Plague

Ben Sholto was in the very act of getting up an extraordinary fine fix on a sethee bird in its elaborate nuptial dance, when the Reserve bracelet he was wearing nearly tore his arm off. It felt like that, at any rate. The electric shock tensed his muscles, threw the three-dimensional camera into an ungraceful wabble which wrecked the recording, and his sudden and violent movement revealed his presence. The sethee bird and her mate vanished with a thin whistling of wings to take up their matrimonial status, most likely, with a lack of ceremony their fellows might deplore.

Ben rubbed his arm vigorously and swore. He hastily dried the skin under the bracelet so that the order to follow would be less painful. It was sharp enough, at that—the series of long and short electric shocks which solemnly ordered him to get in touch with Reserve Headquarters for this sector at once.

“What do those brass hats think I’ll do after an active-status warning?” Ben grumbled sourly.

He started through the jungle back toward his’ small space cruiser. He was a Reserve officer. He had been Space-Navy, and he had been ordered from on high to do something which was completely idiotic and would cost lives. He accomplished the mission in a simpler fashion, without losing any men at all. His report curtly stated that he had not followed instructions exactly because they seemed to have been issued through an error—and he was called up for court-martial, on the basis of his report that he had not obeyed his written orders. After his witnesses had testified, however, the court-martial was hastily dropped by order of the brass hat who had ordered it. If Ben had been convicted and had appealed, the magnificent imbecility of the orders he’d sidetracked would have become apparent to the local brass hat’s superiors. So the brass hat ordered Ben transferred to the Reserve, which could not be appealed. There was a certain amount of pay attached to Reserve status, though, and it allowed Ben to knock about in his own cruiser wherever he pleased. In this par­ticular section of space the privilege was valuable. So he roamed about, taking three-dimension pictures of flora and fauna for the feature-casts, and mourned his Space-Navy career and the romance that seemed to have gone glimmering with it. The romance had been named Sally, and it was her father who was the fatuous brass hat. But Ben missed her very much.

His cruiser rested in a leafy screen beside a particularly prismatic brook. He went in and to the GC—General Communication—phone. He stabbed the special Reserve Headquarters button and watched the screen without expression.

“Ben Sholto reporting for orders,” he said curtly when it lighted.

A fat officer nodded uninterestedly.

“Acknowledged. Stand by.”

The screen faded, Ben waited. And waited. Nothing happened. Half an hour later his Reserve bracelet nearly tore his arm off again. He seethed, and jabbed the button once more. The same officer appeared on the screen after a leisurely interval.

“Ben Sholto reporting for the second time,” said Ben angrily. “I got a second set of shocks from my bracelet.”

“Stand by,” said the fat officer indifferently.

After almost half an hour, Ben opened the back of his bracelet and put his wrist in a basin of water. He felt a bare tingle when the third call came. He grinned. That would blow something at Headquarters.

The screen lighted. The fat officer scowled.

“Say, what are you trying to do?”

“Get my orders,” said Ben. “What’s the emergency? Simulated mobiliza­tion against mythical enemy force from another galaxy, or what? That’s the standard, I think."

The fat officer said curtly:

“You Reserve men think you’re smart! There’s been a quarantine de­clared on Pharona, next System. Somebody’s trying to break it. You’ll be assigned guard duty. Plug in your writer and get written orders.”

Ben threw the switch and prepared a meal. As he sat at the table, and before he threw his dishes in the fuel bin which would feed them to the converter as fuel—considerably more than a mere sports cruiser would ever need—the writer buzzed. He glanced at his orders.

You are to lie out in space and watch for a possible vessel breaking quarantine on Pharona trying to reach the planet on which you now are. Contact other Reserve watchers and divide the area surrounding your planet among you. If the vessel should be contacted by you, identify it, secure a list of crew and passengers, and destroy it. This order is not to be questioned.

Ben whistled, scowled, and then said furiously, “Pompous fatheads!” Then he shrugged philosophically.

He took off. There wasn’t any other Reserve officer on this planet. It was uninhabited. The sports cruiser whistled up through thin air. Then there was empty space. Ben went out and established a casual orbit, set his detector screens, and settled down with a good book. He expected nothing at all to happen. Simply, he would draw active-status pay while on this so-called emergency duty, plus pay for the use of his ship. Since he had been robbed of a career—and a romance—by a brass hat, he felt no qualms at letting the same brass-hat mentality throw a few credits his way now and then.