Part 2

Nordenfeld asked carefully conversational-sounding questions. Kathy Brand, now aged ten, had been taken by her father to live in a big room without any windows. It hadn't any doors, either. There were plants in it, and there were bluish lights to shine on the plants, and there was a place in one corner where there was water. When her father came in to talk to her, he came up out of the water wearing the funny suit with glass over his face. He went out the same way. There was a place in the wall where she could look out into another room, and at first her mother used to come and smile at her through the glass, and she talked into something she held in her hand, and her voice came inside. But later she stopped coming.

* * * * *

There was only one possible kind of place which would answer Kathy's description. When she was six years old she had been put into some university's aseptic-environment room. And she had stayed there. Such rooms were designed for biological research. They were built and then made sterile of all bacterial life and afterward entered through a tank of antiseptic. Anyone who entered wore a suit which was made germ-free by its passage through the antiseptic, and he did not breathe the air of the aseptic room, but air which was supplied him through a hose, the exhaled-air hose also passing under the antiseptic outside. No germ or microbe or virus could possibly get into such a room without being bathed in corrosive fluid which would kill it. So long as there was someone alive outside to take care of her, a little girl could live there and defy even chlorophage.

And Kathy Brand had done it. But, on the other hand, Kamerun was the only planet where it would be necessary, and it was the only world from which a father would land his small daughter on another planet's spaceport. There was no doubt. Nordenfeld grimly imagined someone--he would have had to be a microbiologist even to attempt it--fighting to survive and defeat the chlorophage while he kept his little girl in an aseptic-environment room.

She explained quite pleasantly as Nordenfeld asked more questions. There had been other people besides her father, but for a long time there had been only him. And Nordenfeld computed that somehow she'd been kept alive on the dead planet Kamerun for four long years.

Recently, though--very recently--her father told her that they were leaving. Wearing his funny, antiseptic-wetted suit, he'd enclosed her in a plastic bag with a tank attached to it. Air flowed from the tank into the bag and out through a hose that was all wetted inside. She breathed quite comfortably.

It made sense. An air tank could be heated and its contents sterilized to supply germ-free--or virus-free--air. And Kathy's father took an axe and chopped away a wall of the room. He picked her up, still inside the plastic bag, and carried her out. There was nobody about. There was no grass. There were no trees. Nothing moved.

Here Kathy's account was vague, but Nordenfeld could guess at the strangeness of a dead planet, to the child who barely remembered anything but the walls of an aseptic-environment room.

Her father carried her to a little ship, said Kathy, and they talked a lot after the ship took off. He told her that he was taking her to a place where she could run about outdoors and play, but he had to go somewhere else. He did mysterious things which to Nordenfeld meant a most scrupulous decontamination of a small spaceship's interior and its airlock. Its outer surface would reach a temperature at which no organic material could remain uncooked.

And finally, said Kathy, her father had opened a door and told her to step out and good-by, and she did, and the ship went away--her father still wearing his funny suit--and people came and asked her questions she did not understand.

* * * * *

Kathy's narrative fitted perfectly into the rumor Jensen said circulated among usually well-informed people on Altaira. They believed, said Jensen, that a small spaceship had appeared in the sky above Altaira's spaceport. It ignored all calls, landed swiftly, opened an airlock and let someone out, and plunged for the sky again. And the story said that radar telescopes immediately searched for and found the ship in space. They trailed it, calling vainly for it to identify itself, while it drove at top speed for Altaira's sun.

It reached the sun and dived in.

Nordenfeld reached the skipper on intercom vision-phone. Jensen had been called there to repeat his tale to the skipper.

"I've talked to the child," said Nordenfeld grimly, "and I'm putting her into isolation quarters in the hospital compartment. She's from Kamerun. She was kept in an aseptic-environment room at some university or other. She says her father looked after her. I get an impression of a last-ditch fight by microbiologists against the chlorophage. They lost it. Apparently her father landed her on Altaira and dived into the sun. From her story, he took every possible precaution to keep her from contagion or carrying contagion with her to Altaira. Maybe he succeeded. There's no way to tell--yet."

The skipper listened in silence.

Jensen said thinly, "Then the story about the landing was true."

"Yes. The authorities isolated her, and then shipped her off on the _Star Queen_. Your well-informed friends, Jensen, didn't know what their government was going to do!" Nordenfeld paused, and said more coldly still, "They didn't handle it right. They should have killed her, painlessly but at once. Her body should have been immersed, with everything that had touched it, in full-strength nitric acid. The same acid should have saturated the place where the ship landed and every place she walked. Every room she entered, and every hall she passed through, should have been doused with nitric and then burned. It would still not have been all one could wish. The air she breathed couldn't be recaptured and heated white-hot. But the chances for Altaira's population to go on living would be improved. Instead, they isolated her and they shipped her off with us--and thought they were accomplishing something by destroying the lift-ship that had her in an airtight compartment until she walked into the _Star Queen's_ lock!"

The skipper said heavily, "Do you think she's brought chlorophage on board?"

"I've no idea," said Nordenfeld. "If she did, it's too late to do anything but drive the _Star Queen_ into the nearest sun.... No. Before that, one should give warning that she was aground on Altaira. No ship should land there. No ship should take off. Altaira should be blocked off from the rest of the galaxy like Kamerun was. And to the same end result."

Jensen said unsteadily; "There'll be trouble if this is known on the ship. There'll be some unwilling to sacrifice themselves."

"Sacrifice?" said Nordenfeld. "They're dead! But before they lie down, they can keep everybody they care about from dying too! Would you want to land and have your wife and family die of it?"

The skipper said in the same heavy voice, "What are the probabilities? You say there was an effort to keep her from contagion. What are the odds?"

"Bad," said Nordenfeld. "The man tried, for the child's sake. But I doubt he managed to make a completely aseptic transfer from the room she lived in to the spaceport on Altaira. The authorities on Altaira should have known it. They should have killed her and destroyed everything she'd touched. And _still_ the odds would have been bad!"

Jensen said, "But you can't do that, Nordenfeld! Not now!"

"I shall take every measure that seems likely to be useful." Then Nordenfeld snapped, "Damnation, man! Do you realize that this chlorophage can wipe out the human race if it really gets loose? Do you think I'll let sentiment keep me from doing what has to be done?"

He flicked off the vision-phone.

* * * * *

The _Star Queen_ came out of overdrive. Her skipper arranged it to be done at the time when the largest possible number of her passengers and crew would be asleep. Those who were awake, of course, felt the peculiar inaudible sensation which one subjectively translated into sound. They felt the momentary giddiness which--having no natural parallel--feels like the sensation of treading on a stair-step that isn't there, combined with a twisting sensation so it is like a spiral fall. The passengers who were awake were mostly in the bars, and the bartenders explained that the ship had shifted overdrive generators and there was nothing to it.

Those who were asleep started awake, but there was nothing in their surroundings to cause alarm. Some blinked in the darkness of their cabins and perhaps turned on the cabin lights, but everything seemed normal. They turned off the lights again. Some babies cried and had to be soothed. But there was nothing except wakening to alarm anybody. Babies went back to sleep and mothers returned to their beds and--such awakenings being customary--went back to sleep also.

It was natural enough. There were vague and commonplace noises, together making an indefinite hum. Fans circulated the ship's purified and reinvigorated air. Service motors turned in remote parts of the hull. Cooks and bakers moved about in the kitchens. Nobody could tell by any physical sensation that the _Star Queen_ was not in overdrive, except in the control room.

There the stars could be seen. They were unthinkably remote. The ship was light-years from any place where humans lived. She did not drive. Her skipper had a family on Cassim. He would not land a plague ship which might destroy them. The executive officer had a small son. If his return meant that small son's death as well as his own, he would not return. All through the ship, the officers who had to know the situation recognized that if chlorophage had gotten into the _Star Queen_, the ship must not land anywhere. Nobody could survive. Nobody must attempt it.

So the huge liner hung in the emptiness between the stars, waiting until it could be known definitely that chlorophage was aboard or that with absolute certainty it was absent. The question was up to Doctor Nordenfeld.

He had isolated himself with Kathy in the ship's hospital compartment. Since the ship was built it had been used once by a grown man who developed mumps, and once by an adolescent boy who developed a raging fever which antibiotics stopped. Health measures for space travel were strict. The hospital compartment had only been used those two times.

* * * * *

On this voyage it had been used to contain an assortment of botanical specimens from a planet seventy light-years beyond Regulus. They were on their way to the botanical research laboratory on Cassim. As a routine precaution they'd been placed in the hospital, which could be fumigated when they were taken out. Now the doctor had piled them in one side of the compartment, which he had divided in half with a transparent plastic sheet. He stayed in that side. Kathy occupied the other.

She had some flowering plants to look at and admire. They'd come from the air room and she was delighted with their coloring and beauty. But Doctor Nordenfeld had put them there as a continuing test for chlorophage. If Kathy carried that murderous virus on her person, the flowering plants would die of it--probably even before she did.

It was a scrupulously scientific test for the deadly stuff. Completely sealed off except for a circulator to freshen the air she breathed, Kathy was settled with toys and picture books. It was an improvised but well-designed germproof room. The air for Kathy to breathe was sterilized before it reached her. The air she had breathed was sterilized as it left her plastic-sided residence. It should be the perfection of protection for the ship--if it was not already too late.

The vision-phone buzzed. Doctor Nordenfeld stirred in his chair and flipped the switch. The _Star Queen's_ skipper looked at him out of the screen.

"I've cut the overdrive," said the skipper. "The passengers haven't been told."

"Very sensible," said the doctor.

"When will we know?"

"That we can go on living? When the other possibility is exhausted."

"Then, how will we know?" asked skipper stonily.

Doctor Nordenfeld ticked off the possibilities. He bent down a finger. "One, her father took great pains. Maybe he did manage an aseptic transfer from a germ-free room to Altaira. Kathy may not have been exposed to the chlorophage. If she hasn't, no bleached spots will show up on the air-room foliage or among the flowering plants in the room with her. Nobody in the crew or among the passengers will die."

He bent down a second finger. "It is probably more likely that white spots will appear on the plants in the air room _and_ here, and people will start to die. That will mean Kathy brought contagion here the instant she arrived, and almost certainly that Altaira will become like Kamerun--uninhabited. In such a case we are finished."

* * * * *

He bent down a third finger. "Not so likely, but preferable, white spots may appear on the foliage inside the plastic with Kathy, but not in the ship's air room. In that case she was exposed, but the virus was incubating when she came on board, and only developed and spread after she was isolated. Possibly, in such a case, we can save the passengers and crew, but the ship will probably have to be melted down in space. It would be tricky, but it might be done."

The skipper hesitated. "If that last happened, she--"

"I will take whatever measures are necessary," said Doctor Nordenfeld. "To save your conscience, we won't discuss them. They should have been taken on Altaira."

He reached over and flipped off the phone. Then he looked up and into the other part of the ship's hospital space. Kathy came out from behind a screen, where she'd made ready for bed. She was beaming. She had a large picture book under one arm and a doll under the other.

"It's all right for me to have these with me, isn't it, Doctor Nordenfeld?" she asked hopefully. "I didn't have any picture books but one, and it got worn out. And my doll--it was dreadful how shabby she was!"

The doctor frowned. She smiled at him. He said, "After all, picture books are made to be looked at and dolls to be played with."

She skipped to the tiny hospital bed on the far side of the presumably virusproof partition. She climbed into it and zestfully arranged the doll to share it. She placed the book within easy reach.

She said, "I think my father would say you were very nice, Doctor Nordenfeld, to look after me so well."

"No-o-o-o," said the doctor in a detached voice. "I'm just doing what anybody ought to do."

She snuggled down under the covers. He looked at his watch and shrugged. It was very easy to confuse official night with official day, in space. Everybody else was asleep. He'd been putting Kathy through tests which began with measurements of pulse and respiration and temperature and went on from there. Kathy managed them herself, under his direction.

He settled down with one of the medical books he'd brought into the isolation section with him. Its title was _Decontamination of Infectious Material from Different Planets_. He read it grimly.

* * * * *

The time came when the _Star Queen_ should have come out of overdrive with the sun Circe blazing fiercely nearby, and a green planet with ice caps to be approached on interplanetary drive. There should have been droning, comforting drive noises to assure the passengers--who naturally could not see beyond the ship's steel walls--that they were within a mere few million miles of a world where sunshine was normal, and skies were higher than ship's ceilings, and there were fascinating things to see and do.

Some of the passengers packed their luggage and put it outside their cabins to be picked up for landing. But no stewards came for it. Presently there was an explanation. The ship had run under maximum speed and the planetfall would be delayed.

The passengers were disappointed but not concerned. The luggage vanished into cabins again.

The _Star Queen_ floated in space among a thousand thousand million stars. Her astrogators had computed a course to the nearest star into which to drive the _Star Queen_, but it would not be used unless there was mutiny among the crew. It would be better to go in remote orbit around Circe III and give the news of chlorophage on Altaira, if Doctor Nordenfeld reported it on the ship.

Time passed. One day. Two. Three. Then Jensen called the hospital compartment on vision-phone. His expression was dazed. Nordenfeld saw the interior of the control room behind Jensen. He said, "You're a passenger, Jensen. How is it you're in the control room?"

Jensen moistened his lips. "The skipper thought I'd better not associate with the other passengers. I've stayed with the officers the past few days. We--the ones who know what's in prospect--we're keeping separate from the others so--nobody will let anything out by accident."

"Very wise. When the skipper comes back on duty, ask him to call me. I've something interesting to tell him."

"He's--checking something now," said Jensen. His voice was thin and reedy. "The--air officer reports there are white patches on the plants in the air room. They're growing. Fast. He told me to tell you. He's--gone to make sure."

"No need," said Nordenfeld bitterly.

He swung the vision-screen. It faced that part of the hospital space beyond the plastic sheeting. There were potted flowering plants there. They had pleased Kathy. They shared her air. And there were white patches on their leaves.

"I thought," said Nordenfeld with an odd mirthless levity, "that the skipper'd be interested. It is of no importance whatever now, but I accomplished something remarkable. Kathy's father didn't manage an aseptic transfer. She brought the chlorophage with her. But I confined it. The plants on the far side of that plastic sheet show the chlorophage patches plainly. I expect Kathy to show signs of anemia shortly. I'd decided that drastic measures would have to be taken, and it looked like they might work, because I've confined the virus. It's there where Kathy is, but it isn't where I am. All the botanical specimens on my side of the sheet are untouched. The phage hasn't hit them. It is remarkable. But it doesn't matter a damn if the air room's infected. And I was so proud!"

Jensen did not respond.

* * * * *

Nordenfeld said ironically, "Look what I accomplished! I protected the air plants on my side See? They're beautifully green! No sign of infection! It means that a man can work with chlorophage! A laboratory ship could land on Kamerun and keep itself the equivalent of an aseptic-environment room while the damned chlorophage was investigated and ultimately whipped! And it doesn't matter!"

Jensen said numbly, "We can't ever make port. We ought--we ought to--"

"We'll take the necessary measures," Nordenfeld told him. "Very quietly and very efficiently, with neither the crew nor the passengers knowing that Altaira sent the chlorophage on board the _Star Queen_ in the hope of banishing it from there. The passengers won't know that their own officials shipped it off with them as they tried to run away.... And I was so proud that I'd improvised an aseptic room to keep Kathy in! I sterilized the air that went in to her, and I sterilized--"

Then he stopped. He stopped quite short. He stared at the air unit, set up and with two pipes passing through the plastic partition which cut the hospital space in two. He turned utterly white. He went roughly to the air machine. He jerked back its cover. He put his hand inside.

Minutes later he faced back to the vision-screen from which Jensen looked apathetically at him.

"Tell the skipper to call me," he said in a savage tone. "Tell him to call me instantly he comes back! Before he issues any orders at all!"

He bent over the sterilizing equipment and very carefully began to disassemble it. He had it completely apart when Kathy waked. She peered at him through the plastic separation sheet.

"Good morning, Doctor Nordenfeld," she said cheerfully.

The doctor grunted. Kathy smiled at him. She had gotten on very good terms with the doctor, since she'd been kept in the ship's hospital. She did not feel that she was isolated. In having the doctor where she could talk to him at any time, she had much more company than ever before. She had read her entire picture book to him and discussed her doll at length. She took it for granted that when he did not answer or frowned that he was simply busy. But he was company because she could see him.

Doctor Nordenfeld put the air apparatus together with an extremely peculiar expression on his face. It had been built for Kathy's special isolation by a ship's mechanic. It should sterilize the used air going into Kathy's part of the compartment, and it should sterilize the used air pushed out by the supplied fresh air. The hospital itself was an independent sealed unit, with its own chemical air freshener, and it had been divided into two. The air freshener was where Doctor Nordenfeld could attend to it, and the sterilizer pump simply shared the freshening with Kathy. But--

But the pipe that pumped air to Kathy was brown and discolored from having been used for sterilizing, and the pipe that brought air back was not. It was cold. It had never been heated.

So Doctor Nordenfeld had been exposed to any contagion Kathy could spread. He hadn't been protected at all. Yet the potted plants on Kathy's side of the barrier were marked with great white splotches which grew almost as one looked, while the botanical specimens in the doctor's part of the hospital--as much infected as Kathy's could have been, by failure of the ship's mechanic to build the sterilizer to work two ways: the stacked plants, the alien plants, the strange plants from seventy light-years beyond Regulus--they were vividly green. There was no trace of chlorophage on them. Yet they had been as thoroughly exposed as Doctor Nordenfeld himself!

The doctor's hands shook. His eyes burned. He took out a surgeon's scalpel and ripped the plastic partition from floor to ceiling. Kathy watched interestedly.

"Why did you do that, Doctor Nordenfeld?" she asked.

He said in an emotionless, unnatural voice, "I'm going to do something that it was very stupid of me not to do before. It should have been done when you were six years old, Kathy. It should have been done on Kamerun, and after that on Altaira. Now we're going to do it here. You can help me."

* * * * *

The _Star Queen_ had floated out of overdrive long enough to throw all distance computations off. But she swung about, and swam back, and presently she was not too far from the world where she was now many days overdue. Lift-ships started up from the planet's surface. But the _Star Queen_ ordered them back.

"Get your spaceport health officer on the vision-phone," ordered the _Star Queen's_ skipper. "We've had chlorophage on board."

There was panic. Even at a distance of a hundred thousand miles, chlorophage could strike stark terror into anybody. But presently the image of the spaceport health officer appeared on the _Star Queen's_ screen.

"We're not landing," said Doctor Nordenfeld. "There's almost certainly an outbreak of chlorophage on Altaira, and we're going back to do something about it. It got on our ship with passengers from there. We've whipped it, but we may need some help."

The image of the health officer aground was a mask of horror for seconds after Nordenfeld's last statement. Then his expression became incredulous, though still horrified.