Life on other planets -- Fiction; Quarantine -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space medicine -- Fiction
He turned to the control board. The Med Ship was only planetary
diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining
stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous
shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy
color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and
forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and
squinted at it.
"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
killing wild cattle for sport."
Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
zone.
Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.
Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
But its shadow would be distinctive.
Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a
temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
cast a long, lacy shadow: the landing-grid.
"But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down
unwelcomed."
He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency rockets boomed. The ship
plunged planetward.
A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of
its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforce
the sound.
"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd," commanded Calhoun. "We may have to
dodge some ack."
But nothing came up from below. The Med Ship again inverted itself,
and its rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin,
blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued
to descend. It was not directly above the grid.
It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains
in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the
mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley
in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an
erratic course, lest there be opposition.
But there was no sign. Then the rockets bellowed, and the ship slowed
its forward motion, hovered momentarily, and settled to solidity
outside the framework of the grid. The grid was small, as Calhoun
reasoned. But it reached interminably toward the sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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