“We can only hope that the Descartes gets the message in time,” he added grimly. “With the hospital standby reactor boosting the output of the Corps transmitter, if they don’t hear it they have to be deaf, dumb and blind.”
“Or very sick,” O’Mara observed quietly.
A long silence followed and was broken by the respectful voice of Captain Fletcher.
“If I might make a suggestion, Colonel,” he said, “we know the position of the wreckage and of the Descartes, if it is still at the disaster site and, very approximately, of the sector that is likely to contain the wrecked ship’s home planet. If a distress beacon is released in that area it is almost certain that it will come from the Descartes. The Rhabwar could answer it, not to give assistance but to warn off any other would-be rescuers.”
Obviously the Colonel had forgotten about the ambulance ship. “Are you still connected to the hospital by boarding tube, Captain?” he asked harshly.
“Not since the contamination alert,” Fletcher replied. “But if you approve the suggestion we’ll need power and consumables for an extended trip. Normally an ambulance ship is gone only for a couple of days at most.”
“Approved, and thank you, Captain,” said the Colonel. “Arrange for the material to be placed outside your airlock as soon as possible. Your men can load the stores on board later so as to avoid contact with hospital personnel.”
Conway had been dividing his attention between the conversation and the analyzer, which looked as if it was about to make a pronouncement. He looked up at the screen and protested: “Colonel, Captain, you can’t do that! If you take the Rhabwar away we lose Pathologist Murchison and the DBPK specimens, and remove any chance we have of quickly identifying and neutralizing this thing. She is the only pathologist here with first-hand experience of the life-form.”
The Colonel looked thoughtful for a moment. “That is a valid objection, Doctor, but consider. There is no dearth of pathologists here at the hospital to help you study the live specimen, even second-hand, and the DBPK cadavers on the Rhabwar are staying there. We can contain and, in time, devise some method of treating this disease at the hospital. But the Rhabwar could be instrumental in keeping the Descartes from infecting the warm-blooded oxygenbreathers of dozens of planets. The original order stands. The Rhabwar will refuel and replenish and stand by to answer the expected distress signal from the Descartes .
He had a lot more to say on the subject of probable future history, including the strong probability of having to place the DBPK patient’s home planet and off-world colonies in strict quarantine and to refuse all contact with the new species. The Federation would have to enforce this quarantine in its own defense, and the result might well lead to interstellar war. Then, abruptly, the sound cut out, although it was obvious that Colonel Skempton was still talking to someone off-screen-someone, it was obvious, who was objecting to the Rhabwar’s imminent departure as strongly as Conway had.
But the objector, or objectors, was a medical staff-member concerned with solving what was essentially a unique medical problem in extraterrestrial physiology or pharmacology, while Colonel Skempton, like the dedicated Monitor Corps policeman that he was, wanted only to protect a frighteningly large number of innocent bystanders from he knew not what.
Conway looked over at the image of O’Mara. “Sir, I agree that there is the most fearful danger of letting loose a virulent infection that could bring about the collapse of the Federation and cause the technology of many of its individual worlds to slide back into their particular dark ages. But before we react we must first know something about the threat we are reacting against. We must stop and think. Right now we are overreacting and not thinking at all. Could you speak to the Colonel sensibly, sir, and point out to him that a panic reaction frequently does more harm than-”
“Your colleagues are already doing that,” the Chief Psychologist replied dryly, “much more forcibly and persuasively than I could, so far without success. But if you feel that we are all guilty of a panic reaction, Doctor, perhaps you will demonstrate the kind of calm, logical reasoning that you think this problem demands?”