He went down to the storage compartments again. He came up with another burden.
"Food and a heater, of sorts," he said.
He went out. He came back. He went below again. He was definitely generous in the food supply he piled about the first two loads of equipment. When he'd finished, he checked on his fingers. Then he shook his head and went below for cold-climate garments. He brought them up and put them with the rest.
"Anything you want to say?" he asked pleasantly when he returned. "Anything to help me survive and get back here to pick you up again?"
The bound man ground his teeth.
"You won't get away with turning up in my place!"
Calhoun raised his eyebrows.
"How bad's the plague?"
"Go to the devil!" snapped the bound man.
"You were going to land as a Med Ship man," observed Calhoun. "Judging by two previous operations like this, you were going to check the plague. You did that on Castor IV."
The bound man cursed him.
"I suspect," said Calhoun, "that since you blamed the first plague on contaminated grain, and it did stop when all the grain on the planet was burned and fresh supplies brought in from elsewhere, and since the same thing happened with the blame on meats on Castor IV, my guess is also contaminated food on Kryder II. Criminals rarely change their method of operation as long as it works well. But there are two things wrong with this one. One is that no bacterium or virus was ever identified as the cause of the plagues. The other is that two tormals died. Tormals don't die of plagues. They can't catch them. It's impossible. I'm confident that I can keep Murgatroyd from dying of the plague on Kryder II."
The bound man did not speak, this time.
"And," said Calhoun thoughtfully, "there's the very curious coincident that somebody stole the money to buy uncontaminated grain, in the first plague, and the money to buy meat for Castor IV was destroyed when your Med Ship blew up in the spaceport. It was your Med Ship, wasn't it? And you were reported killed. Something had gone around—had, I said—which was about as lethal as the toxin made by clostridium botulinum. Only it wasn't a germ caused toxin, because there wasn't any germ, or virus either. Are you sure you don't want to talk?"
The man on the floor spat at him. Then he cursed horribly. Calhoun shrugged. He picked up his prisoner and carried him to the lock door. He took him out. He laid him on the pile of stores and survival equipment. He carefully unknotted some of the cords that bound his prisoner's hands.
"You can get loose in five minutes or so," he observed. "By the sunset line when we came in, night is due to fall before long. I'll give you until dark to improve your chances of living by improving mine, then . . ."
He went back to the Med Ship. He entered it and closed the lock doors. Murgatroyd looked inquisitively at him. He'd watched out the lock while Calhoun was aground. If he'd moved out of sight, the little tormal would have tried to follow him. Now he said reproachfully, "Chee! Chee!"
"You're probably right," said Calhoun dourly. "I couldn't get anywhere by arguing with him, and I wasn't more successful with threats. I don't think he'll talk even now. He doesn't believe I'll leave him here. But I'll have to!"
Murgatroyd said, "Chee!"
Calhoun did not answer. He looked at the vision screen. It was close to sunset outside. His captive writhed on top of the mass of cloth and stores. Calhoun grunted impatiently, "He's not too good at loosening knots! The sun's setting and he needs light to get the tent up and the heater going. He'd better hurry!"
He paced up and down the control-room. There were small, unobtrusive sounds within the Med Ship. They were little, meaningless noises. Remote traffic sounds. Snatches of talk, which were only murmurings. Almost infinitely faint tinklings of music not loud enough to identify. In the utter soundlessness of empty space, a ship would be maddeningly silent except for such wisps of things to hear. They kept him from feeling maddeningly alone. They kept him reminded that there were worlds on which people moved and lived. They were links to the rest of humanity and they prevented the psychosis of solitude—with, of course, the help of a companionable small animal who adored being noticed by a man.
He went back to the screens. The sun was actually setting, now, and the twilight would be brief, because despite the ice and snow about, this was the equator of this particular world. The prisoner outside still struggled to free himself. He had moved, in his writhing, until he was almost off the pile of dark stuff on the snow. Calhoun scowled. He needed information. This man, who'd shared in a trick designed to kill him, could give it to him. He'd tried to persuade the man to talk. He'd tried to trap him into it. He'd tried everything but physical torture to get a clear picture of what was going on, on Kryder II. A plague which had no bacterium or virus as its cause was unreasonable. The scheduling of a fake Med Ship man's arrival—at the cost of a very neat trick to secure the death of the real one—and the coordination of a human scheme with the progress of a pestilence, this was not reasonable either. Though Calhoun had irritated his prisoner into fury after persuasion failed, the man had given no information. He'd cursed Calhoun. He'd raged foully. But he'd given no plausible information at all.
It became dark outside. Calhoun adjusted the screens to a higher light-gain. There was only starlight and even with the screens turned up he could see only convulsive struggling movements of a dark figure upon a dark patch of equipment.
He swore.
"The clumsy idiot!" he snapped. "He ought to be able to get loose! Maybe he'll think I meant just to scare him . . ."
He took a hand lamp and opened the air-lock doors again. He cast the light ahead and down. His captive now lay face-down, struggling.
Growling, Calhoun descended to the snow, leaving the air-lock doors open. He went over to his prisoner. Innumerable stars glittered in the sky, but he was accustomed to the sight of space itself. He was unimpressed by the firmament. He bent over the squirming, panting figure of the man he'd apparently not helped enough toward freedom.
But at the last instant the hand lamp showed the former prisoner free and leaping from a crouched position with his hands plunging fiercely for Calhoun's throat. Then the two bodies came together with an audible impact. Calhoun found himself raging at his own stupidity in being fooled like this. The man now grappling him had been full party to one attempt to kill him by a trick. Now he tried less cleverly but more desperately to kill him with his bare hands.
He fought like a madman, which at that moment he very possibly was. Calhoun had been trained in unarmed combat, but so had his antagonist. Once Calhoun tripped, and the two of them rolled in powdery snow with uneven ice beneath it. In that wrenching struggle, Calhoun's foot hit against something solid. It was a landing-fin of the Aesclipus Twenty. He kicked violently against it, propelling himself and his antagonist away. The jerk should have given Calhoun a momentary advantage. It didn't. It threw the two of them suddenly away from the ship, but onto a place where the stone under the snow slanted down. They rolled. They slid, and they went together over a stony ledge and fell, still battling, down into a crevasse.
Murgatroyd peered anxiously from the air-lock door. There was no light save what poured out from behind him. He fairly danced in agitation, a small, spidery, furry creature silhouetted in the air-lock door. He was scared and solicitous. He was panicky. He made shrill cries for Calhoun to come back. "Chee!" he cried desperately. "Chee-chee! Chee-chee-chee-chee! . . ."
He listened. There was the keening sound of wind. There was a vast, vast emptiness all around. This was a world of ice and dreariness, its continents were white and silent, and its beaches were lined with pack ice, there was nothing to be heard anywhere except cold and senseless sounds of desolation. Murgatroyd wailed heartbrokenly.