The Jupiter Plague

Killer outdid himself. He knew that the patient was desperately ill and that the sooner he was in the hospital where all its complex facilities could be marshaled to aid him the better his chances were — but this circumstance was only the trigger. As the ambulance’s turbine whined up to speed he saw that the police had opened a lane for him directly to the highway, which had been completely cleared of all traffic. When the speedometer hit one hundred he kicked in the overdrive and kept his foot on the floor, screaming the heavy machine down the center of the concrete roadway. Green and white police copters paced him on both sides and another copter dropped down between them: sunlight glinted from a lens in the side window and he knew that the scene was going out on television to the world, they were watching him. He gripped the wheel tighter as they hit the turn at

Flushing Meadows, keeping speed and turning sharply so that they broadsided into it, skidding sideways through the arc of road and leaving long streaks of black rubber on the white surface. Television!

In the rear of the ambulance the man from space was dying. The antipyretic was controlling his temperature, but his pulse was fluttering and growing steadily weaker. Sam turned the UV light onto the patient’s chest, but the furunculosis made it impossible to read the medical history invisibly tattooed there.

“Isn’t there something else we can do?” Nita asked helplessly.

“Not now — we’ve done all we can until we know more about the mechanism of this disease.” He looked at her strained face and twisting fingers: she was not used to the dark presence of approaching death. “Wait, there is something we can do — and you’ll do it much better than I could.” He pulled over one of the equipment boxes and unlatched the lid. “Your pathology department will want blood and sputum samples, you might even prepare slides from those suppurating boils.”

“Of course,” she said, straightening up. “I can do it now and save that much time after we get to the hospital.” While she spoke she was laying out the equipment with automatic efficiency. Sam made no attempt to help since right now work was the best therapy for her. He leaned back on the bench, swaying with the motion of the hurtling ambulance, the only sounds in the insulated compartment the hoarse breathing of the patient and the sighing of the air filters.

When Nita finished taking her samples he snapped the oxygen tent over the stretcher, sealing it tight and putting a filter over the exhaust outlet.

“This will cut down the chance of contamination, and the increased oxygen tension should ease the load on his heart.”

The hydraulic motors hummed briefly and the rear door swung wide onto the empty and silent receiving platform. “I can give you,a hand with the stretcher, Doc,” Killer said over the intercom.

“There’s no need, Killer, Dr. Mendel and I can do it ourselves. I want you to stay in the cab until the decon team is finished with the ambulances. And that’s an order.”

“I always do what the doctor says—” His voice cut off as the circuit clicked open.

Sam wheeled the stretcher toward the elevator while Nita watched the patient. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the waiting technicians in sealed plastic suits carrying spray tanks on their backs. One of them lifted his hand briefly and Sam realized that McKay himself was leading the team, the head of the Department of Tropical Medicine decontaminating an ambulance.

“This elevator is on remote,” a voice said from a speaker in the wall when they had pushed the stretcher in. The door closed behind them, then opened again on the sixtieth floor. The corridor was also empty and all of the doors were shut and sealed, waiting for the decon men to follow them up. Ahead of them the first of the thick, vault-type doors of the tight quarantine ward swung open, then sealed itself behind them. The inner door opened.

“Onto the bed first, then get those samples through to the lab,” Sam said, and recognized a tone of relief in his voice. The man was still his patient, but the physicians in the hospital would soon be monitoring the case and advising him. Guiltily, he realized that his relief came from the sharing of responsibility: If the patient were to die now the blame would not be all his.