"Murray Leinster - Med Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

people greeting Calhoun cordially and welcoming Murgatroyd with smiles and pettings.
"Calling ground," said the recorded voice yet again. "Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty—"
It went on through the formal notice of arrival. Murgatroyd waited in pleasurable
anticipation. When the Med Ship arrived at a port of call humans gave him sweets and
cakes, and they thought it charming that he drank coffee just like a human, only with
more gusto. Aground, Murgatroyd moved zestfully in society while Calhoun worked.
Calhoun's work was conferences with planetary health officials, politely receiving such
information as they thought important, and tactfully telling them about the most recent
developments in medical science as known to the Interstellar Medical Service.
"Somebody," said Calhoun darkly, "is going to catch the devil for this!"
The communicator loud-speaker spoke abruptly.
"Calling Med Ship," said a voice. "Calling Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty! Liner
Candida calling. Have you had an answer from ground?"
"Not yet. I've been calling all of half an hour, too!"
"We've been in orbit twelve hours," said the voice from emptiness. "Calling all the
while. No answer. We don't like it."
Calhoun flipped a switch that threw a vision-screen into circuit with the ship's
electron telescope. A star-field appeared and shifted wildly. Then a bright dot centered
itself. He raised the magnification. The bright dot swelled and became a chubby
commercial ship, with the false ports that passengers like to believe they look through
when in space. Two relatively large cargo-ports on each side showed that it carried heavy
freight in addition to passengers. It was one of those work-horse intra-cluster ships that
distribute the freight and passengers the long-haul liners dump off only at established
transshipping ports.
Murgatroyd padded across the Med Ship's cabin and examined the image with a fine
air of wisdom. It did not mean anything to him, but he said, "Chee!" as if making an
observation of profound significance. He went back to the cushion on which he'd been
curled up.
"We don't see anything wrong aground," the liner's voice complained, "but they don't
answer calls! We don't get any scatter-signals either. We went down to two diameters and
couldn't pick up a thing. And we have a passenger to land! He insists on it!"
Ordinarily, communications between different places on a planet's surface use
frequencies the ion-layers of the atmosphere either reflect or refract down past the
horizon. But there is usually some small leakage to space, and line-of-sight frequencies
are generally abundant. It is one of the annoyances of a ship coming in to port that space
near most planets is usually full of local signals.
"I'll check," said Calhoun curtly. "Stand by."
The Candida would have arrived off Maya as the Med Ship had done, and called
down as Calhoun had been doing. It was very probably a ship on schedule and the grid
operator at the space-port should have expected it. Space-commerce was important to any
planet, comparing more or less with the export-import business of an industrial nation in
ancient times on Earth. Planets had elaborate traffic-aid systems for the cargo-carriers
which moved between solar systems as they'd once moved between continents on Earth.
Such traffic aids were very carefully maintained. Certainly for a space-port landing-grid
not to respond to calls for twelve hours running seemed ominous.
"We've been wondering," said the Candida querulously, "if there could be something
radically wrong below. Sickness, for example."
The word "sickness" was a substitute for a more alarming word. But a plague had
nearly wiped out the population of Dorset, once upon a time, and the first ships to arrive
after it had broken out most incautiously went down to ground, and so carried the plague