Thick, seemingly suffocating masses of wood smoke flowed over the city. They were not actually strangling, but they created panic. There was fighting in Government Center, but it stopped when the mysterious stuff—not one man in a hundred had ever seen burning wood or smelled its smoke—the fighting stopped and all men fled when a choking, reeking blanket rolled over the city and lay there.
It wasn't a great fire, considering everything. Less than ten per cent of the city burned, but ninety-odd per cent of the paras in it ceased to be paras. More, they had suddenly regained an invincible aversion to the smell of butyl mercaptan—even a modified butyl mercaptan—and it was promptly discovered that no normal who had smelled wood smoke became a para. So all the towns and even individual farmhouses would hereafter make sure that there was pungent wood smoke to be smelled from time to time by everybody.
But Calhoun did not wait for such pleasant news. He could not look for gratitude. He'd burned part of the city. He'd forced paras to stop being paras and become ashamed. And those who hadn't become paras wanted desperately to forget the whole matter as soon as possible. They couldn't, but gratitude to Calhoun would remind them. He took appropriate action.
With the grid operator landed again, and after the grid was operable once more and had sent the Med Ship a good five planetary diameters into space—some few hours after the ship was in overdrive again—Calhoun and Murgatroyd had coffee together. Murgatroyd zestfully licked his emptied tiny mug, to get the last least taste of the beverage. He said happily, "Chee!" He wanted more.
"Coffee," said Calhoun severely, "has become a habit with you, Murgatroyd! If this abnormal appetite develops too far, you might start yawning at me, which would imply that your desire for it was uncontrollable. A yawn caused by what is called a yen has been known to make a man dislocate his jaw. You might do that. You wouldn't like it!"
Murgatroyd did not reply.
"You don't believe it, eh?" said Calhoun. Then he said: "Murgatroyd, I'm going to spend odd moments all the rest of my life wondering about what happens to Dr. Lett! They'll kill him, somehow. But I suspect they'll be quite gentle with him. There's no way to imagine a punishment that would really fit! Isn't that more interesting than coffee?"
"Chee! Chee! Chee!" said Murgatroyd insistently.
"It wasn't wise to stay and try to make an ordinary public-health inspection. We'll send somebody else when things are back to normal."
"Chee!!!" said Murgatroyd loudly.
"Oh, all right!" said Calhoun. "If you're going to be emotional about it, pass you cup!"
He reached out his hand, Murgatroyd put his tiny mug in it. Calhoun refilled it. Murgatroyd sipped zestfully.
The Med Ship Esclipus Twenty went on in overdrive, back toward sector headquarters of the Interstellar Medical Service.