Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

To die. To rest. Suicide was forbidden and though old she had no ills. But the joy of life had long since left her and, aside from prayer, she lived but to sleep and eat. Fear had gone now that she had been reassured. Her faith was strong.

And good deeds remained to be done.

"Mad!" Charl Tao shook his head as he entered the salon. Nodding to Dumarest and Dephine he drew basic, sipped, made a face, then forced it down.

"Who is mad? Me?" Dephine stared her anger. "I'm fed up with being cooped in a cabin. All right, so it's crazy to mix, but what difference does it make now?"

"None," he said mildly. "But I wasn't talking about you, my dear. I was talking about the old woman. She's turned into a nurse. I left her washing the handler, tending him, crooning like a mother over a child."

"How is he?"

"Fever high. Profuse sweating which is to be expected at such a temperature. Headaches, shivers, pains in the joints." Charl added, slowly, "He's also delirious."

Dephine said, sharply, "Raving, you mean?"

"By now he must be far gone in hallucination. The crisis, I think. Either he will begin to recover in the next few hours or he will die."

"The warning symptoms," said Dumarest. "Have you isolated them yet?"

"I can make a guess, Earl, no more. The handler complained of headaches and nausea a day before he collapsed. However he had been drinking heavily and so the symptoms could have had another cause. But a few hours before he was stricken he did complain of double-vision. It could mean nothing, Earl."

Dumarest said, quietly, "You're wrong, Charl. The engineer complained of that very thing when I saw him last. He also said he felt sick. I told him to lie down and try and get some sleep. If we find blotches on him-"

They were scattered over his shoulders and upper torso, flecks like blackheads which would grow into ebon flowers rimmed with scarlet.

"Help me!" His hands lifted, groping. "My eyes! I can't see! Help me!"

Charl straightened from his examination and shook his head, baffled.

"The eyes don't seem to be affected, but without instruments I can't be sure. And even then my experience is too limited to arrive at a conclusion. A part of incipient hallucination, perhaps? A psychosomatic syndrome?"

"How so?"

"See no evil therefore it doesn't exist. See no illness and it cannot threaten. An escape from unpleasant reality. Was he afraid?"

Dumarest nodded, looking about the cabin, seeing the garish pictures pasted to the bulkheads. Colorful depictions of longed-for pleasures, exaggerated interwindings of shapely limbs, scenes of a vague, dream-like unreality. Visible proof that the engineer had not only imagination but an earthy mind. An imagination which had now turned against him, magnifying his pain.

As the man groaned Dumarest felt a sudden chill, the touch of something against which he had no conscious defense. An enemy which naked steel could neither cow nor defeat. A thing as intangible as a thought, as destructive as a fanatic's ambition.

"I burn!" The engineer writhed in a paroxysm of agony, twisting on the bunk, rearing, his back bent like a bow, hands clenched until the nails dug into his palms. "The pain! Dear God, the pain!"

"Another variable, Earl." Charl shook his head in baffled irritation. "His sensory apparatus appears to have been affected. Usually in men of his type the pain level is inordinately high but now it seems to have been lowered to an incredible extent."

"Could the virus be generating some form of nerve-poison?"

"How can I tell? It's possible in which case it would account for the sudden onset of pain. There hasn't been time for extensive tissue-damage. But if that is the case then why weren't the others affected in the same way?"

"Maybe they were," said Dumarest. "Harmond was drugged until he died, remember?"

"And the handler could be suffering as much in his delirium as the engineer in his physical anguish." Charl nodded, his eyes thoughtful. "In each case it is obvious that the sensory apparatus has been affected by the virus and it could be mere chance which dictates the course the disease will take. If others are affected they could either go insane or-" He winced as the engineer screamed again, a hoarse, rasping, animal-like sound. "Earl!"

The screaming died as Dumarest fired drugs into the tormented body. He checked the load of the hypogun as the engineer sank into merciful oblivion. It had taken a heavy dose-too heavy if it was to be maintained. The supply of drugs was limited and the more he took the less there would be for others.

If others came to need it? If they did and none was available?

Dumarest looked at his hands thinking of Dephine.

Chapter Seven

The lamps flashed, the port cycled, Allia Mertrony went to meet her God. A small, aged, withered woman who had spent the last few days of her life bringing ease to others. Standing before the port, Dumarest hoped she would find what she had sought. Hoped even more that never again would he have to void the shell of a human being into space.