Murray Leinster

“ But we are fools if we still believe, because it is not true any more. How do we make people understand, Calhoun? You tell me. I can handle people when they are not afraid. I can make them do what I think wise—when they are not afraid. But when they fear—"
"When they fear," said Calhoun dryly, "they want a stranger to tell them what to do. You came for me, remember? You are a stranger to One City and Three City. Pat is a Stranger to Two City. If the cities become really afraid—"
Hunt grunted. ”

“ There is such a thing as an isolation syndrome, Murgatroyd. A syndrome is a complex of pathological symptoms which occur together as a result of some morbid condition. To us humans, isolation is morbid. You help me to endure it, Murgatroyd, but I couldn't get along with only your society—charming as it is—for but so long. A group of people can get along longer than a single man, but there is a limit for any small-sized group. ”

“ There was the misty golden ribbon in space. It was assuredly beyond the technical capacity of cities suffering from an isolation syndrome. He'd guessed at hydroponic gardens underground. There was surely no surface city near the landing grid, and the city entrance they'd just left was in the face of a cliff. Such items pointed to a limited technical capacity. Both, also, suggested mining as the original purpose of the human colony or colonies here.
Only mining would make a colony self-supporting in an arctic climate. This world could have been colonized to secure rare metals from it. ”

“ A third in Three City. In each city they were used to their own sickness—"
"That is it," said Hunt, nodding. "But why is Pat not dying? Or Nym? Why do you do nothing to keep them alive?"
"Suppose," said Calhoun, "the carrier of a sickness dies. What happens?"
Hunt bit again, and chewed. Suddenly he choked. He sputtered:
"There is no sickness to spread on the clothing! The people no longer have it to give to strangers who are not used to it! The babies do not get used to it while they are little! There is no longer a One City sickness or a Two City sickness or a Three!" ”

“ But human beings did not thrive on a wholly un-Earthly diet.
The clump of slowly moving men reached the reclining cow. They pulled up stakes which surrounded her, and coiled up wire or cordage which had made the stakes into a fence. They prodded the animal. Presently it lurched to its feet and swung its head about foolishly. They drove it toward the Med Ship.
Fifty yards away they stopped, and the outside microphones brought the sound of their voices muttering. By then Calhoun had seen their faces. ”

“ The romantic appeal of a stranger is at once a wise provision of nature and a cause of incredible furies and disasters. It is notorious that spaceship crews are inordinately popular where colonies are small and strangers infrequent. It is no less notorious that a girl may be destitute of suitors on her own world, but has nearly her choice of husbands if she merely saves the ship fare to another.
Calhoun could have predicted defiances of tradition and law and quarantine alike, as soon as he began to learn the state of things here. ”

“ Calhoun could hardly believe his ears. This was an emergency situation! The curing of a sick cow was considered more convincing than a Med Ship man's regular credentials! Such a scale of values hinted at more than a mere isolation syndrome. There were thousands of inhabited worlds, now, with splendid cities and technologies which most men accepted with the same bland confidence with which they looked for sunrise. The human race was civilized. ”

“ So across the wide valley of eternal snow there would travel whispers of desperate rebellion, and then firmly resolute murmurings, and then what seemed the most obvious of truths—that it would be much more satisfactory to die together than to live apart. ”

“ Nobody ever gets used to going into overdrive or coming out of it. One is hideously dizzy for an instant, and his stomach has a brief but violent urge to upchuck, and no matter how often one has experienced it, it is necessary to fight a flash of irrational panic caused by the two sensations together.
But after an instant Calhoun stared about him as the vision-screens came to life. They showed the cosmos outside the Med Ship. It was a perfectly normal cosmos—not at all the cosmos of overdrive—but it looked extremely wrong to Calhoun. He and Murgatroyd and the Med Ship were in emptiness. ”

“ As the sledge swept close, there were two small figures who stood close together. They defiantly faced the approaching sledge. As its drive-motor stopped and it merely glided on, its runners whispering on the snow, the girl snatched away the cold-mask which all the inhabitants of this planet wore out-of-doors. She raised her face to the man. ”

“ Calhoun twisted in his seat and shouted above the roar. He made violent gestures. The deep-voiced Hunt, driving from a standing position behind the seat, slowed the sledge. It came nearly to a stop and hissing noises from snow passing beneath it could be heard.
"What's the matter?" His tone was lifeless. "What d'you want?"
"Two people have run away," said Calhoun vexedly. "Your daughter Nym and a man from Three City—whatever that is. You're driven out to prevent fighting between the cities." ”

“ The distance between sol-type stars is on an average very much higher, and with certain specific exceptions habitable planets are satellites of sol-type suns. But only a fraction of the habitable planets are colonized, and when a ship has traveled blind, in overdrive, for two months or more its pilot cannot simply look astern and recognize his point of departure. There's too much scenery in between. Further, nobody can locate himself by the use of star-maps unless he knows where something on the star-map is, with reference to himself. Which makes a star-map not always useful. ”

“ Three City men'll come boiling over—" The voice raised in pitch, expressing scorn and fury. "Because they fell in love! We shoulda killed 'em right off or let 'em die in the snow like they wanted in the first place!"
Calhoun nodded almost imperceptibly to himself. When there is a syndrome forbidding association between societies, it is a part of the society's interior struggle against morbidity that there shall be forbidden romances. The practice of exogamy is necessary for racial health, hence there is an instinct for it. ”

“ If people lived by choice in an inhospitable environment, that was not a Med man's problem, but anything which led to preventable deaths was. And in a Crusoe colony there were plenty of preventable deaths!
He cooked a meal to have something to occupy his mind. Murgatroyd sat on his haunches and sniffed blissfully. Presently Calhoun ate, and again presently darkness fell on this part of the world. There were new noises—small ones. He went to look. The pasture inside the landing grid was faintly lighted by the glowing ribbon in the sky. ”

“ They've sentries out—they said somebody sneaked past them—against what I imagine must be Two City and Three City. I've an impression that the sentries are to enforce a quarantine rather than to put up a fight. It is probable that the other communities practice the same tactics—plus biological cold war if somebody did bring a sick cow here to infect and destroy the local herd. These people may have a landing grid, but they've an isolation syndrome and I'm afraid there's a classic Crusoe health problem in being. ”

“ And panic would inevitably call up the notion of the most-feared thing in their lives. Sickness. The most-feared thing is always a rare thing, of course. One cannot fear a frequent thing, because one either dies of it or comes to take it for granted. Fear is always of the rare or nonexistent. One City would be filled with fear of sickness.
And sickness would come. Hunt would call them, presently, on a walkie-talkie communicator. He would express deep concern because—so he'd say—new domestic animals intended for Two City had been dumped on One City pastureland. ”

“ One accepts the first-imagined solution to a problem without examining it, either out of an urgent desire to avoid the labor of thinking, or out of impassioned reluctance to think about the matter at hand when prettier and more pleasurable other things can be contemplated.... ”

“ Calhoun jockeyed the Med Ship to position for a landing call. This was not Merida II, but there should be a colony here. That glowing ribbon had not been hung out for nothing.
"Med Ship Esclipus Twenty," he said confidently into the spacephone mike. "Calling ground. Requesting co-ordinates for landing. My mass is fifty tons. Repeat, five-oh tons. Purpose of landing, to find out where I am and how to get where I belong."
There was a clicking. Calhoun repeated the call. He heard murmurings which were not directed into the transmitter on the planet. ”

“ It was taught, nowadays, that something of the sort had caused the ancient, primitive human belief that women were perilous to men, and a man must exercise great precaution to avoid evil mana emanating from his prospective bride. When wives were acquired by capture and all human communities were small and fiercely self-isolated—why each unsanitary tribal group might easily acquire a condition like that assumed in cities One, Two, and Three. ”

“ All ships go into overdrive as near their port of departure as they can. Usually it is something like five or six planetary diameters out from the local spaceport. All ships come out of overdrive as near their destinations as computation makes possible. They do not stop to look at scenery on the way. It isn't good for humans to look at stars when there are only stars to see. The sight has a tendency to make them feel small. Too small. Men have been known to come out of such an experience gibbering.
Calhoun scowled at the sight of Between-the-Stars. ”

“ Some young girl must have loved terribly, and some young man been no less impassioned, to accept expulsion from society on a world where there was no food except in hydroponic gardens and artificially warmed pastures. ”

“ What—"
"You know about sickness, eh?" demanded the stocky man evenly. "How to cure it and stop it?"
"I'm a Med Ship man," admitted Calhoun. "For whatever that may mean."
"You're needed in Two City," said the deep-voiced Hunt. His manner was purest resolution. "We came to get you. Get y'medicines. Dress warm. Load us down, if you like, with what you want to take. We got a sledge waiting."
Calhoun felt a momentary relief. This might make his job vastly easier. When isolation and fear brings a freezing of the mind against any novelty—even hope—a medical man has his troubles. ”

“ Four of the six were bearded. The other two were young men. On most worlds men prided themselves that they needed to shave, but few of them omitted the practice.
These six moved hastily away, though the two younger ones turned often to look back. The cow, deserted, stumbled to a reclining position. It lay down, staring stupidly about. It rested its head on the ground.
"I go out now, eh?" asked Calhoun mildly.
"We're watching you!" grated the spacephone speaker.
Calhoun glanced at the outside temperature indicator and added a garment. He put a blaster in his pocket. He went out the exit port. ”

“ Heat elements underground must draw power from somewhere—the grid's tapping of the ionosphere—and heated this pasture from underneath so forage plants could grow here. They did. The cattle fed on them. There would be hydroponic gardens somewhere else, probably underground. They would supply vegetable food in greater quantity. But in the nature of things human beings had to have animal food in a cold climate.
Calhoun went across the pasture with the frowning snowy mountains all about. ”

“ The girders of the landing grid looked very black against it.
He saw a dark figure plodding away until he vanished. Then he reappeared as a deeper black against the snow beyond the pasture. He went on and on until he disappeared again. A long time later another figure appeared where he'd gone out of sight. It plodded back toward the grid. It was a different individual. Calhoun had watched a changing of sentries. Suspicion. Hostility. The least attractive qualities of the human race, brought out by isolation. ”