Life on other planets -- Fiction; Medical fiction; Physicians -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space medicine -- Fiction
A savage anger filled Calhoun. Everything fitted together. Allison
had put his hand convenient to his blaster when Calhoun mentioned
Texia. It meant that Calhoun suspected what Allison knew to be true.
A cattle-fence unit had been set up on Maya, and it was holding--like
cattle--the people it had previously driven--like cattle. Calhoun
could deduce with some precision exactly what had been done. The first
experience of Maya with the cattle fence would have been very mild.
It would have been low-power, causing just enough uneasiness to be
noticed. It would have moved from west to east, slowly, and it would
have reached a certain spot and there faded out. And it would have been
a mystery and an uncomfortable thing, and nobody would understand it
on Maya. In a week it would almost be forgotten. But then there'd come
a stronger disturbance. And it would travel like the first one; down
the length of the peninsula on which the colony lay, but stopping at
the same spot as before, and then fading away to nothingness. And this
also would have seemed mysterious. But nobody would suspect humans of
causing it. There would be theorizing and much questioning, but it
would be considered an unfamiliar natural event.
Probably the third use of the cattle fence would be most disturbing.
This time it would be acutely painful. But it would move into the
cities and through them and past them, and it would go down the
peninsula to where it had stopped and faded on two previous occasions.
The people of Maya would be disturbed and scared. But they considered
that they knew it began to the westward of Maya City, and moved toward
the east at such-and-such a speed, and it went so far and no farther.
And they would organize themselves to apply this carefully worked out
information.
It would not occur to any of them that they had learned how to be
driven like cattle.
* * * * *
Calhoun, of course, could only reason that this must have happened. But
nothing else could have taken place. Perhaps there were more than three
uses of the moving cattle fence to get the people prepared to move past
the known place at which it always faded to nothingness. They might
have been days apart, or weeks apart, or months. There might have been
stronger manifestations followed by weaker ones and then stronger ones
again.
But there was an inductive cattle fence across the highway here.
Calhoun had driven into it. Every two seconds the muscles of his
body tensed. Sometimes his heart missed a beat at the time that his
breathing stopped, and sometimes it pounded violently. It seemed that
the symptoms became more and more unbearable.
He got out his med kit, with hands that spasmodically jerked
uncontrollably. He fumbled out the same medication he'd given
Murgatroyd. He took two of the pellets.
"In reason," he said coldly, "I ought to let you take what this damned
thing would give you. But--here!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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