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Authors: James White

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BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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Conway threw down the report; this was another stupid piece of an already senseless puzzle, and all at once he was sick of the whole silly business. He rose and stamped into the outer office, sending the door crashing against the wall. Stillman twitched slightly and looked up.
“Dump that paperwork until morning!” Conway snapped. “Tonight we are going to indulge shamelessly in pleasures of the flesh. We’re going to sleep in our own cabins …”
“Sleep?” said Stillman, grinning suddenly. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” said Conway, “I thought you might. I hear it’s a new sensation, unutterable bliss and very habit-forming. Shall we live dangerously … ?”
“After you,” said Stillman.
Outside the office block the night was pleasantly cool. There was broken cloud on the horizon but above them the stars seemed to crowd down, bright and thick and cold. This was a dense region of space, a fact further proved by the meteorites which made white scratches across the sky every few minutes. Altogether it was an inspiring and calming sight, but Conway could not stop worrying. He was convinced that he was missing something, and his anxiety was much worse out here under the sky than it had been at any time in the office. Suddenly he wanted to read that report on the Empire as quickly as possible.
To Stillman, he said, “Do you ever think of something, then feel horribly ashamed for having the kind of dirty mind which thinks thoughts like that?”
Stillman grunted, treating it as a rhetorical question, and they continued walking toward the ship. Abruptly they stopped.
On the Southern horizon the sun seemed to be rising. The sky had become a pale, rich blue which shaded through turquoise into black, and the bases of the distant clouds burned pink and gold. Then before they could appreciate, or even react to this glorious, misplaced sunrise it had faded to an angry red smudge on the horizon. They felt a tiny shock transmitted through the soles of their shoes, and a little later they heard a noise like distant thunder.
“Lonvellin’s ship!” said Stillman.
They began to run.
T
he communications room on
Vespasian
was a whirlwind of activity with the Captain forming its calm and purposeful center. When Stillman and Conway arrived orders had gone out to the courier ship and all available helicopters to load decontamination and rescue gear and proceed to the blast area to render all possible aid. There was, of course, no hope for the Etlan force which had been surrounding Lonvellin’s ship, but there were isolated farms and at least one small village on the fringe area. The rescuers would have to deal with panic as well as radiation casualties, because the Etlans had no experience of nuclear explosions and would almost certainly resist evacuation.
Out on the field, when Conway had seen Lonvellin’s ship go up and had realized what it meant, he had felt physically ill. And now, listening to Williamson’s urgent but unhurried orders going out, he felt cold sweat trickle down his forehead and spine. He licked his lips and said, “Captain, I have an urgent suggestion to make …”
He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his tone which made Williamson swing around immediately.
“This accident to Lonvellin means that you are in charge of the project, Doctor,” Williamson said impatiently. “There is no need for such diffidence.”
“In that case,” said Conway in the same low, tense voice, “I have orders for you. Call off the rescue attempts and order everyone back to the ship. Take off before we are bombed, too …”
Conway saw them all looking at him, at his white, sweating face and frightened eyes, and he could see them all jumping to wrong conclusions. Williamson looked angry, embarrassed and completely at a loss for a few
seconds, then his expression hardened. He turned to an officer beside him, snapped an order, then swung to face Conway again.
“Doctor,” he began stiffly, “I have just put out our secondary meteor shield. Any solid object greater than one inch in diameter approaching from any direction whatever will be detected at a distance of one hundred miles and automatically deflected by pressors. So I can assure you, Doctor, that we are in no danger from any hypothetical attack with atomic missiles. The idea of a nuclear bombardment here is ridiculous, anyway. There is no atomic power on Etla, none whatever. We have instruments … You must have read the report.
“My
suggestion,
” the Captain went on, in exactly the tone he used to suggest that the junior astrogator make an alteration in course, “is that we rush all possible help to the survivors of the blow-up, which must have been caused by a fault in Lonvellin’s power pile …”
“Lonvellin wouldn’t have a faulty pile!” Conway said harshly. “Like many long-lived beings it suffered from a constant and increasing fear of death the longer its life went on. It had the ultimate in personal physicians so that illness would not shorten its already tremendous life span, and it follows that it would not have endangered itself by using a ship which was anything but mechanically perfect.
“Lonvellin was killed,” Conway went on grimly, “and the reason they hit its ship first is probably because they dislike e-ts so much. And it’s nice to know that you can protect the ship, but if we leave now they might not launch another missile at all, and our people out there and a lot more Etlans would not have to die …”
It was no good, Conway thought sickly. Williamson looked angry and embarrassed and stubborn—angry at being given apparently senseless orders, embarrassed because it looked as though Conway was behaving like a frightened old woman and stubborn because he thought he and not Conway was right.
Get the lead out of your pants, you unprintable fool!
Conway raged at him, but under his breath. He could not address such words to a Monitor Colonel surrounded by junior officers, and for the added reason that Williamson was not nor ever had been a fool. He was a reasonable, intelligent, highly competent officer. It was just that he had not had the chance to put the facts together properly. He didn’t have any medical training, nor did he have a nasty, suspicious mind like Conway …
“You have a report on the Empire for me,” he said instead. “Can I read it?”
Williamson’s eyes flickered toward the battery of view-screens surrounding them. All showed scenes of frantic activity—a helicopter being readied for flight, another staggering off the ground with a load obviously in excess of the safety limit, and a stream of men and decontamination equipment being rushed through the lock of the courier ship. He said, “You want to read it
now …
?”
“Yes,” said Conway, then quickly shook his head as another idea struck him. He had been trying desperately to make Williamson take off immediately and leave the explanations until later when there was time to give them, but it was obvious now that he would have to explain first, and fast. He said, “I’ve a theory which explains what has been going on here and the report should verify it. But if I can tell you what I think is in that report before reading it, will you give my theory enough credence to do what I tell you and take off at once?”
Outside the ship both ’copters were climbing into the night sky, the courier boat was sealing her lock and a collection of surface transport, both Etlan and Monitor, was dispersing toward the perimeter. More than half of the ship’s crew were out there, Conway knew, together with all the land-based Corpsmen who could possibly be spared—all heading for the scene of the blow-up and all piling up the distance between themselves and
Vespasian
with every second which passed.
Without waiting for Williamson’s reply, Conway rushed on, “My guess is that it is an Empire in the strict sense of the word, not a loose Federation like ours. This means an extensive military organization to hold it together and implement the laws of its Emperor, and the government on individual worlds would also be an essentially military one. All the citizens would be DBDGs like the Etlans and ourselves, and on the whole pretty average people except for their antipathy toward extra-terrestrials, who they have had little opportunity of getting to know so far.”
Conway took a deep breath and went on, “Living conditions and level of technology should be similar to our own. Taxation might be high, but this would be negated by government controlled news channels. My guess is that this Empire has reached the unwieldy stage, say about forty to fifty inhabited systems …”
“Forty-three,” said Williamson in a surprised voice.
“ … And I would guess that everyone in it knows about Etla and are sympathetic toward its plight. They would consider it a world under constant quarantine, but they do everything they can to help it …”
“They certainly do!” Williamson broke in. “Our man was on one of the outlying planets of the Empire for only two days before he was sent to the Central world for a audience with the Big Chief. But he had time to see what the people thought of Etla. There are pictures of the suffering Etlans practically everywhere he looked. In places they out-numbered commercial advertising, and it is a charity to which the Imperial Government gives full support! These look like being very nice people, Doctor.”
“I’m sure they are, Captain,” Conway said savagely. “But don’t you think it a trifle odd that the combined charity of forty-three inhabited systems can only run to sending one ship every ten years … ?”
Williamson opened his mouth, closed it, and looked thoughtful. The whole room was silent except for the muted, incoming messages. Then suddenly, from behind Conway, Stillman swore and said thickly, “I see what he’s getting at, sir. We’ve got to take off at once … !”
Williamson’s eyes flicked from Conway to Stillman and back again. He murmured, “One could be temporary insanity, but two represents a trend …”
Three seconds later recall instructions were going out to all personnel, their urgency emphasized by the ear-splitting howl of the General Alarm siren. When every order which had been issued only minutes ago had been reversed, Williamson turned to Conway again.
“Go on, Doctor,” he said grimly. “I think I’m beginning to see it, too.”
Conway sighed thankfully and began to talk.
Etla had begun as a normal colony world, with a single spacefield to land the initial equipment and colonists, then towns had been set up convenient to natural resources and the planetary population had increased nicely. But then they must have been hit by a wave of disease, or a succession of diseases, which had threatened to wipe them out. Hearing of their plight the citizens of the Empire had rallied round, as people do when their friends are in trouble, and soon help began to arrive.
It must have started in a small way but built up quickly as news of the colony’s distress got around. But so far as the Etlans were concerned the assistance stayed small.
The odd, un-missed pennies of a whole planetary population added up to a respectable amount, and when scores of worlds were contributing the amount was something which could not be ignored by the Imperial government, or by the Emperor himself. Because even in those days the
Empire must have grown too big and the inevitable rot had set in at its core. More and more revenue was needed to maintain the Empire, and/ or to maintain the Emperor and his court in the luxury to which they felt entitled. It was natural to assume that they might tell themselves that charity began at home, and appropriate a large part of these funds for their own use. Then gradually, as the Etlan charity was publicized and encouraged, these funds became an essential part of the administration’s income.
That was how it had begun.
Etla was placed in strict quarantine, even though nobody in their right mind would have wanted to go there anyway. But then a calamity threatened, the Etlans through their own unaided efforts must have begun to cure themselves. The lucrative source of revenue looked like drying up. Something had to be done, quickly.
From withholding the aid which would have cured them it was only a small matter ethically, the administration must have told itself, to keep the Etlans sick by introducing a few relatively harmless diseases from time to time. The diseases would have to be photogenic, of course, to have the maximum effect on the kind-hearted citizenry—disfiguring diseases, for the most part, or those which left the sufferer crippled or deformed. And steps had to be taken to ensure that the supply of suffering natives did not fall off, so that the techniques of gynecology and child care on Etla were well advanced.
At a fairly early stage an Imperial Representative, psychologically tailored to fit his post, was installed to ensure that the level of health on the planet was held at the desired point. Somehow the Etlans had ceased to be people and had become valuable sick animals, which was just how the Imperial Representative seemed to regard them.
Conway paused at that point. The Captain and Stillman were looking ill, he thought; which was exactly how he had felt since the destruction of Lonvellin’s ship had caused all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.
He said, “A native force sufficient to drive off or destroy chance visitors is always at Teltrenn’s disposal. Because of the quarantine all visitors are likely to be alien, and the natives have been taught to hate aliens regardless of shape, number or intentions …”
“But how could they be so … so cold-blooded?” Williamson said, aghast.
“It probably started as simple misappropriation of funds,” Conway
said tiredly, “then it gradually got out of hand. But now we, by our interference, have threatened to wreck a very profitable Imperial racket. So now the Empire is trying to wreck us.”
Before Williamson could reply the Chief Communications officer reported both helicopter crews back in the ship, also all personnel who had been within earshot of the siren, which meant everyone in town. The remainder could not make it back to
Vespasian
for several hours at least and had been ordered to go under cover until a scoutship sneaked in later to pick them up. Almost before the officer had finished speaking the Captain snapped “Lift ship” and Conway felt a moment’s dizziness as the ship’s anti-gravity grids compensated for full emergency thrust.
Vespasian
climbed frantically for space, with the courier vessel only ten seconds behind her.
“You must have thought me pretty stupid back there …” Williamson began, then was interrupted by reports from the returned crew-men. One of the helicopters had been fired on and the men from town had been ordered to stay there by the local police. These orders had come directly from the Imperial Representative, with instructions to kill anyone who tried to escape. But the local police and Corpsmen had come to know each other very well, and the Etlans had aimed well above their heads …
“This is getting dirtier by the minute,” said Stillman suddenly. “You know, I think we are going to be blamed for what happened around Lonvellin’s ship, for all the casualties in the area. Everything we have done here is going to be twisted so that
we
will be the villians. And I bet a lot of new diseases will be introduced immediately we leave, for which
we
will be blamed!”
Stillman swore, then went on, “You know how the people of the Empire think of this planet. Etla is their poor, weak, crippled sister, and we are going to be the dirty aliens who cold-bloodedly assaulted her …”
As the Major had been talking Conway had begun to sweat again. His deductions regarding the Empire’s treatment of Etla had been from medical evidence, and it had been the medical aspect which had most concerned him, so that the larger implications of it all had not yet occurred to him. Suddenly he burst out, “But this could mean a
war!
”
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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