Ole Doc Methuselah (20 page)

They
let him out and through the side. Back in his ship, Ole Doc presented the order
to the cruiser captain and the
Morgue
was freed. Five minutes later, at
the controls, Ole Doc sent the
Morgue
knifing through the cloud layers
and across the verdant surface of the beautiful planet.

He
found the shapely towers of Piedmont with no trouble and in a short while was
settled down upon the red earth of the landing field.

Within
five minutes the
Morgue
was likely to be crushed by the mob which
pressed to it. There was anxiety and hysteria in the welcome. Women held up
their children to see the ship and hitherto accounted brave men fought
remorselessly to get close enough to it to beg succor. Officials and police
struggled with the crowd, half to clear it, half to get near the ship
themselves. An old woman in the foremost rank, when the area before the port had
been cleared, knelt humbly and began to pray in thankfulness.

Ole
Doc swung out, stood on the step and looked down on their heads. The babble
which met him was almost a physical force. He waited for them to quiet and at
last, by patience alone, won their silence.

“People,”
said Ole Doc, “I can promise you nothing. I will try. While I am here you will
help by giving me space in which to walk and work”—for he had been in such
panic areas before—“so that I can help you. I cannot and will not treat an individual.
When I have a solution, you will all benefit if that proves possible. Now go to
your homes. Your radios will tell what is taking place.”

They
did not disperse but they gave him room to walk. He went across the field and
down a tree-lined street under the directions of an Army officer who informed
him that the
Star of Space
was landed, partially disabled, at a flying
field near the ballpark.

Data
was poured at him by people who fled along on either side and walked backwards
a distance before him. Most of it was contradictory. But it was plain that in
the last few hours a thousand cases had broken out across the face of Green
Rivers.

 

It
was a pleasant town upon a pleasant planet. The neat streets were flanked by
wide gardens and trees and the heat of Sirius was comfortable. Ole Doc sighed
as he realized how he stood between this homely work and a charred planet of
debris.

A
quack, selling a box of “fever cure,” saw Ole Doc coming and ashamedly tried
to stand before his sign and hide it. How the man expected to get away with any
money he made was a mystery of psychology.

The
Star of Space
was a desolation. She had jammed into the ground on
landing, fracturing her tubes. Bad navigation had dented her with space dust.
Her sealed ports were like sightless eyes in a skull.

Ole
Doc stood for a while within twenty feet of her, gazing in pity. And then he
cupped his hands. “
Star of Space,
ahoy.”

A
lock opened and a gaunt young man in a filthy uniform stood there. “A Soldier
of Light,” he said in a hushed voice.

A
woman was crying on Ole Doc's left, holding a child cradled in her arms, and
when they saw her the crowd shrank from her, for the child had closed eyes and
was breathing with difficulty. But Ole Doc did not see her. He advanced on the
Star.

The
young man tried to say a welcome and could not. He dropped his face into his
hands and began to sob soundlessly.

Ole
Doc pushed on through. He was, after all, a mortal. Diseases respected no man,
not even the UMS. It is valiant to go up against ray guns. It took more nerve
to walk into that ship.

The
stench was like a living wall. There were unburied dead in there. The salons
and halls were stained and disarrayed, the furniture broken, the draperies torn
down for other uses. A piano stood gleamingly polished amid a chaos of broken
glass. And a young woman, dead, lay with her hair outsplayed across the
fragments as though she wore diamonds in her locks.

The
young man had followed and Ole Doc turned in the salon. “Bring the other people
here.”

“They
won't assemble.”

“Bring
them here.”

Ole
Doc sat down in a deep chair and took out a notebook. After a long while the
people began to come, a few at a time, singly or in large groups. They looked
at one another with fear on their faces. Not a few of them were mad.

A
girl hurled herself across the salon and dropped to grasp at Ole Doc's knees.
She was a beautiful girl, about twenty. But hunger and terror had written large
upon her and her hands were shaking.

She
cried out something over and over. But Ole Doc was looking at the people who
were assembling there. Then he dropped his eyes, for he was ashamed to look at
their misery longer.

He
began as orderly as he could and gradually pieced together the tale.

The
disease had begun nine days out, with one case, a man from Cobanne in the
Holloway System. He had raved and muttered in delirium and when partly
conscious had informed the ship's doctor that he had seen the same sickness in
Cobanne, a back-space ruined remnant of war. He was a young man, about twenty.
Twenty-one days out he died, but it was the opinion of the doctor that death
was due to a
rheumatic heart
which the patient had had prior
to the disease.

This
was news enough, to find a place where a rheumatic heart was considered
incurable. And then Ole Doc recalled the disease warfare of the Holloway System
and the resultant poverty and abandonment of what had once been rich.

The
next case had broken out twelve days after departure and had terminated in
death a week later. Ole Doc took down the details and made a scan of nearly
forty cases to arrive at a course.

The
disease had an incubation period of something up to ten days. Then for a period
of one week, more or less, the temperature remained low. Spots came in the
mouth—though these had also been noted earlier. The temperature then rose
rapidly and often caused death in this period. If it did not, the throat was
greatly swollen and spots came out on the forehead and spread down over the
body. Temperature then dropped to around ninety-nine for a day but rose
suddenly to one hundred and five or more, at which point the patient either
died or, as had happened in two cases, began to recover. But death might follow
any sudden temperature rise and generally did.

 

Ole
Doc went back to a cabin where a currently stricken woman lay and took some
phlegm. He processed it quickly and established the disease as a nonfilterable
virus.

There
were two hundred and twenty well officers, crew and passengers remaining on the
Star of Space.
They were without hope but their eyes followed Ole Doc
whenever he moved across the salon going to patients in other parts of the
ship.

The
inspection took an hour and Ole Doc went then into the daylight and sat down on
the grass under a tree while Hippocrates shooed people away. After a long time,
it looked as if Ole Doc were asleep.

But
he was not sleeping. No modern medical text contained any mention of such a
disease. But that, of course, proved nothing. The UMS texts were blank about
it, that he knew. But it seemed, somehow, that he had heard or read something,
somewhere, about it.

The
study of such diseases was not very modern after the vigorous campaigns for
asepsis
five hundred years ago. But still— Ole Doc looked at a
stream nearby and wondered if it had any fish in it. Hang it, this area looked
like the Cumberland country back in his native Maryland, a long, long way and a
long, long time from here. Maybe if he fished—but his dignity here, right now,
would not permit that. These people expected him to do something. Like that old
woman, when he was a brand-new doctor up in the Cumberland Gap. Her child—

Ole
Doc leaped to his feet. He grabbed the kit from Hippocrates and flung out the
contents on the grass. After a short space of study he began to call for
details and it was like a bucket-brigade line the way Hippocrates was hustled
back and forth by people between the
Morgue
and the
Star.

He
called for barrels. He called for wrapping paper. He played light on scraps of
meat and he had a patient brought out from the ship and made him spit and spit
again into a small cup.

The
cup was treated and from the contents a drop was put in each barrel. And then
the barrels were full of ingredients and being stirred under a light. And then
another light, hitched to a thousand pounds of tubes and condensers, was lowered
into each barrel and the mixtures left to stew.

It
was crude but it was fast.

Ole
Doc called for the young man—fourth officer of the
Star of Space.

“I
can catalyze the course of this disease,” said Ole Doc. “I want a guinea
pig.”

The
young man
took a reef in his nerve
. He stood forward.

Ole
Doc made him open his mouth and poured in a deadly dose. Then he played a new
electrode over the fourth officer. Within five minutes the first symptom of the
disease had appeared. In ten, the man's temperature was beginning to rise.

Ole
Doc grabbed a needle full of the contents of the first barrel. He gave the
fourth officer a nonpiercing shot. Five minutes later the temperature was down
and the man was well!

Ole
Doc tried his antitoxin on five people and tried to give them the disease. It
would not settle in them. They were immune!

“I
want,” said Ole Doc, “volunteers to write these instructions down, let me
check what they have written and rush gallons of both these medicines to every
part of this planet. You, you're the space-radio superintendent, aren't you?
Take what I dictate here for warning to all systems and to provide them with
the cure and prevention. Hippocrates, give me that mike.”

Ole
Doc said into the speaker, “UMS to Garth. Prevention and cure established.
Star
of Space
survivors will not be carriers. You may disperse your fleet. Your
doctors will be furnished with information by the general dispatch.”

He
turned to a local doctor, a young man who, for some thirty-five minutes, had
been standing there with his mouth open. “You see the procedure, sir. I would
advise you to get in and treat the patients in that poor ship. If you need my
further help, particularly with those who have become insane, I shall be at
hand. I think,” he added, “that there are trout in that stream.”

 

Hippocrates
carried the equipment back, an elephant load of it, and restored it to its
proper places in the
Morgue.
Ole Doc, when he had got free of people
trying to kiss his hands, push money on him and lift and carry him in triumph,
climbed into the
Morgue
and stretched out his feet under his desk. He
made a series of interesting notes.

 

It
is sometimes unwise to remove a disease entirely from the Universe. It is
almost impossible to eradicate one completely from all quarters of the
Universe, particularly as some are borne by animals unbeknownst to men.

The
human being as a race carries a certain residual immunity to many violent
diseases so that these are, in time, ineffective against a group with which
they have associated but, reaching a new group, pass quickly to destructive
lengths.

Diseases
known to us commonly now would be fatal should we outgrow that immunity. In
such a way are the penicillin-like panaceas destructive at long last.

I
would advise—

 

A
deferential footfall sounded at the office doorway. Ole Doc looked up,
preoccupied, to find Galactic Admiral Garth.

“Doctor,”
said Garth uncomfortably, “are you busy just now? I can come back but—”

“No,
no,” said Ole Doc. “Come in and sit down. Have a drink?”

Garth
shuffled his feet and sank gingerly into his chair. Plainly he was a victim of
awe and he had a problem. “That was magnificent. I . . . I've been wrong about
doctors, sir. I have been very wrong about the Universal Medical Society. I
said some hard words—”

“No,
no,” said Ole Doc. “Come, have a drink.”

“Well,
the fact is,” said Garth, “my doctors tell me that what my admirals and myself
have . . . well . . . it doesn't fit the description. I don't mean your
diagnosis is wrong—”

“Admiral,”
said Ole Doc, “I think I know what the trouble is.” He reached into a desk
drawer and pulled out a package which he gave to the admiral. “Take one every
four hours. Drink lots of water. Tell your other men to do the same and keep to
their quarters. Anybody else comes down, have your doctors give them this.”
And he wrote a quick prescription in a hand nobody but a pharmacist could read
and gave it to Garth. Deciphered, it said “Aspirin.”

“You're
sure—” And Garth blew his nose.

“Of
course I'm sure!” said Ole Doc. “Now how about—”