This World Is Taboo | Page 3

indices and cross-references while the ship continued to travel onward.
He found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was
listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with a
landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a
flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently
added to the entry in some change of editions: "Since plague, special
license from Med Service is required for landing."
That was all. Absolutely all.
The communicator said suavely:
"Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty! Come in on vision, please!"
Calhoun went to the control board and threw on vision.
"Well, what now?" he demanded.
His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.
"We have--ah--verified your statements," said the third voice from
Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"

"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.
"Quite alone?" insisted the voice.
"Obviously!" said Calhoun.
"No other living creature?" insisted the voice again. "Of--oh!" said
Calhoun, annoyed. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come
here!"
Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.
"Very good!" it said. "Very, very good! Blueskins do not have tormals!
You are Med Service! By all means come in! Your coordinates will
be...."
Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
growled to Murgatroyd, "So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And
you're my passport, because only Med Ships have members of your
tribe aboard! What the hell's the matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they
think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of
plague germs!"
He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have
reached this planet or that, and the supplying of information about such
as have not arrived.
Then the lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to repeat the
process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man because two
could not stand the close contact without quarreling with each other.
But Med Ships do carry tormals, like Murgatroyd, and a tormal and a
man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a highly
unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.

Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had
been operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to
correct the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in this
sector. But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for
somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that
needs to be done.
The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in point.
Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin pigmentation
from other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly maintained a
one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is normally an
emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over, wiped
out the need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't been done.
Calhoun fumed to himself.
The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a
disk. The disk had icecaps and a reasonable proportion of land and
water surface. The ship decelerated, voices notifying observation from
the surface, and the little ship came to a stop some five planetary
diameters out from solidity. The landing field's force-field locked on to
it, and its descent began.
The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the singular
flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still lower. There
was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly a mile. It
could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift them out to
emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for everyone.
It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to greet
Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit. There
would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by whatever
title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd would be
petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to impress
Calhoun with the splendid conduct of public health matters on Weald.
He would be told much scandal.

He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately labored to
advance the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how to keep
them well or, failing that, how