Гарри Гаррисон - The Jupiter Plague

“Of course. There doesn’t seem to be anything that we can do here and there is no indication that it is the house we are looking for.”

“Up ahead, more smoke,” the pilot said as they passed west of the settlement. He followed a rutted farm road to a clearing where a white, frame house stood. A man was in the yard waving up at them and a trickle of smoke rose from the chimney.

“This looks more like it,” the sergeant said. He squinted into the sun as they turned and automatically loosened his recoilless.50 in its holster. “Is there enough room to set down there?”

“Enough room to put down five of these jobs. Here we go.”

The man below took shelter in the doorway of the farm as the copter settled straight down, a billowing circle of dust and weeds blowing out from below it. They touched gently and rocked on the wheels: Sam reached for the door handle but the sergeant put his hand on his shoulder.

“I think I’ll go out first, Doctor. The town was too quiet, and that house that burned down— there’s just the smell of trouble around here. Stay here and keep an eye on the bus, Forson.”

The pilot clicked off the jets and nodded. “You’re just not used to the country, Sarge. It’s always quiet like this.” He grunted. “Why do you think I came to the city?”

The sergeant jumped down and walked slowly toward the man who came out of the farmhouse and waved again, a gray-haired man who wore old-fashioned suspenders over a white shirt.

“Come in,” he called out. “I’m Dr. Stissing. I’m the one who called up; the patient is inside.”

The sergeant gave him a quick look in passing and just nodded, then went into the house. He came out a few moments later and called across to the copter.

“This is the right place, there’s a man in bed here.”

Sam was waiting with his black bag and climbed down. Stissing looked a little bewildered, rubbing at the white stubble on his jaw. In his late seventies, Sam guessed. He shook hands.

“I’m Dr. Bertolli, Bellevue Hospital. I’d like to see your patient if I may.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course. Right through there. I’m very glad to see you, very glad indeed; I’ve been up two days and a night and I’m not used to be doing that any more. But Hadley in there phoned me, very frightened, and he should have been, because I recognized Rand’s disease when I walked in and he knew himself that he had it. I’ve been treating him here alone ever since, and I have the fever licked and he’s on the mend…”

“Do you mind if I have that curtain opened?” Sam asked. The room was dark and the man on the bed only a dim outline.

“Surely, of course, just resting Hadley’s eyes.”

The sergeant pulled up the curtain and Sam stood next to the bed, looking down at the middle-aged man with the red boils on his face: he put the telltale against his wrist.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Hadley?” he asked.

“Hadley’s my first name. And I felt a whole lot better in my time, I tell you. Felt worse until the doc came.”

Sam opened Hadley’s pajama jacket — there were one or two boils scattered on his chest— then palpated his armpits: the lymph nodes were swollen.

“That hurts,” Hadley said.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be all right.”

“Then he is cured,” Dr. Stissing said, his words tumbling one over the other. “I knew it, I told him, these new antibiotics. The plague, I mean Rand’s disease…”

“Hadley’s a lucky man,” Sam said tiredly, “he never had Rand’s disease. This is common furunculosis complicated by a lympathic infection which the antibiotics have brought under control.”

“But Rand’s disease, the symptoms, the fever, all the same. I’ve been practicing long enough…”

“How long have you been ill, Hadley?” Sam asked.

“Couple of days. Fever hit me right after the rocket landed, like I told the doc. Felt like I was dying.”

“That was the fever part — but how long have you had the boils?”

“Came at the same time. Of course I felt them coming on a few days earlier. Then the fever hit and I knew I had the plague…”

“Not the plague from space, Hadley,” Dr. Stissing said, sitting down heavily on the wooden kitchen chair by the head of the bed. “Just a bad case of the boils. Boils and a fever. I’m… sorry, Doctor, about getting you up here from the city—”

The sudden crackle of small arms fire sounded from outside the house, from the front, broken by the heavy boom of a recoilless handgun. The sergeant ran from the room, drawing his pistol as he went; Sam was right behind him.

“Stay here!” Sam shouted over his shoulder to the bewildered doctor. He reached the parlor just as the sergeant threw open the front door. A hail of small arms fire splintered the door frame and punched holes in the floor. Sam had been under fire before, often enough to have developed all the correct instincts: he dived and rolled at the same time, out of the line of fire through the door. The sergeant lay crumpled in the doorway, his fingers still outstretched toward the bulk of the recoilless pistol, which lay on the porch outside. A few more shots splattered around the door as Sam grabbed him by the leg and pulled him away from the opening. The right shoulder of his uniform was spotted with blood and Sam tore it open: there was the entrance hole where a small-caliber bullet had penetrated. It must have been a magnum because the hydrostatic shock had knocked the sergeant out and, as Sam rolled him over to look at the exit wound, also small and bleeding only slightly, the sergeant opened his eyes and tried to sit up. Sam pressed him back.

“Take it easy — you’ve been hit.”

“The hell you say!” The sergeant pushed Sam’s hand away and struggled to a sitting position. “What’s happening out there?”

Sam looked quickly from the side of the window, shielded by a curtain, and pulled his head back before the shots crashed through the glass. It was long enough for him to see the dark forms of the men who were running toward the copter, and to see the body of the pilot hanging halfway out of the doorway.

“Don’t try nothing!” A voice called from outside. “You don’t shoot at us and we’re not going to shoot at you.” Sam rose behind the curtain and the sergeant struggled up next to him. The men had pushed the limp pilot to the ground and were climbing in. One of them, the one who had been talking, held a young girl by the arms, shielding himself behind her body. She was in her twenties and the way her head hung and the way her clothing was torn left no doubt as to what had happened to her.

“Try anything I’ll shoot the girl,” the man shouted. “So help me I’ll kill her. We don’t want no more trouble, we just want to get away from the plague. Andy here can fly your whirly, learned in the Army, and we’re going to take it and get out. Be smart and no one’s going to get hurt.”

He walked backward toward the door, dragging the girl with him. The jets whistled to life and the big blades began to move, faster and faster. When the copter began to rock on its landing gear the man in the doorway hurled the girl from him and climbed quickly inside. Sam and the sergeant jumped back as a hail of shots tore through the window. They had taken the pilot’s recoilless.50: a foot-wide piece of wood was blasted from the frame.

Slowly, ignoring the bullets that crashed into the wooden planking around him, the sergeant walked out on the porch and reached down with his left hand to pick up his pistol. The rain of fire stopped as the copter rose straight up.

Carefully, in no hurry, the sergeant walked clear of the porch, flicked off the safety and raised the pistol straight-armed before him. He waited until the copter swung away and was no longer over the girl, who still lay face down in the yard, then dropped the pistol sights onto the target and pulled the trigger.