Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

“TO ALL HANDS: THERE WILL BE NO YELLOW WARNING THREE. REPEAT, THERE WILL BE NO YELLOW WARNING THREE. BOAT CREWS, DECOMMISSION

ALL BOATS AND ASSEMBLE AT LANDING STATIONS. YELLOW WARNING FOUR WILL GO INTO EFFECT IN ONE HOUR. ALL HANDS STAND BY FOR

LANDING.”

The landing site looked ideal, even after they were safely down on it. It

was a broad plain beside the western shore of a huge body of water which,

since it was both fed and drained by rivers, could safely be assumed to be

fresh. Farther to the west there was a

112 fames Blish

solid wall of virgin forest, marching unbroken for hundreds of miles into

the foothills of a long and very high mountain range.

“Now we sit,” Ertak said firmly. “I know everybody has his nose pressed to

the ports, or would if we had any ports. But I want everyone to bear the

fate of the Kestrel at the very front of his mind. We are going to make

especially exhaustive bacteriological tests-and we are not going to miss

any other tricks, either. The stand-bys will suit up and go out in rotation

to collect samples; first man to disembark will be selected by lot. And

nobody comes back into the ship without spending one full hour in the

airlock under live steam at sixteen atmospheres, until Dr. Chase-Huebner’s

prepared to certify this planet as clean.”

That took two weeks, and her certification was well hedged with conditions.

I can’t rule out long incubation periods,” she reminded the Director. “Some

forms of viral cancer, for instance, take five or six years to incubate;

and some bacterial diseases, like leprosy, may take as long as fifteen. But