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Updated: May 22, 2025
Behind the cartons she thought she would be safe. This wasn't what she had expected. Mryna thought there might be one man living in a kind of prefab somehow suspended above the rain mist. But there were obviously others up here; she didn't know how many. And the old man frightened her more than the dazzling sight of the heavens visible through the mica wall.
The government of Earth had originally planned a migration of ten million persons. "But after twelve months the survey colony was destroyed by an infection," Mryna read on the projection screen, "which has never been identified. It is called simply the Sickness. The origin of this plague is unknown.
She could not move quickly. She saw the armed man at the mouth of the corridor. Frantically she pushed open the door of a room, which was crowded with consoles of transmission machines. Three men were seated in front of the speakers. They jumped and came toward her, clumsily fighting the weightlessness. Mryna caught at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling.
Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor, screaming in terror. She's afraid of me! Mryna thought. And that made no sense at all. Mryna knew she had to get back to the god-car quickly. Since the Earthmen had built up the taboos in order to get their sacrifice ores from Rythar, they would do everything they could to prevent her return. She ran toward an intersecting spoke corridor.
True, it was not difficult to dig out the ore, but Mryna resented the fact that the kids on Rythar had not been told the truth. She had long ago lost her awe of the man called god; now she lost her respect as well. Mryna was glad she had not seen him, glad no one knew she was aboard the Guardian Wheel. She would return to Rythar.
No adult in the survey colony survived; children born on Rythar are themselves immune, but are carriers of the Sickness. The first rescue team sent to save them died within eight hours. No human being, aside from these native-born children, has ever survived the Sickness." Now Mryna had the whole truth. She knew the motivation for their madness of self-destruction.
If a plague carrier escaped from Rythar, we would have heard about it long before this. The trouble with you scientists is you don't grant the rest of us any common sense. And Jameson's the worst of the lot. He's always contended that the sociologists should determine our Rytharian policy, not the elected representatives of the people." Mryna broke down and began to cry hysterically.
Mryna had never seen physical age before. No one on Rythar was older than she was herself a sturdy, healthy, lusty twenty. The old man's infirmity disgusted her; for the first time in her life she was conscious of the slow decay of death. The door of the supply room slid open. Mryna crouched low behind the cartons, but she was able to see the man and the woman who had entered the room.
A woman here? Mryna hadn't considered that possibility. Perhaps the Earth-god already had a mate. The newcomers were dressed in crisp, white uniforms; the woman wore a starched, white hat. They carried a tray of small, glass cylinders from which metal needles projected.
To do that adequately, we shall have to send survey teams to the surface; that requires much larger appropriations for research than we have had in the past. The metal immunization suits, which must, of course, be destroyed after each expedition " "And what, may I ask, is the meaning of this?" Mryna dropped the report and swung toward the door.
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