“No, Doctor, I’ve stopped believing it’s psychogenic.” The major glanced put of the dispensary shack window, to an unnaturally swift sunset which a dust storm made the color of clotted blood. Night would bring relief from the horrible heat… in the form of inward-gnawing chill. “I was ready to believe that at first. Your psychodrugs aren’t helping any longer, though. And more and more men are developing the symptoms, as you must know better than I. Bellyache, diarrhea, muscle pains, more thirst than this damned dryness will account for. Above all, tremors and fuzzy-headedness. I hate to tell you how necessary a job I botched today.”
“I’m having my own troubles thinking.” The medical officer passed a hand across his temple. It left a streak of grime, despite the furnace air sucking away sweat before that could form drops. “Frequent blurred vision too? Yes.”
“Have you considered a poison in the environment?”
“Certainly. You weren’t in the first wave, Major. I was. Intelligence, as well as history, assured us Avalon is acceptably safe. Still, take my word, we’d scarcely established camp when the scientific team was checking.”
“How about quizzing Avalonian prisoners?”
“I’m assured this was done. In fact, there’ve been subsequent commando operations just to collect more for that purpose. But how likely are any except a few specialists to know details about the most forbidding part of a whole continent that nobody inhabits?”
“And of course the Avalonians would have all those experts safely tucked out of reach.” The major gusted a weary breath. “So what did your team find?”
The medical officer groped for a stimpill out of the open box on his desk. “There is a, ah, high concentration of heavy metals in local soil. But nothing to worry about. You could breathe the dust for years before you’d require treatment. The shrubs around use those elements in their metabolism, as you’d expect, and we’ve-warned against chewing or burning any part of them. No organic compounds test out as allergens. Look, human and Ythrian biochemistries are so similar the races can eat most of each other’s food. If this area held something spectacularly deadly, don’t you imagine the average colonist would have heard of it, at least? I’m from Terra — middle west coast of North America — oh, Lord—” For a while his gaze was gone from Scorpeluna. He shook himself. “We lived among oleanders. We cultivated them for their flowers. Oleanders are poisonous. You just need to be sensible about them.”
“This has got to have some cause,” the major insisted.
“We’re investigating,” the medic said. “If anyone had foreseen this planet would amount to anything militarily — it’d have been studied before ever we let a war happen, so thoroughly — Too late.”
Occasional small boats from the Avalonian remnants slipped among the Terran blockaders at high velocity and maximum variable acceleration. About half were destroyed; the rest got through and returned spaceward. It was known that they exchanged messages with the ground. Given suitable encoding and laser beams, a huge amount of information can be passed in a second or two.
“Obviously they’re discussing a move,” Cajal snarled at his staff. “Equally obviously, if we try to hunt them, they’ll scatter and vanish in sheer distance, sheer numbers of asteroids and moons, same’s they did before. And they’ll have contingency plans. I do not propose to be diverted, gentlemen. We shall keep our full strength here.”
For a growing body of observations indicated that, on land and sea, under sea and in their skies, the colonists were at last making ready to strike back.
Rochefort heard the shrieking for the better part of a minute before it registered on him. Dear Jesus, dragged through his dullness, what ails me? His muscles protested bringing the skimmer around. His fingers were sausages on the control board. Beside him, Nasution slumped mute, as the boy had been these past days (weeks? years?). The soft cheeks had collapsed and were untidily covered by black down.
Still, Rochefort’s craft arrived to help those which had been floating above a ground patrol. The trouble was, it could then do no more than they. Energy weapons incinerated at a flash hundreds of the cockroach-like things, twenty centimeters long, whose throngs blackened the ground between shrubs. They could not save the men whom these bugs had already reached, and were feasting on. Rochefort carefully refrained from noting which skimmer pilots gave, from above, a coup de grace. He himself hovered low and hauled survivors aboard. After what he had seen, in his present physical shape, Nasution was too sick to be of use.
Having evidently gotten wind of meat in this hungry land, the kakkelaks swarmed toward the main base. They couldn’t fly, but they clattered along astonishingly fast. Every effort must go to flaming a cordon against them.
Meanwhile the Avalonians landed throughout Equatoria. They deployed so quickly and widely — being very lightly equipped — that bombardment would have been futile. All who entered Scorpeluna were Ythrian.
The chief officers of medicine and planetology confronted their commandant. Outside, an equinoctial gale bellowed and rang through starless night; dust scoured over shuddering metal walls. The heat seemed to come in enormous dry blasts.
“Yes, sir,” the medical chief said. Being regular navy rather than marine, he held rear admiral’s rank. “We’ve proven it beyond reasonable doubt” He sighed, a sound lost in the noise. “If we’d had better equipment, more staff — Well, I’ll save that for the board of inquiry, or the court-martial. The fact is, poor information got us sucked into a death trap.”
“Too many worlds.” The civilian planetologist shook his gaunt head! “Each too big. Who can know?”
“While you gabble,” the commandant said, “men lie in delirium and convulsions. More every day. Talk.” His voice was rough with anger and incomplete weeping.
“We suspected heavy-metal poisoning, of course,” the medical officer said. “We made repeated tests. The concentration always seemed within allowable limits. Then overnight—”
“Never mind that,” the planetologist interrupted. “Here are the results. These bushes growing everywhere around… we knew they take up elements like arsenic and mercury. And the literature has described the hell shrub, with pictures, as giving off dangerous vapors. What we did not know is that here is a species of hell shrub. It looks entirely unlike its relatives. Think of roses and apples. Besides, we’d no idea how the toxin of the reported kind works, let alone these. That must have been determined after the original descriptions were published, when a purely organic compound was assumed. The volume of information in every science, swamping—” His words limped to a halt.
The commandant waited.
The medical officer took the tale: “The vapors carry the metals in loose combination with a… a set of molecules, unheard of by any authority I’ve read. Their action is, well, they block certain enzymes. In effect, the body’s protections are canceled. No metal atoms whatsoever are excreted. Every microgram goes to the vital organs. Meanwhile the patient is additionally weakened by the fact that parts of his protein chemistry aren’t working right. The effects are synergistic and exponential. Suddenly one crosses a threshold.”
“I… see…” the commandant said.
“We top officers aren’t in too bad a condition yet,” the planetologist told him. “Nor are our staffs. We spend most of our time indoors. The men, though—” He rubbed his eyes. “Not that I’d call myself a well man,” he mumbled.
“What do you recommend?” the commandant asked.
“Evacuation,” the medical chief said. “And I don’t recommend it, I tell you we have no alternative. Our people must get immediate proper care.”