The Jupiter Plague

“Yes, well, thank you.” He hung up and rubbed his jaw, wondering. What was this all about? Who could be important enough to take him away from the emergency work? And how were Chabel and World Health involved? He started to call first, then decided it would be better to go right up. The only stop he made was to wash some of the soot from his hands and face before he pushed open the unlocked door to his room.

It was an UN Army officer, a big man whose back was turned as he stood looking out of the window with his hands clasped behind him in the position of parade rest. His garrison hat was on the table and the peak was rich with gold braid; a field officer. Sam’s eyes jumped from the hat to the familiar hand-tooled holster hanging from the officer’s belt, out of which projected the chrome-and-teak butt of a recoilless.75. As the man turned Sam’s shoulders squared automatically and he had to resist the desire to throw a salute.

“It’s been ten years, hasn’t it, Sam?” General Burke asked, swinging about and sticking out a large and gnarled brown hand. Sam took it and remembered just in time to clamp down hard with his fingers so that they wouldn’t get crushed.

“Yes, sir, at least ten years,” Sam answered. He could think of nothing better to say. Burke looked the same, perhaps a few more crowfeet at the corner of those burning, dark eyes, maybe a little more thrust to that big jaw. But what was he doing here?

“Listen, Sam, I won’t call you doctor if you won’t call me sir, or general.” He gave a last powerful contraction before he let go of Sam’s hand. “My friends call me Cleaver.”

“I was there when you got the name,” Sam said, and he had to smile as he did. It was during the evacuation operation on Formosa. There had been a night guerrilla raid while all of the officers had been in the mess tent and, for one of the rare times in his life, General Burke hadn’t been armed. But he had grabbed a meat cleaver from the cook and howling like an Indian — thereby giving new strength to the rumor that he was half Apache— had chopped a hole in the side of the tent and fallen on the guerrillas from the rear. It was a night that was hard to forget — especially for Sam, who had been the rawest second lieutenant in the company.

“By Christ, I had forgotten that, you were a crummy shavetail then, but you learned fast enough.” Sam was expecting the slap on the back so he swung with it so that his shoulder blade wasn’t fractured.

“Cleaver” Burke had a big mouth, big muscles and at times seemed to be a parody of the perfect Texan. He was also one of the shrewdest field officers in the Army and did nothing without a purpose.

“What are you here for, Cleaver? It can’t be just to renew an old acquaintance?”

“Right from the shoulder like always, hey, Sam? Pour me a drink of something and I’ll lay it on the line.”

There was an open bottle of Irish whiskey in the closet and Sam, remembering Cleaver’s tastes, found a water glass and filled it half full. He hesitated until he remembered he would be off duty for a while, then poured one for himself.

“Here’s to the Irish, their bogs and their whisky,” General Burke said, holding up his glass.

“Uisce beathadh.”

Burke drained most of it with a single swallow, then frowned at the empty glass before he put it down. “This plague from space is the biggest trouble you or I have seen in our time, Sam, and it’s going to get worse before it’s better. I need your help.”

“There’s not much that I can do, Cleaver. I’m out of the Army and busy doctoring.”

“I know, and I’ll let you go back to work as soon as we’re finished, but I need some more information. You were there when Rand came out, you talked to him, you watched him write that message. Do you have any idea what he meant by it— or why he sealed the ship after he left?”

“Just what I’ve put into the reports. I did the postmortem and I’ve been thinking about it since then. You can’t put too much meaning into what he wrote, one way or the other.”

“What do you mean—?”

“Without being too clinical, let’s say his brain was affected. He was barely conscious, with a high fever and his blood stream loaded with toxins. What he wrote about sickness in the ship might have been a terribly important message, or just the meandering of a damaged mind.”

General Burke was pacing the room, his anachronistic spurs clinking with each footstep. He wheeled about and glared at Sam.

“But this is just guesswork, you don’t know one way or the other. What about the ‘Pericles’? When you made the phone calls, didn’t you see anything unusual, anyone else, bodies, signs of violence? Anything?”

“Just what I reported, Cleaver. I wouldn’t know a real spaceship from a TV stage setting. What I saw looked in order, and there was no one visible in any of the compartments. But this should be easy enough to check; someone could get into the air lock with a camera and dial the numbers as I did and record the whole thing.”