The Jupiter Plague

“You catch on quick, boy. You better hang around the orderly room and take my calls for a while. The corporal here can carry the message back to the dock.”

Once inside, with the door closed, Cleaver relinquished his hold on his temper. “Politicians,” he snorted, stamping the length of the room. “Meatheads! Sitting up there on their fat duffs and making unilateral decisions that may affect the entire future of the human race — and making those decisions out of fear. I hadn’t realized that the old philosophy of a bomb-waving solution for international problems was still lurking in dark, spider-filled corners of the political mind. Cretins! They talk about war on disease without realizing that it is a war, particularly now, and has to be run like a war. We need good intelligence and the only place we’re going to find it is inside that spaceship. They’re operating out of fear — if you can’t run away from the unknown, why just blow it up!”

“They seem to be afraid of you too, Cleaver— even though you are under UN command. Why else wouldn’t they inform you about the decision to destroy the ”Pericles‘?“

The general pulled open a file cabinet and took out a giant, two-quart bottle of bourbon. “Get the glasses out of the desk drawer,” he said, then rilled the large water glasses almost to the brim. “Are they really afraid I’ll bust into that spacer?”

“It looks like it.”

“Well — should I? What’s the reason you want to look at it? What do you think we can find?”

Sam had the glass raised to his lips when he stopped suddenly, frozen, then slowly Iowered it, untasted, back to the desk.

He knew what they would find in the ship.

This was no logical conclusion but a leap in the dark as his subconscious put together a number of clues that had been collecting ever since the spaceship had landed. It was a single answer that could explain everything that had happened — yet it was an incredible answer that he did not dare speak aloud if he wanted Cleaver to help him get into the “Pericles.” He couldn’t tell him this, so he had to fall back upon the general’s own arguments.

“We can’t possibly know what we’ll find in there, Cleaver, though there should surely be records of some kind. The important thing is that we cannot completely ignore the possibility of missing out on anything that might be of help. And there is — well — something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a guess — a wild hunch— and so wild I don’t want to talk about. But I do know that we must get into that ship.”

“That’s not much to go on, Sam, you realize that? Not now. It would have been enough awhile back when we could have raised a political stink and got some public pressure working on our side to take a look into the ship. But public pressure and publicity are out now and there is only one way left that we can get into that ship…” He broke off, swirling the liquor round and round in his glass before drinking the remainder in a long swallow.

“I’ll say it so you won’t have to, Cleaver. We’ll have to break into that rocket by force — in spite of the guards.”

When he finally answered, the general’s voice was flat and empty of emotion.

“That’s treason you’re talking about, boy — do you know that? And I’m a serving officer in the Army in a time of international peril. If I did what you’re suggesting I could be shot.”

“If you don’t do it, people are going to keep right on dying by the thousands then by the tens of thousands — because I can guarantee that we’re no closer now to finding a cure for Rand’s disease than we were the day it started. I took the same oath of allegiance that you did, Cleaver, and I’d break it in an instant if I felt that the people on the top had made a wrong decision over a danger as big as this one. And they have made a wrong decision…”

“I know they have — but it’s asking too much, Sam! I agree the ship should be entered, but I can’t bring myself to do it this way, not with the slight evidence, guesses and hunches that we have—”

A light knocking on the door interrupted him and he threw it open angrily. “What the devil do you want?” he asked Lieutenant Haber, who was uncomfortably standing there.

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been turning away all the calls and people who wanted to see you but — there is a call on the hot line, I didn’t feel qualified to take it.”

General Burke hesitated for a single instant. “That’s fine, Haber. Put it through to me here.”

He relocked the door then seated himself behind the large desk where there sat three phones, one of them a brilliant red.

“Top secret direct line,” he said, picking up the hand set. “Keep out of range of the pickup.”

It was a brief conversation, almost a monologue because Burke said little more than yes and no, then hung up. He seemed to have aged a bit and he rested his hands on the desk top as though he were tired.

“It’s happened,” he finally said. “More cases of the plague, people dropping on the streets. Your labs at Bellevue have confirmed the change.”

“You mean that…”