Hazel alone had the courage to quiz him about the calls. On the sixth day at lunch she said, ‘Well, Roger? What was the news today? Give.’
‘Nothing much. Hazel, these chops are atrocious.’.
‘They ought to be good; I flavored ’em with my own blood.’ She held out a bandaged thumb. ‘Why don’t you try cooking? But back to the subject. Don’t evade me, boy.’
‘She thinks she’s on the track of something. So far as she can tell from their medical records, nobody has caught it so far who is known to have had measles.’
Meade said, ‘Measles? People don’t die of that, do they?’
‘Hardly ever,’ agreed her grandmother, ‘though it can be fairly serious in an adult.’
‘I didn’t say it was measles,’ her father answered testily, ‘nor did your mother. She thinks it’s related to measles, a mutant strain maybe more virulent.’
‘Call it “neomeasles”,’ suggested Hazel. ‘That’s a good question-begging tag and it has an impressive scientific sound to it. Any more deaths, Roger?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘How many?’
‘She wouldn’t say. Van is still alive, though, and she says that he is recovering. She told me,’ he added, as if trying to convince himself, ‘that she thought she was learning how to treat it.’
‘Measles,’ Hazel said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve never had it, Roger.’
‘No.’
‘Nor any of the kids.’
‘Of course not.’ put in Pollux. Luna City was by long odds the healthiest place in the known universe; the routine childhood diseases of Earth had never been given a chance to establish.
‘How did she sound, Son?’
‘Dog tired.’ He frowned. ‘She even snapped at me.’
‘Not Mummy!’
‘Quiet, Meade.’ Hazel went on, ‘I’ve had measles, seventy or eighty years ago. Roger, I had better go over and help her.’
He smiled without humor. ‘She anticipated that. She said to tell you thanks but she had all the unskilled help she could use.’
‘”Unskilled help!” I like that! Why, during the epidemic of ’93 there were times when I was the only woman in the colony able to change a bed. Hummph!’
Hazel deliberately waited around for the phone call the next day, determined to get a few words at least with her daughter-in-law. The call came in about the usual time; Roger took it. It was not his wife.
‘Captain Stone? Turner, sir Charlie Turner. I’m the third engineer. Your wife asked me to phone you.’
‘What’s the matter? She busy?’
‘Quite busy.’
‘Tell her to call me as soon as she’s free. I’ll wait by the board.’
‘I’m afraid that’s no good, sir. She was quite specific that she would not be calling you today. She won’t have time.’
‘Fiddlesticks! It will only take her thirty seconds. In a big ship like yours you can hook her in wherever she is.’
The man sounded embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Stone gave strict orders not to be disturbed’
‘But confound it, I —’
‘I’m very sorry, sir. Good-by.’ He left him sputtering into a dead circuit.
Roger Stone remained quiet for several moments, then turned a stricken face to his mother. ‘She’s caught it.’
Hazel answered quietly, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Son.’ But in her own heart she had already reached the same conclusion. Edith Stone had contracted the disease she had gone to treat.
The same barren stall was given Roger Stone on the following day; by the third day they gave up the pretence. Dr. Stone was ill, but her husband was not to worry. She had already, before she gave into it herself, progressed far enough in standardizing a treatment that all the new cases — hers among them — were doing nicely. So they said.
No, they would not arrange a circuit to her bed. No, he could not talk to Captain Vandenbergh; the Captain was still too ill.
‘I’m coming over!’ Roger Stone shouted.
Turner hesitated. ‘That’s up to you, Captain. But if you do, we’ll have to quarantine you here. Dr. Stone’s written orders.’
Roger Stone switched off. He knew that that settied it; in matters medical Edith was a Roman judge — and he could not abandon his own ship, his family, to get to Mars by themselves. One frail old woman, two cocksure half-trained student pilots — no, he had to take his ship in.