathed Delhi air, I got over it. But one man panicked when he found he had the plague. He went to the Health Department and tried to give himself up as a plague victim. He hoped to be carried back to Delhi and to life. But they killed him."
There was a growling sound from the G.C. speaker. Calhoun said, "The Med Service can handle this, but I've got to get to headquarters! There's a mob outside my ship, getting ready to break in. I'll be wrecked! I need somebody to stop the mob from breaking in and wrecking this ship, which is needed to take these facts to Med Service Headquarters. As a matter of common sense, you'd better come here and stop them."
A pause. Then a growled, "We'll be there!"
Calhoun grinned. Murgatroyd said shrilly, "Chee-chee-chee!"
Ordinarily, when Calhoun held conversations over the general communicator phone, it meant that the Med Ship would shortly go aground and people would pet Murgatroyd and feed him sweet cakes and coffee until he almost burst. His small brain made that association again. He began to lick his whiskers and otherwise make himself tidy and irresistible.
Rob said contemptuously, "Are you fool enough to expect him to protect this ship and let you go away in it? He'll never do that! Never!"
"I don't expect him to," said Calhoun mildly. "But he really shouldn't make trips like those to Lanke. It's dangerous! There may be plague on Lanke now, because of it. I expect him to try to get the ship for his own ideas."
"But he's coming . . ."
"Yes," said Calhoun.
He turned to the vision plates again. There were at least eight hundred men lined up beside ropes. There were shoutings and orders and cursings. Under exact instructions, the rope tightened. Men heaved at the ends of the short logs. They rose. They stood up at an angle of forty-five degrees. More shoutings. Enormous, straining efforts . . .
The long log, the heaviest log, the one with the cross-pieces fastened to it, stirred. The shorter logs transferred the flat drag of the ropes to a slanting downward cable, so that the long log went wavering up from the ground. Men with ropes spreading out in every direction balanced it to a sharply vertical position. It stood on end, nearly forty feet long, with cross-pieces by which it could be climbed to its very top.
Now Calhoun observed the spike at its end. It was inches thick and six feet long. It pointed toward the Med Ship. The men with the smoking stuff were halfway across the marsh, now. They kept carefully out of the white vapor the thing they were carrying gave off.
Shoutings, making sure that everything was right.
"What . . ." That was Elna. Rob scowled, but he did not grasp the picture even yet.
The tall pole with the horizontal spike at its end wavered a little, back and forth. A bellowing voice roared . . .
Half the men at the ropes—those that kept the spiked log from falling toward the ship—let go. The other half dragged frantically at the ropes to make it fall on the Med Ship.
It was very well handled. The log crashed into the small ship's plating. The spike went through, as no battering ram could possibly do. Then there were men swarming up the cross-pieces. Those who'd been bringing the smoking stuff ran desperately to arrive at the earliest possible instant. Containers of the strangling white smoke went up.
"Clever!" said Calhoun.
He sniffed. There was an uproar of triumph outside. The citizens of Delhi howled in triumph, and in their movements they stirred up the swampy pools and many were nauseated.
Calhoun sniffed again, and nodded.
"Sulfur," he commented. "They're blowing sulfur smoke in the hole they punched in our hull. In theory, we'll have to open the air-lock doors to get out or strangle. And when we go out they'll come in. Clever!"
The smell of burning sulfur became distinct. It grew strong. Calhoun adjusted a control governing the barometric pressure inside the ship. If by a rise in temperature or for other reasons the pressure in the ship went up, a pump would relieve the extra pressure by compressing it into one of the large air-tanks which carried fourteen times the volume of the Med Ship. Calhoun and Murgatroyd could live for a long time on stored air if the air-renewal system failed.
Now Calhoun had raised the pressure-control. The control called for a pressure of twenty pounds to the square inch instead of fourteen point seven. The tanks poured out vast volumes of air from the reserve-tanks. The pressure inside the ship went up. The sulfur smoke being pumped in the ship turned cold. An icy blast poured out on the sweating men atop the log. The burning sulfur itself was blown about . . .
The men on the log went down. The tumult of outcries outside the Med Ship was a frenzied rage.
Calhoun restored the pressure-control to normal. Elna shivered. The air in the ship was cold.
"What—what happens now?" she asked forlornly. "If you can't lift off . . ."
"I'm waiting for the spaceboat that went to Lanke," said Calhoun. "He's going to come here. Object, to take over the Med Ship."
The ceiling G.C. speaker rasped: "Med Ship! You think you're smart, eh? Come out of that ship and leave the air-lock open or we'll kill you!"
Calhoun said politely, "Hadn't we better talk it over? I really should get to Med Headquarters . . ."
"We've a cannon," said the harsh voice. "If we have to use it—we can rebuild what it breaks. Come out!"
Calhoun did not reply. Instead, he carefully inspected the dials and the switches of the control-board. Rob said savagely, "Here comes the boat! If they fire an explosive shell into us, it'll destroy us!"
"And the Med Ship too," said Calhoun encouragingly. "Which is what you want. But they're not used to gunnery near a planet, which makes straight-line trajectories into parabolas."
He saw the lifeboat, patches on patches, dents and lumps in its hull, the very picture of makeshifts piled on each other to the point of lunacy. It landed, on what must have been a flat place on a mountain-flank. The voice came again, "Come out, leaving the air-lock open, or we kill you!"
Rob said as if reluctantly, "You should let Elna go out before they kill us."
Calhoun said, "I was just waiting for that ship. It really shouldn't go traveling about. Nobody should leave Delhi but me."
"But you're mired! You're stuck here. Your rockets can't lift you."
"I'm not counting on rocket thrust," said Calhoun cheerfully. "I'm going to use steam."