Fresh Air Fiend
By KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by KARL ROGERS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sick and helpless, he was very lucky to have a
faithful native woman to nurse him. Or was he?
He rolled over to look at the plants. They were crinkled and dead anduseless in the narrow flower box across the hut. He tried to draw hisarm under his body to force himself erect. The reserve oxygen began tohiss in sleepily. He tried to signal Hertha to help him, but she wasacross the room with her back to him, her hands fumbling with a bowl ofdark, syrupy medicine. His lips moved, but the words died in his throat.
He wanted to explain to her that scientists in huge laboratories withmany helpers and millions of dollars had been unable to find a curefor liguna fever. He wanted to explain that no brown liquid, madelike cake batter, would cure the disease that had decimated the crewsof two expeditions to Sitari and somehow gotten back to cut down thepopulation of Wiblanihaven.
But, watching her, he could understand what she thought she was doing.At one time she must have seen a pharmacist put chemicals into a mortarand grind them with a pestle. This, she must have remembered, was whatpeople did to make medicine, and now she put what chemical-appearingsubstances she could locate—flour, powdered coffee, lemon extract,salt—into a bowl and mashed them together. She was very intent on herwork and it probably made her feel almost helpful.
Finally she moved out of his field of vision; he found that he couldnot turn his head to follow her with his eyes. He lay conscious butinert, like waterlogged wood on a river bottom. He heard sounds of hermovement. At last he slept.
He awakened with a start. His head was clearer than it had been forhours. He listened to the oxygen hissing in again. He tried to read thedial on the far wall, but it blurred before his eyes.
"Hertha," he said.
She came quickly to his cot.
"What does the oxygen register say?"
"Oxygen register?"
He gritted his teeth against the fever which began to shake his bodymercilessly until he wanted to scream to make it stop. He became angryeven as the fever shook him: angry not really at the doctors; notreally at any one thing. Angry because the mountains did not care ifhe saw them; angry that the air did not care if he breathed it. Angrybecause, between planets, between suns, the coldness of space merelywaited, not giving a damn.
Several years ago—ten, twenty, perhaps more—some doctor had finallyisolated a strain of the filterable virus of liguna fever that couldbe used as a vaccine: too weak to kill, but strong enough to produceimmunity against its more virulent brother strains. That opened up theSitari System for colonization and exploration and meant that the menwho got there first would make fortunes.
So he went to the base at Ke, first selling his strip mine property anddisposing of his tools and equipping his spaceship for the intersolartrip; and at Ke they shot him full of the disease. But his bloodstreambuilt no antibodies. The weakened virus settled in his nervous systemand there was no way