Her Majesty's Aberration
There
is a slight disadvantage in being absent-minded. It was this regrettable
failing which took Ole Doc Methuselah, highly respected member of the Universal
Medical Society, some forty-five light-years out of his way and caused him to
land in the
Algol System
on the planet Dorcon.
Hippocrates
had asked him, pointedly and repeatedly, if they had taken aboard a new pile at
Spico and Ole Doc had answered him abstractedly in the affirmative. But it
developed, some ninety light-years out, that they were traveling on the ship's
reputation and that the poor old
Morgue
had but three or four
grasshopper-power left in her gleaming golden tubes.
This
was annoying. Hippocrates said so and, waving his four short arms, repeated,
phonograph-recordwise, a two-hundred-thousand-word text on fuels and their
necessity in space travel. He repeated it in fact so shrilly that Ole Doc in
the pilot compartment unhooked every means of communication with the operating
room, where Hippocrates was delivering his secondhand oration, and then used
inertia converters to get down, somehow, into the Algol System.
He
had never been there before, which was odd because it was not too distant from
Earthâon the same side of the Earth Galactic Wheel, in fact. He had heard
several things about it, now and then, for a man hears quite a bit when he has
lived some seven hundred and fifty years. Somewhere near the beginning of that
span he had jettisoned most superstition and thus it had not been this which
prevented him, though it well might have been.
Algol had a rotten
reputation around the spaceports. For some thousands of years men had been
looking at it and shuddering only because it winked every three days. They
called it the “Evil Eye” and the “Demon Star” and so deep was the feeling
that for a century or more after space travel and colonization had begun,
people had left Algol alone, not even informing themselves if she had planets.
The
wise knew she was a dark star rotating around a bright one, which accounted for
her being a variable, but when an expedition crashed on one of her planets,
when the first colony vanished, when a transgalactic flier burned in the
system, people began to recall her original reputation and shun her. That, of
course, made her an excellent pirate base and all six of her variously
inhabitable planets were soon messed about with blood and broken loot.
“As
is natural in such evolutions, she ultimately gave birthӉit said in the
United
Planets Vacugraphic Office Star Pilot
which Ole Doc was reading on his
knees (still holding the buttons down on his creature Hippocrates)â“to a strong
ruler who ate up the lesser ones and for the past three hundred and nineteen
years has been getting along as a monarchy of six planetic states governed from
Dorcon.” It said in the book that “there are spaceship ways and limited repair
facilities, fuel and supplies to be had at Ringo, Dorcon's chief city.”
Certainly they would have so small a thing as a pile there.
Ole
Doc started to open the switch to tell Hippocrates where they were going but
received a flood instead:
“âThe
manual circuits must be supplied by auxiliary hanbits of torque-compensated
valadium. Five erg seconds of injected . . .”'
Plainly
Hippocrates was not pleased. Ole Doc laughed uncomfortably. He had picked the
weird little creature up at an auction a century back, meaning to examine his
metabolism, which was gypsum, but the gnome had been so
willing and his brain was so accurately gauged to remembering that somehow Ole
Doc had never thought again about examinations but had succumbed to these
deluges of being informed.
A
gong rang. A whistle blew. A big plate before him began to
flick-flick-flick
as it displayed likely landing spots one after another. A metal finger jutted
suddenly from the gravity meter and touched off the proximity coil. The ship
went on to chemical brakes. The cockpit turned at right angles to ease the
deceleration of the last few hundred miles and then there was a slight bump.
The
Morgue
had sat down. There was a clang inside as her safety doors
slid open again, a tinkle of ladders dropping and a
click-click-click
as
instruments dusted themselves and put themselves out of sight in the bulkheads.
Ole
Doc unbuckled his crash helmet and stood up, stretching. The port guards were sliding
open of themselves, displaying a green expanse of field, a surrounding regiment
of trees and the plastic towers of a city beyond.
But
the instruments were not yet through. The analyzer came out, a square massed
solid in red and green bulbs which recorded the presence of anything harmful,
unnatural or hostile. And while it said green to atmosphere, gravity,
vegetation, food, habitations, the weather, storms, the surface temperature,
the subsurface temperature, radioactive presences and a thousand others, it
said
red-red-red
to soldiers, weapons, dead men, women and hostility.
The strip at the bottom of the board read “Relatively unsafe. Recommend
takeoff.”
Ole
Doc owed his continued presence in the flesh to a certain superstition about
instruments. If they were there they should be observed, and if they gave
advice it should be taken. And he was about to take off on chemical and go
elsewhere nearby when Hippocrates thrust his outraged antennae into the
compartment.
“â.
. . momentary inattention to fissure temperatures may result in ionization of
farundium particles and consequent . . .”'
“STOP
IT!” said Ole Doc.
Hippocrates
stopped it. But not because he was told. He was reading “Relatively unsafe.
Recommend takeoff.” This gave him an impasse and while his dissertation
struggled fiercely with this check, Ole Doc dropped down into his dining salon
and drank the milk which waited there for him.
The
ports were all open there, for the salon was beautifully designed, done by
Siraglio shortly after the turn of the century, paneled in gold and obsidian
and exquisitely muraled with an infinity of feasting scenes which, together,
blended into a large star map of the Earth galaxy as it had been known in his
time. The ports were so designed as to permit scenery to become a portion of
the mural without ruining it. But in this case the scenery did not cooperate.
Six
hundred and nineteen dead men swung from the limbs of the landing field trees.
They were in uniforms bleached by suns and snows and their features were mostly
ragged teeth and yellow bone. The blasts of the
Morgue
's landing had
made a wind in which they swung, idly, indolently, as though in their timeless
way they waltzed and spun to an unheard dirge.
Ole
Doc set down the milk. He looked from flowering beds, well-groomed grass,
splendid walks, back to the hanging dead.
“Hippocrates!”
The
gnome was there instantly, all five hundred kilos of him.
“Stand
by the ship. If anyone approaches her but myself, turn on Force Screen Alpha. Keep in communication with me and the ship in readiness
to blast. Questions?”
Hippocrates
was too thwarted to reply and Ole Doc changed into a golden tunic, threw a
sun-fiber cloak about his shoulders, buckled twin blasters around his waist and
stepped down the ladder to the ground.
A
man develops, after a few score years, certain sensitivities which are not
necessarily recognized as senses. Carrying on the business of the Universal
Medical Society was apt to quicken them. For though the members of the society
possessed amongst them the monopoly of all medical knowledge forbidden by the
various systems and states, and although they had no sovereign and were
inviolate, things happen. Yes, things happen. More than a hundred ebony coffins
lay in the little chapel of their far-off baseâSoldiers of Light who had come
home forever.
He
directed, therefore, his entire energy to getting a pile and escaping Ringo
within the hour if possible. And, guided by the sound of repair arcs and
hammers, promptly brought himself to the subsurface shops beside the hangars of
the field.
And
at the door he halted in stupefied amazement.
There
were ten or twelve mechanics there and they did mechanics' work. But they were
shackled one to the next by long, tangling strands of plastiron which was
electrically belled every few yards to warn of its breaking. And overseeing
them was not the usual supereducated artisan-engineer but a dough-faced guard
of bovine attention to the surroundings.
Ole
Doc would have backed out to look for the supply office, but the guard instantly
hailed him.
“Stand
where you be, you!” He advanced, machine blaster at ready and
finger on trigger. “Hey, Eddy! Sound it!” A gong struck hysterically somewhere
in the dark metallic depths of the place.
It
was a tossup whether Ole Doc drew and fired or stood and explained. But an
instant later a barrel was digging a hole in his back.
Now
if the President of the Vega Confederation had been so
greeted by his lackey, he could not have been more amazed than Ole Doc. For
though he was occasionally offered violence, he was almost never accosted in
terms of ignorance. For who did not know of the Soldiers of Light, the Ageless
Ones who ordered kings?
This
pair, obviously.
They
were animals, nothing more. Mongrels of Earth and Scorpon stock, both bearing
the brands of prisons on their faces.
“He
ain't got a chain,” said Eddy.
“Must've
landed,” hazarded the guard, straining his intellect.
“If
you will pleaseâ” began Ole Doc.
“They'll
be here in a minute, bud,” said Eddy, planting his thick boots squarely in Ole
Doc's path. He reeked of Old Space Ranger and was obviously a victim of an
unmentionable illness.
They
were there in less than that. An entire squad-sled of them, complete with dirty
uniforms, unshaven faces, yellow eyes and shiny weapons.
“Get
in, pal,” said Eddy, disarming Ole Doc with a yank.
“Ain't
he pretty, though,” said a young corporal.
“Get
in!” insisted Eddy.
Ole
Doc saw no sense in a chance killing. It was not that serious yet. People
weren't entirely stupid on Dorcon. They couldn't be!
He
mounted the sled which promptly soared off toward the city, ten feet above the
ground and traveling erratically. In the glimpse he had of the blue green
pavements and yellow houses of the suburbs, Ole Doc was aware of neglect and
misery. A number of these inhabitants were evidently of Mongolian origin for
the architecture had that atmosphere, but now the once-gay pagodas looked more
like tombs, their walled gardens gone to ruin, their stunted trees straggling
out from broken bonds. The desolation was heightened by the hobbling gait of a
few ancient inhabitants who dodged in fear below the sled. It shocked Ole Doc
to see that each was chained to a round ball.
The
sled swept on toward the blue towers, but as it neared, the first illusion of
palace gave way to a gray atmosphere of prison. For the government buildings
were all enclosed within many walls, each complete in its defenses, each manned
like some penitentiary on Earth. Here was prison within prison within prison.
Or defense within defense within defense. And the central portion, instead of
being a courtyard and keep, was a metal-roofed dome, wholly bombproof.
But
the sled had no business within. It bounced to a landing outside the guardhouse
of the first walls and there Ole Doc was thrust into the presence of a
dissolute young man.
Tunic
collar unbuttoned to show a dirty neck, greasy hair awry, he sat with heels
amongst the glasses and bottles on his desk. Obviously he was of that decayed
school which thought that to be dashing one must be drunk.
“Where's
identity card?” he hiccoughed.
Ole
Doc, naturally, had no such thing. But the rayed gold medallion around his neck
was a passport to the greatest kingdoms in the universe.
“What's
that?” said the young officer.
“My
identification,” said Ole Doc. “I am a member of the Universal Medical
Society.”
“The
what?”
“I
am a physician,” said Ole Doc patiently.
The
young man thereupon altered. He looked bright and interested. He brought his
feet down off the desk, upsetting several glasses and bottles, and snatched up
an antique gadget Ole Doc recognized dimly as a telephone.
“I
got a doctor out here, Sir Pudno. How do you like that, huh? . . . Sure he
looks like one. Why do you think I'd say so? . . . Okay, Sir Pudno. Right
away.”
In
the wake of the reeling young officer Ole Doc was then delivered through
eighteen separate ramparts, each gated, each guarded, until he came at last to
a stairway which led underground. The officer having navigated this without
falling, Ole Doc was usheredâor rather shovedâinto a chamber done in blue silk,
a particularly gloomy place which had for furniture but one bed and one chair.