"Better take me back. I'm not allowed to
practice medicine. The charge would be first-degree murder if anything
happened."
Lou leaned forward. "Shall I talk to him, Jake?"
The old man grimaced. "Time enough. Let him see what we got first."
Sand howled against the windshield and the tractor bumped and surged
along. Feldman took another of the weeds and tried to estimate their
course. But he had no idea where they were when the tractor finally
stopped. There was a village of small huts that seemed to be merely
entrances to living quarters dug under the surface. They led him into
one and through a tunnel into a large room filled with simple cots and
the unhappy sounds of sick people.
Two women were disconsolately trying to attend to the half-dozen
sick--four children and two adults. Their faces brightened as they saw
Jake, then fell. "Eb and Tilda died," they reported.
Feldman looked at the two figures under the sheets and whistled. The
same black specks he had seen on the face of Billings covered the skins
of the two old people who had died.
"Funny," Jake said slowly. "They didn't quite act like the others and
they sure died mighty fast. Darn it, I had it figured for that stuff in
the book. Infantile paralysis. How about it, Doc? Sort of like a cold,
stiff sore neck."
It was clearly polio--one of the diseases that could attack Mars-normal
flesh.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44