Part 3 (1/2)

Outside a cold drizzle was falling, and from the way the leaden skies were piling up, Gallifa was convinced that it would stay around for several days. Evidently the weather boys had been right in predicting that the planet was about to be plagued by a rainy season.

As they drew near to the edge of camp, c.u.mmings, the little, bald-headed meteorologist of the weather group, burst out of the weather shack, cursing soundly and waving a boot in one hand.

”d.a.m.n those piebald dwarfs,” he shouted. ”They've got more bra.s.s than a fire pole. They stole one of my boots.”

He threw the boot and disappeared around the corner. ”Get out of here, you little devils!”

”The gnomes seem to have invaded the camp,” MacFarland remarked. ”We'll have to take steps to chase them out. They might get into our stores.”

”Yeah,” Gallifa nodded glumly. He was too upset with the problem of Bradshaw and Samuels to worry about gnomes.

From all indications Samuels had developed the same malady as Bradshaw.

The doctor pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders. Thirty-three hours on the planet and two men suddenly, violently insane! Did that herald an epidemic, Gallifa wanted to know. Or could it simply be put down to an unlucky coincidence? Could it be a disease or a virus?

There were tests that might shed some light on the mystery, the doctor admitted. But it would take time to apply them and reach any kind of conclusion. Meanwhile, the work had to continue. The survey could not wait.

Samuels had been given a hypo and been moved to the ward with Bradshaw.

Gallifa walked past the ward corpsman and looked in the door. Bradshaw was tossing fretfully in his sleep. Both he and Samuels were in restraint jackets.

Gallifa shuddered and swabbed a perspiring brow. The rain was making everything muggy.

He left MacFarland still talking to Dr. Thornd.y.k.e, and started back--heading directly for the team shack. Gallifa was obviously worried. He found himself wis.h.i.+ng that he could somehow avoid telling the rest of the crew about Samuels.

d.a.m.n! Was the Bio team jinxed?

V

Gallifa kept close to the shacks in a futile effort to protect himself from the rain, which was really driving now. A single light burned in the Administration Building, but the rest of the compound was dark and quiet.

He skirted the deserted equipment building and paused for an instant in the lee of a truck to light his pipe. There was a loud tinkle of gla.s.s, and the winds.h.i.+eld on the vehicle magically spouted a hole.

Gallifa ducked instinctively and only just in time. The winds.h.i.+eld spouted a second hole--and then a third. A faint, bluish flash located his attacker. It was uncomfortably close.

Gallifa lashed out, and fell over a crouching figure. In a moment the two men were thras.h.i.+ng in the mud. The unseen attacker was strong and he fought like a maniac. But Gallifa was even stronger and his determined anger quickly gave him the advantage. He wrested the pellet gun from the other's grasp, and brought the b.u.t.t down hard--brought it down twice.

The man slumped, and was still.

Gallifa snapped on his wrist torch and played the tiny, luminous glow over the sprawled figure. The man who had tried to kill him was c.u.mmings. Gallifa numbly wiped the mud from his pipe and lit it with a flickering lighter. The flame made a weird, cameo-like oval of his gaunt face, with the olive-toned skin of his ancestry stretched tightly across the high cheekbones.

Why? Bradshaw ... Samuels ... c.u.mmings ...

A pattern was forming. And it was forming with a viciousness and a regularity which left little doubt as to the probable outcome.

Did that pattern embrace the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p with its ring of rain-washed skeletons? Had they disintegrated under a pressure as relentless as the swiftly-tightening jaws of a vise. _Something_ was forcing normal men into homicidal insanity. But what?

Gallifa didn't know. But he did know that someone had better come up with some answers--intelligent ones, and very much to the point. Or was it already too late? Was the compound already infected--with each man only waiting to be struck down?

Gallifa draped the limp body of c.u.mmings over his shoulder, and sloshed his way back to the hospital. The doctor grimly made room in the ward room for the new patient. While he was treating the gash in Gallifa's cheek, MacFarland, Hawkins, and some of the early-rising camp cooks brought in two more men from the weather group.

Gallifa watched in tight-lipped silence as the corpsmen administered hypos and set the new cots end to end in the already overcrowded sickbay.