Nobody said anything. They sat around in various relaxed positions watching the doctor. Guranin and Layatinsky were looking up from their chess board as if some relatively unimportant comments were being made that, perforce, just had to be treated, for the sake of courtesy, as of more significance than the royal game. But when Guranin shifted his elbow and knocked his king over, neither of them bothered to pick it up.
“Belov,” Dr. Alvin Schneider went on after a bit, “Belov is in the second stage. This is characterized by a weirdly fluctuating temperature, delirium, and a substantial loss of coordination—pointing, of course, to an attack on the nervous system. The loss of coordination is so acute as to affect even peristalsis, making intravenous feeding necessary. One of the things we will do tonight is go through a demonstration-lecture of intravenous feeding, so that any of you will be able to take care of the patients. Just in case.”
Across the room, O’Brien saw Hopkins, the radio and communications man, make the silent mouth-movement of “Wow!”
“Now as to what they’re suffering from. I don’t know, and that about sums it up. I’m fairly certain though that it isn’t a terrestrial disease, if only because it seems to have one of the shortest incubation periods I’ve ever encountered as well as a fantastically rapid development. I think it’s something that Belov caught in that Martian city and brought back to the ship. I have no idea if it’s fatal and to what degree, although it’s sound procedure in such a case to expect the worst. The only hope I can hold out at the moment is that the two men who are down with it exhibited symptoms before I had a chance to fill them full of duoplexin. Everyone else on the ship—including me—has now had a precautionary injection. That’s all. Are there any questions?”
There were no questions.
“All right,” Dr. Schneider said. “I want to warn you, though I hardly think it’s necessary under the circumstances, that any man who experiences any kind of a headache—any kind of a headache—is to report immediately for hospitalization and quarantine. We’re obviously dealing with something highly infectious. Now if you’ll all move in a little closer, I’ll demonstrate intravenous feeding on Captain Ghose. Captain, if you please.”
He glanced around the room, looking unhappy.
When the demonstration was over and they had proved their proficiency, to his satisfaction, on each other, he put together all the things that smelled pungently of antiseptic and said, “Well, now that’s taken care of. We’re covered, in case of emergency. Get a good night’s sleep.”
Then he started out. And stopped. He looked around and looked carefully from man to man. “O’Brien,” he said at last. “You come up with me.”
Well, at least, the navigator thought, as he followed, at least it’s even now. One Russian and one American. If only it stayed that way!
Schneider glanced in at the hospital and nodded to himself. “Smothers,” he commented. “He’s reached the second stage. Fastest-acting damn bug ever. Probably finds us excellent hosts.”
“Any idea what it’s like?” O’Brien asked, finding, to his surprise, that he was having trouble catching up to the little doctor.
“Uh-uh. I spent two hours with the microscope this afternoon. Not a sign. I prepared a lot of slides, blood, spinal fluid, sputum, and I’ve got a shelf of specimen Tars all filled up. They’ll come in handy for Earthside doctors if ever we— Oh, well. You see, it could be a filterable virus, it could be a bacillus requiring some special stain to make it visible, anything. But the most he was hoping for was to detect it—we’d never have the time to develop a remedy.”
He entered the control room, still well ahead of the taller man, stood to one side, and, once the other had come in, locked the door. O’Brien found his actions puzzling.
“I can’t see why you’re feeling so hopeless, doe. We have those white mice down below that were intended for testing purposes if Mars turned out to have half an atmosphere after all. Couldn’t you use them as experimental animals and try to work up a vaccine?”
The doctor chuckled without turning his lips up into a smile. “In twenty-four hours. Like in the movies. No, and even if I intended to take a whirl at it, which I did, it’s out of the question now.”
“What do you mean—now?”
Schneider sat down carefully and put his medical equipment on the desk beside him. Then he grinned. “Got an aspirin, Pres?”
Automatically, O’Brien’s hand went into the pocket of his jumper. “No, but I think that—” Then he understood. A wet towel unrolled in his abdomen. “When did it start?” he inquired softly.
“It must have started near the end of the lecture, but I was too busy to notice it. I first felt it just as I was leaving the mess hall. A real ear splitter at the moment. No, keep away!” he shouted, as O’Brien started forward sympathetically. “This probably won’t do any good, but at least keep your distance. Maybe it will give you a little extra time.”
“Should I get the captain?’
“If I needed him, I’d have asked him along. I’ll be turning myself into the hospital in a few minutes. I just wanted to transfer my authority to you.”
“Your authority? Are you the—the—a”
Doctor Alvin Schneider nodded. He went on—in English. “I’m the American Military Intelligence officer. Was, I should say. From now on, you are. Look, Pres, I don’t have much time. All I can tell you is this. Assuming that we’re not all dead within a week, and assuming that it is decided to attempt a return to Earth with the consequent risk of infecting the entire planet (something which, by the way, I personally would not recommend from where I sit), you are to keep your status as secret as I kept mine, and in the event it becomes necessary to tangle with the Russians, you are to reveal yourself with the code sentence you already know.”
“Fort Sumter has been fired upon,” O’Brien said slowly. He was still assimilating the fact that Schneider had been the MI officer, Of course, he had known all along that it could have been any one of the seven Americans. But Schneider!
“Right. If you then get control of the ship, you are to try to land her at White Sands, California, where we all got our preliminary training. You will explain to the authorities how I came to transfer authority to you. That’s about all, except for two things. If you get sick, you’ll have to use your own judgment about who to pass the scepter to—I prefer not to go any further than you at the moment. And—I could very easily be wrong—but it’s my personal opinion, for whatever it may be worth, that my opposite number among the Russians is Fyodor Guranin.”
“Check.” And then full realization came to O’Brien. “But, doc, you said you gave yourself a shot of duoplexin. Doesn’t that mean—”
Schneider rose and rubbed his forehead with his fist. “I’m afraid it does. That’s why this whole ceremony is more than a little meaningless. But I had the responsibility to discharge. I’ve discharged it. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I’d better lie down. Good luck.”
On his way to report Schneider’s illness to the captain, O’Brien came to realize bow the Russians had felt earlier that day. There were now five Americans to six Russians. That could be bad. And the responsibility was his.
But with his hand on the door to the captain’s room, he shrugged. Fat lot of difference it made! As the plump little man had said: “Assuming that we’re not all dead within a week…”
The fact was that the political setup on Earth, with all of its implications for two billion people, no longer had very many implications for them. They couldn’t risk spreading the disease on Earth, and unless they got back there, they had very little chance of finding a cure for it. They were chained to an alien planet, waiting to be knocked off, one by one, by a sickness which had claimed its last victims a thousand thousand years ago.