Chapter Seven

Mitchell approved of Shona’s initiative in finding a more efficient transport out to Karela, and negotiated a fee with the captain of the Sibyl. Moreover, he made a further offer to use the Sibyl in conveying Shona to future assignments. Shona and Gershom were overjoyed.

A few days later, with a distinct sense of satisfaction, Shona oversaw the loading of her laboratory module into the cargo hold of the Sibyl. In shape, the trader scout was a cross between an arrowhead and a loaf of bread. Its living quarters were minuscule compared with the cargo holds: twinned, rough semi-cylinders seated side by side horizontally at the rear of the ship. The starboard cargo bay doors slid open as the crane bearing the module approached and slid its burden forward on the slick tracks in the bay floor.

The original lab units had actually been made using the shell of cargo containers. Logic dictated that there would be less breakage, and less time wasted setting up a laboratory if it was never broken down and packed in the first place. Over time, the module containers came to be custom-designed, using the original shape to ensure that they could fit into a standard hold, but now they were made of a durable ceramic over a titanium frame that was lightweight, radiation-resistant, shockproof, and heatproof. The units could even be off-loaded from low orbit to surface without damaging the delicate equipment inside, though Shona doubted she’d enjoy the sensation of dropping hundreds of kilometers and crash-landing on a difficult site just to prove it could be done.

The Corporation and the Galactic Government shared the available laboratory modules between them, allowing each group to have access to a greater number than either would have alone. Normally, Shona would have been assigned her old module container, a unit with a leaky water-recycling system and a noisy air-recirculation intake like an asthma sufferer, in which she had lived through two long missions under sometimes unbearable conditions. By a stroke of good luck, it was not available, and she wondered sympathetically which innocent scientist was stuck with it out in the void. Instead, she was assigned a brand new unit that was so fresh off the line; the plastic coats over the applied metal trims hadn’t been peeled off yet. The maintenance record showed it had even been modified by GLC to add some new goodies.

Half the module was designed as living quarters. Shona’s room was quite small compared with the chamber set aside for her menagerie. The bed was crowded by her entertainment center, reading shelf, and the console for the personal communicator, which, when activated, automatically established a digital link with the nearest beacon. In between was a bathroom that contained a bathing pool almost large enough to satisfy the ottle’s yen for water sports. It was purely a luxury. Shona filled the pool for bathing only while the container was planetside; the rest of the time, she used the sonic shower. The small clothes cleaner, which fit in a corner of the room, was an efficient one, using little power, water, or cleaning solution.

The module was designed to be occupied on a full-time basis. She would eat and drink, wash, sleep, and work within its confines. The water, air, and waste-recycling units were under the floor, next to the storage tank for the food supply. Nutri. Shona sighed. Well, nothing was perfect. Government and Corporation policy both dictated that a medic on assignment must not eat any of the indigenous food supply, to avoid becoming one of her own patients. At least she could eat normal ship’s food in transit. She would just make certain that there was plenty of salt, spice, and flavoring on board before she made planetfall on Karela. And under a floor panel with a custom lock that responded only to her fingerprints at normal body temperature, was a case of Crunchynut candy bars. Chirwl watched woefully as she shut the treats away.

There was a protest from the Galactic Government Import/Export Service when Shona declared she was taking her menagerie off-planet with her within a couple of days. GG took a minimum of ten days to process a license for each animal before they would be allowed to leave Mars, but the Corporation exercised its massive pull, cutting through the red tape so that she and they could leave immediately, citing an emergency case. There was another small protest when she applied for a short-term license to carry seeds for restricted plants, most especially cannabis, used to treat glaucoma, a typical ailment in mining colonies. That was another good reason for having Saffie around, Shona thought. The odd thrill-seeker who broke into her lab looking for dope would face squarely 100 pounds of highly trained guard dog. The module featured small hydroponic tanks for forcing medical plants while she traveled, easily large enough to grow fresh herbs to spark up the endless meals of nutri. The plant waiver was also granted without delay. Shona, who had decried the Corporation’s vast powers, was now grateful for its influence. She wanted to lift ship as soon as possible.

“All safe and locked down,” Ivo called down to her, waving. The Sibyl’s engineer and shuttle pilot was a large, dark-skinned man with incongruously meaty arms to go with the rest of his spacer’s physique. Shona beamed at him.

“Can we go, then?” she called back.

“They’re still talking,” Ivo said scornfully, jerking his head in the direction of the bridge, where Gershom and Kai sat over the navicomp examining planetary location maps for the colony, messaged to them by the Corporation, and deciding whether to take on cargo and what items they might take to offer the Karelans. “As soon as we know where we’re going, we go!”

* * *

Liftoff was Shona’s favorite part of any spacebound trip, but this time her enjoyment was diminished because of her desperation to get offworld. With the moment imminent, she could hardly wait for the ship to close and be on its way. She’d said her goodbyes to her friends and co-workers twice now, and she and her aunt had each shed tears; Shona because she’d miss the kindness Laurel had shown to her over the last, trying months, and Laurel, because she was partly convinced that Shona was putting herself unnecessarily into danger.

All the visitors had left the bay when the first siren sounded. Shona climbed aboard the Sibyl and signaled Gershom to shut the hatch. She felt more alive just knowing she was once again launched on a job she enjoyed doing, one on which she was really needed. The last information the Corporation had released to her on Karela said that there had been five fatalities from the fever, but that empirical treatment was proving successful. She was eager to go out to the colony and help, but not too eager that she wasn’t going to enjoy the time with Gershom.

The animals were unhappily confined in their impact cages. Harry complained when she went aft to see how they were doing. He had not yet reaccustomed himself to the ship’s scent, and was probably suspicious that this was a disguised, long way to go to the veterinarian. Saffie, who had been on more flights than the cat, merely huddled down and looked miserable in her small bed.

“Come on, guys,” Shona coaxed them, putting her fingers through the thickly padded mesh. “It’ll be all right. You’ll be out of there in no time.”

Chirwl’s pouch had straps across it, holding it in place. The ottle hung partway out, facing the viewscreens which displayed the same view the pilots had. It was the least they could do, letting him see what was happening to him. Only his faith in his human friends kept him from protesting what the unpredictable machines would do.

“This will be some interesting, yes?” he inquired, cocking his head at her when she checked his safety harness.

“Oh, yes, Chirwl,” Shona assured him.

“You have become happy, I observe,” the ottle said. “I am pleased. The time for mourning has passed, and now you exist, am I right?”

“I’m more than existing, thank you,” Shona replied, patting the pouch where the ottle’s tummy was. “I’ll come and get you out of there when we’ve taken off.”

The Sibyl’s bridge had eight impact couches, two for the pilot and co-pilot before the main control boards, and the others in two tiers of three against the bulkheads, like triple bunk beds. Shona was cradled in her couch, staring intently at the screen at the end of the bunk over her feet, all her muscles tense as the trading ship tilted back on its tail for the launch. Sibyl lifted with a slow majesty, and the rusty disk began to recede behind them. Shona willed herself to relax, so she could feel the powerful kick of the engines resisting Mars’s gravity. Swiftly, the red planet shrank into a crescent and then disappeared as they circled around to its nightside. Saturn and Uranus appeared in quick succession, growing to broad, ringed disks, then vanishing, as the Sibyl swept toward the radiopause, beyond which the ship could make her first warp jump. She was spaceborne once again. Inside Shona’s head, a tiny voice sang a song of triumph, ignoring the sad and guilty voice of grief that still haunted her.

The living quarters of the Sibyl were small by any standards except those of dome-living, but Shona had no trouble adjusting again to the narrow metal corridors and pressure doors, and the light-gee which was most commonly used aboard ship.

She fell in quickly with the crew’s well-practiced routine. Ship-time was based on Earth’s rotation, rather than Mars’s or Alpha’s, giving the crew three shifts of eight standard hours. Her animals were given the run of the ship, except for the bridge, to which only Chirwl was granted access. The animals found the lighter gravity disorienting at first, but became acclimated before the end of the first jump. Shona ordered a full-gee exercise period every day so her menagerie wouldn’t be too weak to support their own weight on Karela when they got there. She worked out too, getting her body back into shape. Exertion improved her mood.

Shona hadn’t spent much time on the ship of which she was a part owner. She was already in medical school and then engaged on her long residency when Gershom had purchased it. Most of their income was still tied up in quarterly payments, and the Sibyl was always in need of some kind of refitting or repair. Shona knew nothing about ship mechanics. The bills for replacement modules always shocked her until she compared them with the cost of similar pieces of medical equipment. Precision was required in the manufacture of both, because lives were dependent upon them, and skilled labor cost money. Over time, the trading business had improved so that most of the day-to-day bills were covered by profits. Shona was proud of her husband’s acumen, and, personally, could see no flaw in the ship he flew.

At first, she spent a lot of time at the viewports and screens, renewing her love affair with space. In time, since the view of the constellations didn’t change very quickly when they were in “real” space, and there was nothing to see during a jump, she turned her attention inward, to her shipmates.

Ivo and Gershom’s teammates, Eblich and Kai, welcomed her heartily on board. Eblich was a small-boned man whom she knew was rather shy. He didn’t speak much, but he smiled warmly at her whenever he saw her. Eblich acted as navigator and co-pilot, and also as bookkeeper—an equally necessary function. Somewhere back on one of the colony worlds, he had a wife and five children. They ran the general store in the capital city, aided greatly by Eblich’s connections with goods suppliers.

Kai was the stores-master. He was from Alpha, and was the first of the permanent crew Gershom had signed aboard. He had a faultless system for organization in the Sibyl’s hold, from which he could call forth any item, no matter how small, on demand, and keep anyone else from finding anything he didn’t want them to. He had reacted to the introduction of Shona’s lab module with a noncommittal shrug, and rearranged their trade goods to make it fit.

“When you gonna give up working for other people and stay with us?” Kai asked.

“Soon, Kai,” Shona promised him. “Gershom and I have been talking about it. I think this contract will probably be my last working for someone else, no matter how good the money is. We’ll get by, somehow.” She grinned. “Three years, and I’m all yours.” The other crewmembers cheered, and Shona sighed with joy. She was beginning a new life, with a clearer idea of what she wanted out of it than she had before.

“What about you, Chirwl?” Gershom asked the ottle, who was seated atop the back of the co-pilot’s couch. “Are you going to sign on and join the Taylor Traveling Medicine Show?”

“My time with you, though long, shall be finite,” Chirwl replied. “So soon as my thesis is complete on the properly interaction of machines to humanity, I will wish to return my planet home. There is much rivalry among we ottles-ss-s in the pursuit of probable theories. I may resume my place there when I may acquire a higher standing.”

“Oh-ho,” chortled Ivo. “So it’s not that you can’t go back for love of a lady ottle, eh?”

“In this case you are correct and not incorrect,” Chirwl said. “For my lady-ottle-love-would-be-co-mate is in factly my chief rival of theories. It is my hope that we shall be equal in integrity. To that end, I strive to work at practicality in my seek of knowledge.”

Ivo knocked himself in the head once or twice over the ear with the heel of his hand. “D’you know, I think I understood all of that. You’ll be welcome among us until you finish your ‘seek,’ then.”

“For that I gratefully thank you,” Chirwl said, with a solemn twitch of his whiskers.

“Eblich, can you send a message for me?” Shona asked. “I’m introducing myself to the doctor on Karela. I haven’t heard a word directly from him yet, and I still don’t have direct data on their fever epidemic.”

“Sure,” Eblich beamed at her, accepting the small disk.

With that done, Shona had little left to do aboard the Sibyl but watch the entertainment beams. When the Sibyl was in warp, no new signals could reach the ship’s antenna array, but when she was out, the crew uploaded anything from the digital system beacons within line-of-sight all the way back to Sol. Her favorite program was a science-fiction show that had been aired since video was in 2-D. She loved the oldest episodes, especially the one that featured Mars as the primogenitor of ancient Egyptian culture. Gershom and Ivo followed sports, especially the Interplanetary Football League. Chirwl was more interested in the news reports.

“Do you own Corporation stock, S-sshona?” he asked, while waiting for her to finish cooking the evening meal. The five humans took turns a day at a time preparing meals. Shona cheerfully accepted a shift. It was no more difficult to cook for five adults and an ottle here than it would be for her aunt’s family and an ottle back on Mars. The galley area was about the same size as Laurel’s kitchen.

Shona tasted a simmering vegetable puree. “Mmm. That’s just about ready. Nope. I didn’t buy any before I left. Should I have?”

“I own some,” Kai said, pouring himself a drink from the cold cabinet. “You’ve got to diversify against inflation. Good news or bad news?”

“Good news for some, bad for others,” Chirwl said, clambering up onto a chair. “Corporation scientists have succeeded in artificially producing a chemically pure form of trelastadin.”

“That’s great,” Shona exclaimed, setting down her spoon. “It’s a valuable drug.”

“Spacers on difficult runs use it to keep from oxidizing in their own juices when they have to stay awake for several days on end,” Kai added. “The real drug is expensive. It’s good to hear they’ve come up with a sub.”

“Not good for the growers of the root in which it appears naturally,” Chirwl said severely. “They have lost their livelihood.”

“Win some, lose some,” the stores-master said cheerfully, patting the ottle’s back.

“Isn’t Karela where they grow trelasi root?” Shona asked, remembering her briefing.

“That’s right,” Kai said. “If they’re grateful for your services, I hope we can bargain for a load of raw root. It’d bring a good price on the market from people who prefer organics.”

“They’re so far away,” Shona mused, bringing up the star chart of Karela on the computer screen. “Do they know that their crop has been made obsolete by a new chemical compound?”

“It won’t matter,” Kai said, with a shake of his head. “The Corporation guarantees purchase of their product in ten-year exclusive contracts. Gives them time to shift, find another crop to raise.”

“How long until we get to Karela?” she asked.

“Oh, two months, at this rate. Karela is a long way out.”

“That’s the worst of these assignments,” Shona said with a sigh. “Space travel takes time.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Gershom said, coming into the galley and catching her eye with a wicked wink. She grinned broadly, and winked back.

* * *

Eblich signaled to Shona in her lab eleven days later. “Your message from Karela just came off the beacon. From a Dr. Dai Minaukan.”

“How bad’s he sound?”

“Not bad,” Eblich replied with his usual economy of words. His image in the screen tank wrinkled its nose. “Sounds more perturbed.”

“Pipe it back here, will you? Thanks.” Shona waited for the colored light to come on, indicating that the message was queued up for her to see.

A man’s face appeared in the screen tank. He was thin and sallow-skinned, with dark hair and a tired-looking mustache sagging around the corners of his mouth.

“Dr. Taylor, I am Dai Minaukan, of Karela. I have already sent the Corporation full details of the epidemic from which some of our people have suffered. Luckily, we have had no further fatalities, because it has been fruitless waiting for a reply from you or any other specialist as we requested some time ago. The five who died lived in a remote reach of the colony, and the bodies, after autopsy, were burned. Complete data has been in your hands for some time. It distresses me that you are approaching us unprepared to deal with our situation.”

“Well,” said Shona aloud, “that’s a stinker of a message.” The data must have gotten lost in transmission. Mitchell had told her nothing came, even though she’d asked him to retransmit the query once a week. “We must have sounded like idiots to him, asking again and again for something he’d already sent.”

Minaukan went on. “We cannot identify the strange bacteria that seems to have caused the deaths some weeks ago, but since there has been no repetition of the ailment so far, it is less of a concern to us. The site has been quarantined against possible reinfection among those here.”

Shona let out a sigh of relief. The recording bore out Mitchell’s contention that it didn’t sound like much of an epidemic. She recorded a message informing Minaukan that no data had been received, and suggested very politely that he check his transmission equipment for glitches. “You know how the message systems can be. I am on my way to you, within forty days of making planetfall. May I ask for details of the disease, even if it has passed? Since you haven’t identified the infector, I offer the use of my database for you to cross-match the bacteria. I would also be grateful for the autopsy reports so that I may be up to date when I arrive.”

* * *

She and Gershom had more time to talk and simply be together than they had since they were in school. Shona was discovering all over again how comfortable he was to be with, and reaffirmed her decision that this contract with the Corporation would be the last.

“I don’t want to be separated from you again for any reason after that,” she said. Twined together with Gershom on his bunk, she enjoyed the closeness, where every movement was a caress.

She felt guilty. In a way she felt as though she was running away from her husband, but when she pinned down the sensation and analyzed it, she saw that she really needed a little time away from everyone she knew to heal. On the other hand, it wasn’t his fault that their child had died, so it was unfair to be leaving him behind again. Her dream of being the best doctor in the galaxy could be accomplished right here, as a freelance traveling physician. Still, she had signed a contract, and she was held by that promise.

Gershom broke the silence, voicing exactly what she had been thinking. “You don’t have to go off on this mission,” he said. “You can stay right here on the Sibyl.”

“I do have to go,” Shona said, and sighed thoughtfully. “They need me, and we really do need the money. I signed a contract that binds me for three years. It isn’t forever. I’ll be seeing you more often, since Manny agreed to let you carry me from assignment to assignment. But I want to prove to myself that I can do something right.”

“You do plenty of things right,” Gershom said, running a finger down her bare ribs. He leaned over to smile at her, and his long hair drifted down across the side of his face.

“Besides that,” Shona said, returning with a glance through her eyelashes the suggestion implicit in his words. “This is a great opportunity for me. I’ve never been on assignment by myself. We always said that I ought to get in some more experience before we took the show on the road. I … it’s what I would have done if I hadn’t stayed on Mars all those months.” She closed her eyes as she felt a pang in her heart.

“Shona?” Gershom turned her chin so that her face was toward his. She kept her eyes down, and there were tears under the lashes. “Shona, you have talk about it. He was our child. He existed. He did! By not talking, you keep it bottled up. Learn to let go of your feelings. We’ll always love him, and remember him. And I’ll always love you.”

For answer, Shona squeezed Gershom’s ribs with all her strength, and relaxed against him. “I still feel as if I did something wrong. What did I miss?”

“You did nothing wrong. It wasn’t your fault. Know that.”

Shona sniffled, but she raked her gaze to meet his. “I do know it. I can’t help it. I feel guilty anyway.” She blinked at the haze of tears.

The corner of Gershom’s mouth lifted. “So you’d rather be back on Mars living with Aunt Lal under the Child Protection Act?”

Shona’s eyes flew wide open, and she sputtered. “Not that!”

“I didn’t think so. Well, it wasn’t time yet. He wasn’t meant to stay with us. The child we’re meant to keep will come along in a better time, and a more appropriate place. You’ll see.”

Shona didn’t mention again what Dr. Robin had said about the high odds against her conceiving, but she nodded. “I’ll try. I’ve got some hard thinking to do first, but I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask,” Gershom said, pulling her close. “Then I can wait three years to have you all to myself.”

* * *

Shona checked the beacons for messages coded under her personal number whenever the Sibyl dropped out of warp. It was almost twenty days later when she received a second message from Dai Minaukan. The Karelan looked more tired than he had been in the previous transmission.

“I was too harsh in the previous message, Dr. Taylor,” the man began. “I apologize for my fit of temper. I would appreciate your assistance. The fever has returned and become widespread. Many of our elderly are dying of it. Children, too, are dying. It is confusing. I have been unable to identify a vector by which the infectious bacteria was spread, and there is little time to halt the disease once it has taken hold. Quarantining seems to do little good. In two to five days those who have become infected are dead. The situation has become extreme. We beg help, but it may be too late. Please review the following data which I have compiled. This is Dai Minaukan on Karela, out.”

Shona was shocked at the change in the Karelan’s appearance. His cheekbones stood out sharply in his thin face, and there were shadows under his eyes and around his mouth. His droopy moustache looked like melted wax. “How old is this message?” she asked Eblich.

He ran the log back and checked the tach encoding on the previous transmission. “Ten days, maybe twelve,” he said.

“Those poor people!” Shona exclaimed, running the message a second time. “We have to get there as soon as possible.”

“We can’t get there any faster than we’re going,” Gershom reminded her. “There’s nothing you can do for them yet. It’s going to take time to get to Karela.” He patted Shona’s shoulder. “You’re on your way. They can’t ask better than that. Take it easy.”

But Shona couldn’t take it easy, and the review of the files that Minaukan had appended to his message worried her more.

The victims suffered from high fever, chills, headaches, and rapid heartbeat. Within a day or two, the patients exhibited delirium. There was no clue as to the source of the malady, except possibly the small, raised punctures on shoulders, arms, or necks, which suggested an insect bite was to blame for the spread of disease.

Shona bit her lip as she considered the possibility. She had studied the environmental data on Karela, and while the life forms there were carbon-based, the odds were against the existence of an alien insect whose bite was capable of making a human being ill. Such a bite should have caused a toxic reaction, irritation or poisoning, or have no effect at all. Contrariwise, a native insect carrying an alien Earth-type organism should have been killed by it.

The answer might lie in the bacteria itself. Shona examined the image of the invading organism found in the victims. It was a bacillus bacteria, stained blue to indicate that it was gram positive. Shona called up her cross-reference program, and ordered it to identify the image. The computer flashed its “Working” graphic. At last, the words “No Match” replaced the graphic. Shona groaned. Perhaps there was an alien organism which could affect human beings. If a fever epidemic with a high mortality rate had been discovered here, it could mean Karela becoming quarantined forever. What was left of its population would have to be evacuated.

She ran the autopsy tape, and studied the images of pale bodies with horrible black swellings under the arms and at other points she knew to be lymph nodes. Minaukan’s voice narrated the findings as the bodies were examined. The swellings in the nodes varied from mere lumps under the skin to matted hemorrhages, followed by necrosis, as the blood clotted within blood vessels, starving vital organs. Something swam up from the depths of her memory of medical school. She called back the slide of the organism. It was familiar, but with one important difference. Telling the computer to ignore the blue gram stain, she ran the cross-reference program again. A screen popped up immediately. The images were identical, except that the bacillus pictured was stained gram negative, or red, not blue. It confirmed her guess. She sat back, puzzled. Where did Karelan mosquitoes or fleas, or whatever the vector of infection could have been, get yersinia pestis? It was impossible to mistake the appearance of buboes, hemorrhaged and distended black clusters of lymph nodes, for anything else. These people had died of black plague. It had been virtually unknown for centuries. No wonder Minaukan couldn’t recognize it. The organism had mutated slightly, enough to throw off her computer program and probably enough to negate whatever treatment the Karelan doctor had tried to use to save his patients.

Alarmed, Shona recorded a message to Minaukan, giving him her findings, and including a complete history of the ancient disease.

“Are there fleas in Karela, or any other biting insect parasite?” Shona added. “If it is spreading through infected carriers, rats or other small creatures used by the insects as a reservoir, you might be able to halt further infections by wiping out the vermin. Burn any clothing or porous hangings that have been in contact with the patients. Take all precautions to avoid the spread of the disease. It’s vital to begin treatment as soon as symptoms arise. If it follows the classic pattern as you describe, the patient undergoes systemic sepsis within three days …”

Shona stopped the recording, and realized the horror of what she had just recited so calmly. The Karelan doctor could not possibly receive her message for another four to six days. How many more would die in that time?

“Gershom!” Shona dashed out of her laboratory toward the bridge. “How long until we reach Karela?”

“At least seventeen or eighteen days,” he said, twirling his couch around to face her. When he saw her face, he stood up and held out his hands to her. “What’s wrong?”

Shona held fast to his hands as if to a lifeline. “Those people have plague,” Shona said. “The old one, the original plague. They’re dying. They need help. I’ve got to get to them.”

“You are getting to them, as quickly as you can,” Gershom assured her. “No one could be with them faster than you will. That’s why the Corporation is sending you. You were the closest, remember?”

“Gershom, it may be too late,” Shona exclaimed. She tried to find a way to make him understand the desperation she felt, remembering the history lesson that went along with the instruction in infectious diseases. Bubonic plague had wiped out most of the population of a continent, millions of lives lost. Karela had only thousands.

“Shona, stay calm,” Gershom said. “Worrying won’t get us there any faster.”

Shona nodded. She had to do something else with her agitation. Hurrying back to her lab, she completed her message to Dai Minaukan and sent it off. After a moment’s thought, she copied the information, and included it in a message to Manfred Mitchell with a repeat of the Karelan transmission.

The Corporation needs to be informed what’s happening on its colony in case anyone else has been exposed, she reasoned. Once I get there, I won’t have time to send any reports.

Each time she looked out of the ports and saw how little changed the pattern of stars around them was from the last time, she felt frustrated and helpless. She was still so far away. With every hour that passed, more Karelans could be dying of a disease so ancient that it was believed to have been wiped out.

After only a few days, Shona felt nearly worn out from worrying. With commendable patience, Gershom persuaded her to calm down. “It’ll be another twelve days, even if we strike it lucky on the warp jumps.”

The next four days, while the Sibyl was traveling in real space to the point where it could make the next jump, were almost intolerable for Shona.

Another message came two hours after they emerged from their third jump. It was much more recent, and the news it contained was much worse.

“I speak for Dai Minaukan, who died three days ago,” the young man on the viewscreen said. “Everyone has the fever now. Robust adults are dying, and even those with milder symptoms are weakening. Only a few of us remain alive, and probably not for long.”

Shona’s agitation nearly tore her apart. “I should be there,” she wailed.

“We’re close,” Ivo assured her. He was piloting the second shift. He ran up the star map on the viewtank. “Do you see that?” he asked, poking a forefinger right into the heart of the projection at a bright, yellow-white spot. “That’s Karela’s primary. You see that?” He pointed to a place just beyond the star. “That’s us. An hour or two in warp will bring us within the system. We’re nearly right on target.”