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  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 scout ship 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 villains. 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!”

  “Yes indeed,” said Stillman savagely, “and that is probably just what the Imperial government wants. It has grown too big and fat and rotten at the core, judging by what has been happening here. Within a few decades it would probably fall apart of its own accord, and a good thing, too. But there is nothing like a good war, a Cause that everybody can feel strongly about, to pull a crumbling Empire together again. If they play it right this war could make it stand for another hundred years.”

  Conway shook his head numbly. “I should have seen what was happening sooner,” he said. “If we’d had time to tell the Etlans the truth—”

  “You saw it sooner than anyone else,” the Captain broke in sharply, “and telling the natives would not have helped them or us if the ordinary people of the Empire could not have been told also. You have no reason to blame yourself for—”

  “Ordinance Officer,” said a voice from one of the twenty-odd speaker grills in the room. “We have a trace at Green Twelve Thirty-one which I’m putting on your repeater screen Five. Trace is putting out patterned interference against missile attack and considerable radar window, suggesting that it has a guilty conscience and is smaller than we are. Instructions, sir?”

  Williamson glanced at the repeater screen. “Do nothing unless it does,” he said, then turned to Stillman and Conway again. When he spoke it was with the calming, confidence-inspiring tone of the senior officer who bears, and accepts, full responsibility, a tone which insisted that they were not to worry because he was there to do it for them.

  He said, “Don’t look so distressed, gentlemen. This situation, this threat of interstellar war, was bound to come about sometime and plans have been devised for dealing with it. Luckily we have plenty of time to put these plans into effect.

  “Spatially the Empire is a small, dense association of worlds,” he went on reassuringly, “otherwise we could not have made contact with them so soon. The Federation, however, is spread thinly across half the Galaxy. We had a star cluster to search where one sun in five possessed an inhabited planet. Their problem is nowhere near as simple. If they were very lucky they might find us in three years, but my own estimate is that it would be nearer twenty. So you can see that we have plenty of time.”

  Conway did not feel reassured and he must have shown it, but the Captain was trying to meet his objections before he could make them.

  “The agent who made the report may help them,” Williamson went on quickly. “Willingly, because he doesn’t know the truth about the Empire yet, he may give information regarding the Federation and the organization and strength of its Monitor Corps. But because he is a doctor this information is unlikely to be either complete or accurate, and would be useless anyway unless the Empire knows where we are. They won’t find that out unless they capture an astrogator or a ship with its charts intact, and that is a contingency which we will take very great precautions to guard against from this moment on.

  “Agents are trained in linguistics, medicine or the social sciences,” Williamson ended confidently. “Their knowledge of interstellar navigation is nil. The scout ship which lands them returns to base immediately, this being standard precautionary procedure in operations of this sort. So you can see that we have a serious problem but that it is not an immediate one.

  “Isn’t it?” said Conway.

  He saw Williamson and Stillman looking at him — intently and cautiously as if he was some kind of bomb which, having exploded half an hour ago was about to do so again. In a way Conway was sorry that he had to explode on them again and make them share the fear and horrible, gnawing anxiety which up to now had been his alone. He wet his lips and tried to break it to them as gently as possible.

  “Speaking personally,” he said quietly, “I don’t have the faintest idea of the coordinates of Traltha, or Illensa or Earth, or even the Earth-seeded planet where I was born. But there is one set of figures which I do know, and any other doctor on space service in this Sector is likely to know them also. They are the coordinates of Sector General.

  “I don’t think we hav
e any time at all.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The only constructive thing which Conway did during the trip back to Sector General was to catch up on his sleep, but very often the sleep was made so hideous by nightmares of the coming war that it was more pleasant to stay awake, and his waking time he spent in discussions with Williamson, Stillman and the other senior officers on Vespasian. Since he had called the shots right during that last half hour on Etla Williamson seemed to value any ideas he might have, even though problems of espionage, logistics and fleet maneuvers were hardly within the specialty of a Senior Physician.

  The discussions were interesting, informative and, like his dreams, anything but pleasant.

  According to Colonel Williamson an interstellar war of conquest was logistically impossible, but a simple war of extermination could be fought by anyone with sufficient force and stomachs strong enough to withstand the thought of slaughtering other intelligent beings by the planet-load. The Empire had more than enough force, and the strength of its collective stomach was dependent on factors over which the Monitor Corps had no control, as yet.

  Given enough time agents of the Corps could have infiltrated the Empire. They already knew the position of one of its inhabited worlds and, because there was traffic between it and the other planets of the Empire, they would soon know the positions of others. The first step then would be to gather intelligence and eventually … Well, the Corps were no mean propagandists themselves and in a situation like this where the enemy was basing their campaign on a series of Big Lies, some method of striking at this weak spot could be devised. The Corps was primarily a police organization, a force intended not so much to wage war as to maintain peace. And like any good police force its actions were constrained by the possible effects on innocent bystanders-in this case the citizens of the Empire as well as the people of the Federation.

  That was why the plan for undermining the Empire would be set in motion, even though it could not possibly take effect before the first clash occurred. Williamson’s fondest hope-or prayer might be a more accurate word-was that the Corpsman who was now in Empire hands would not know, and so would not be able to tell, the coordinates of Sector General. The Colonel was realist enough to know that if the agent knew anything the enemy would get it out of him one way or another. But failing this ideal solution the hospital would be defended in such a way that it would be the only Federation position that the enemy would know-unless they diverted a large proportion of their force to the time wasting job of searching the main body of the Galaxy, which was just what the Corps wanted.

  Conway tried not to think of what it would be like at Sector General when the entire mobile force of the Empire was concentrated there …

  A few hours before emergence they received another report from the agent who was now on the Empire’s Central World. The first one had taken nine days to reach Etla, the second was relayed with top priority coding in eighteen hours.

  The report stated that the Central World did not seem to be as hostile toward extra-terrestrials as Etla and the other worlds of the Empire. The people there seemed much more cosmopolitan and occasionally e-ts could be seen in the streets. There were subtle indications, however, that beings had diplomatic status and were natives of worlds with which the Empire had made treaties with the purpose of holding them off as a group until such times as it could annex them individually. So far as the agent personally had been treated, things could not have been nicer, and in a few days time he was due for an audience with the Emperor himself. Nevertheless, he was beginning to feel uneasy.

  It was nothing that he could put his finger on-he was a doctor who had been yanked off Survey and pre-Colonization duty, he reminded them, and not one of the Cultural Contact hot-shots. He got the impression that on certain occasions and among certain people, all mention of the Federation’s aims and constitution by himself was discouraged, while at other times, usually when there were only a few people present, they encouraged him to talk at great length. Another point which worried him was the fact that none of the newscasts he had seen made any mention of his arrival. Had the position been reversed and a citizen of the Empire made contact with the Federation, the event would have been top-line news for weeks.

  He wondered sometimes if he was talking too much, and wished that a subspace receiver could be built as small as a sender so that he could ask for instructions.

  That was the last they ever heard from that agent.

  Conway’s return to Sector General was not as pleasant as he had thought it would be a few weeks previously. Then he had expected to return as a near-heroic personage with the biggest assignment of his career successfully accomplished, the plaudits of his colleagues ringing in his ears and with Murchison waiting to receive him with open arms. The latter had been a very slim probability indeed, but Conway liked to dream sometimes. Instead he was returning from a job which had blown up most horribly in his face, hoping that his colleagues would not stop him to ask how or what he had been doing, and with Murchison standing inside the lock with a friendly smile on her face and both arms hanging correctly by her sides.

  Meeting him after a long absence, Conway thought sourly, was the sort of thing one friend did for another — there could be nothing more to it than that. She said it was nice to see him back and he said it was nice to be back, and when she started to ask questions he said he had a lot of things to do now but would it be all right if he called her later, and he smiled as if calling her to arrange a date was the most important thing in his mind. But his smile had suffered through lack of use and she must have seen that there was something definitely insincere about it. She went all Doctor-and-Nurse on him, said that of course he had more important things to attend to, and left quickly.

  Murchison had looked as beautiful and desirable as ever and he had undoubtedly hurt her feelings, but somehow none of these things mattered to Conway at the moment. His mind would not think of anything but his impending meeting with O’Mara. And when he presented himself in the office of the Chief Psychologist shortly afterward it seemed that his worst forebodings were to be realized.

  “Sit down, Doctor,” O’Mara began. “So you finally succeeded in involving us in an interstellar war …

  “That isn’t funny,” said Conway.

  O’Mara gave him a long, steady look. It was a look which not only noted the expression on Conway’s face but such other factors as his posture in the chair and the position and movements of his hands. O’Mara did not set much store by correct modes of address, but the fact that Conway had omitted to say “Sir” was also being noted as a contributory datum and given its proper place in his analysis of the situation. The process took perhaps two minutes and during that time the Chief Psychologist did not move an eyelid. O’Mara had no irritating mannerisms; his strong, blunt hands never twitched or fiddled with things, and when he desired it his features could be as expressive as a lump of rock.

  On this occasion he let his face relax into an expression of almost benign disfavor, and finally he spoke.

  “I agree,” he said quietly, “it isn’t a bit funny. But you know as well as I do that there is always the chance of some well-intentioned doctor in a place like this stirring up trouble on a large scale. We have often brought in some weird beastie of a hitherto unknown species who requires treatment urgently, and there is no time to search for its friends to discover if what we propose to do is the right procedure in the circumstances. A case in point was that Ian chrysalis you had a few months ago. That was before we made formal contact with the Ians, and if you hadn’t correctly diagnosed the patient’s condition as a growing chrysalis instead of a malignant growth requiring instant removal, a procedure which would have killed the patient, we would have been in serious trouble with the Ians.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Conway.

  O’Mara went on, “My remark was in the nature of a pleasantry, and had a certain aptness considering your recent experience with that Ian. Perhaps it was in questionable ta
ste, but if you think I’m going to apologize then you obviously believe in miracles. Now tell me about Etla.

  “And,” he added quickly before Conway could speak, “my desk and wastebasket are full of reports detailing the implications and probable dire consequences of the Etla business. What I want to know is how you handled your assignment as originally given.”

  As briefly as possible Conway did as he was told. While he talked he felt himself begin to relax. He still had a confused and very frightening picture in the back of his mind of what the war would mean to countless millions of beings, to the hospital and to himself, but he no longer felt that he was partly responsible for bringing it about. O’Mara had begun the interview by accusing him of the very thing he had felt guilty of, then without saying so in so many words had made him see how ridiculous it had been to feel guilty. But as he neared the point where Lonvellin’s ship had been destroyed, the feeling returned full strength. If he had put the pieces together sooner, Lonvellin would not have died …

  O’Mara must have detected the change of feeling, but allowed him to finish before he said, “It surprises me that Lonvellin didn’t see it before you did, it being the brain behind the operation. And while we’re on the subject of brains, yours does not seem to be thrown into complete disorder by problems involving large numbers of people requiring differing forms of treatment. So I have another job for you. It is smaller than the Etla assignment, you won’t have to leave the hospital, and with any luck it won’t blow up in your face.

  “I want you to organize the evacuation of Sector General.”

  Conway swallowed, then swallowed again.

  “Stop looking as though you’d been sandbagged!” O’Mara said testily, “or I will hit you with something! You must have thought this thing through far enough to see that we can’t have patients here when the Empire force arrives. Or any non-military staff who have not volunteered to stay. Or any person, regardless of position or rank, who has in his mind detailed information regarding the whereabouts of any Federation planets. And surely the idea of telling people nominally your superiors what to do doesn’t frighten you, not after ordering a Corps Colonel around