THE MED SHIP ESCLIPUS Twenty rode in overdrive while her ship’s company drank coffee. Calhoun sipped at a full cup of strong brew, while Murgatroyd the tormal drank from the tiny mug suited to his small, furry paws. The astrogation unit showed the percentage of this overdrive hop covered up to now, and the needle was almost around to the stop pin.
There’d been a warning gong an hour ago, notifying that the end of overdrive journeying approached. Hence the coffee. When breakout came, the overdrive field must collapse and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship’s keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion. She should be somewhere near the sun Tallien. She should then swim toward that sol-type sun and approach Tallien’s third planet out at the less-than-light-speed rate necessary for solar-system travel. And presently she should signal down to ground and Calhoun set about the purpose of his three-week journey in overdrive.
His purpose was a routine checkup on public health on Tallien Three. Calhoun had lately completed five such planetary visits, with from one to three weeks of overdrive travel between each pair. When he left Tallien Three he’d head back to Sector Headquarters for more orders about the work of the Interstellar Medical Service.
Murgatroyd zestfully licked his empty cup to get the last least drop of coffee. He said hopefully:
“Chee?“ He wanted more.
“I’m afraid,” said Calhoun, “that you’re a sybarite, Murgatroyd. This impassioned desire of yours for coffee disturbs me.”
“Chee!“ said Murgatroyd, with decision.
“It’s become a habit,” Calhoun told him severely. “You should taper off. Remember, when anything in your environment becomes a normal part of your environment, it becomes a necessity. Coffee should be a luxury, to be savored as such, instead of something you expect and resent being deprived of.”
Murgatroyd said impatiently:
“Chee-chee!“
“All right, then,” said Calhoun, “if you’re going to be emotional about it! Pass your cup.”
He reached out and Murgatroyd put the tiny object in his hand. He refilled it and passed it back.
“But watch yourself,” he advised. “We’re landing on Tallien Three. It’s just been transferred to us from another sector. It’s been neglected. There’s been no Med Service inspection for years. There could be misunderstandings.”
Murgatroyd said, “Chee!“ and squatted down to drink.
Calhoun looked at a clock and opened his mouth to speak again, when a taped voice said abruptly:
“When the gong sounds, breakout will be five seconds off.“
There was a steady, monotonous tick, tock, tick, tock, like a metronome. Calhoun got up and made a casual examination of the ship’s instruments. He turned on the vision screens. They were useless in overdrive, of course, Now they were ready to inform him about the normal cosmos as soon as the ship returned to it. He put away the coffee things. Murgatroyd was reluctant to give up his mug until the last possible lick. Then he sat back and elaborately cleaned his whiskers.
Calhoun sat down in the control chair and waited.
“Bong!“ said the loud-speaker, and Murgatroyd scuttled under a chair. He held on with all four paws and his furry tail. The speaker said, “Breakout in five seconds ... four ... three ... two ... one ...“
There was a sensation as if all the universe had turned itself inside out, and Calhoun’s stomach tried to follow its example. He gulped, and the feeling ended, and the vision screens came alight. Then there were ten thousand myriads of stars, and a sun flaming balefully ahead, and certain very bright objects nearby. They would be planets, and one of them showed as a crescent.
Calhoun checked the solar spectrum as a matter of course. This was the sun Tallien. He checked the brighter specks in view. Three were planets and one a remote brilliant star. The crescent was Tallien Three, third out from its sun and the Med Ship’s immediate destination. It was a very good breakout; too good to be anything but luck. Calhoun swung the ship for the crescent planet. He matter-of-factly checked the usual items. He was going in at a high angle to the ecliptic, so meteors and bits of stray celestial trash weren’t likely to be bothersome. He made other notes, to kill time.
He reread the data sheets on the planet. It had been colonized three hundred years before. There’d been trouble establishing a human-use ecological system on the planet because the native plants and animals were totally useless to humankind. Native timber could be used in building, but only after drying-out for a period of months. When growing or green it was as much water-saturated as a sponge. There had never been a forest fire here, not even caused by lightning!
There were other oddities. The aboriginal microorganisms here did not attack wastes of introduced terrestrial types. It had been necessary to introduce scavenger organisms from elsewhere. This and other difficulties made it true that only one of the world’s five continents were human-occupied. Most of the land surface was strictly as it had been before the landing of men—impenetrable jungles of spongelike flora, dwelt in by a largely unknown useless fauna. Calhoun read on. Population ... government ... health statistics.... He went through the list.
He had time to kill, so he rechecked his course and speed relative to the planet. He and Murgatroyd had dinner. Then he waited until the ship was near enough to report in.
“Med Ship Esclipas Twenty calling ground,” he said when the time came. He taped his own voice as he made the call. “Requesting co-ordinates for landing. Our mass is fifty tons. Repeat, five-oh tons. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection.”
He waited while his taped voice repeated and re-repeated the call. An incoming voice said sharply:
“Calling Med Ship! Cut your signal! Do not acknowledge this call! Cut your signal! Instructions will follow. But cut your signal!“
Calhoun blinked. Of all possible responses to a landing call, orders to stop signaling would be least likely. But after an instant he reached over and stopped the transmission of his voice. It happened to end halfway through a syllable.
Silence. Not quite silence, of course, because there was the taped record of background noise which went on all the time the Med Ship was in space. Without it, the utter absence of noise would be sepulchral.
The voice from outside said:
“You cut off. Good! Now listen! Do not—repeat, do not!—acknowledge this call or respond to any call from anyone else! There is a drastic situation aground. You must not—repeat, must not—fall into the hands of the people now occupying Government Center. Go into orbit. We will try to seize the spaceport so you can be landed. But do not acknowledge this call or respond to any answer from anyone else! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!“
There was a click, and somehow the silence was clamorous. Calhoun rubbed his nose reflectively with his finger. Murgatroyd, bright-eyed, immediately rubbed his nose with a tiny dark digit. Like all tormals, he gloried in imitating human actions, as parrots and parakeets imitate human speech. But suddenly a second voice called in, with a new and strictly professional tone:
“Calling Med Ship!“ said this second voice. “Calling Med Ship! Spaceport Tallien Three calling Med Ship Esclipus Twenty! For landing, repair to co-ordinates—“
The voice briskly gave specific instructions. It was a strictly professional voice. It repeated the instructions with precision.
Out of sheer habit, Calhoun said, “Acknowledge.” Then he added sharply: “Hold it! I’ve just had an emergency call—”
The first voice interrupted stridently:
“Cut your signal, you fool! I told you not to answer any other call! Cut your signal!“
The strictly professional other voice said coldly:
“Emergency call, eh? That’ll be paras. They’re better organized than we thought, if they picked up your landing request! There’s an emergency, all right! It’s the devil of an emergency—it looks like devils! But this is the spaceport. Will you come in?“
“Naturally,” said Calhoun. “What’s the emergency?”
“You’ll find out....“ That was the professional voice. The other snapped angrily, “Cut your signal!“ The professional voice again: “... you land. It’s not....“ “Cut your signal, you fool! Cut it....“ The other voice again.
There was confusion. The two voices spoke together. Each was on a tight beam, while Calhoun’s call was broadcast. The voices could not hear each other, but each could hear Calhoun.
“Don’t listen to them! There’s....“ “to understand, but....“ “Don’t listen! Don’t....“ “... When you land.“
Then the voice from the spaceport stopped, and Calhoun cut down the volume of the other. It continued to shout, though muffled. It bellowed, as if rattled. It mouthed commands as if they were arguments or reasons. Calhoun listened for fully five minutes. Then he said carefully into his microphone:
“Med Ship Esclipus Twenty calling spaceport. I will arrive at given co-ordinates at the time given. I suggest that you take precautions if necessary against interference with my landing. Message ends.”
He swung the ship around and aimed for the destination with which he’d been supplied—a place in emptiness five diameters out, with the center of the sun’s disk bearing so-and-so and the center of the planet’s disk bearing so-and-thus. He turned the communicator volume down still lower. The miniature voice shouted and threatened in the stillness of the Med Ship’s control room. After a time Calhoun said reflectively:
“I don’t like this, Murgatroyd! An unidentified voice is telling us—and we’re Med Ship personnel, Murgatroyd!—who we should speak to and what we should do. Our duty is plainly to ignore such orders. But with dignity, Murgatroyd! We must uphold the dignity of the Med Service!”
Murgatroyd said skeptically:
“Chee?”
“I don’t like your attitude,” said Calhoun, “but I’ll bear in mind that you’re often right.”
Murgatroyd found a soft place to curl up in. He draped his tail across his nose and lay there, blinking at Calhoun above the furry half-mask.