Life on other planets -- Fiction; Quarantine -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space medicine -- Fiction
He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thick
undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading
flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle-tactics with
blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But something
from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground directly upwind
from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.
It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl
Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the
flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether.
Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched or
burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. In
clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them. They were then halfway
to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.
But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles twitched
and tense. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of agitation.
Calhoun was familiar enough with tear-gas, used by police on some
planets. But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged
Maril onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it.
Panic gas! Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.
Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering terror.
A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physical
sensations, wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and a
frantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physical
sensations are induced by other means will--ordinarily--find his mind
yielding to terror.
Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude enabled
him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base of the
Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not be
counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some
moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet
from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a
staccato of fire which emptied the rifle of all its charges.
Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook and
trembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outer
airlock door just as another blaster-bolt hit.
"They--they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they only
knew--."
"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and he
raged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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