Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/102

 Doc started to ram Smalley's spine and brain with that long, glittering point.

The first gun cured the blotches, the last gun put Smalley to sleep. And then Ole Doc went on into the bungalow to get himself some food and a little rest.

The following many hours were hectic indeed for it was enough to simply treat thirty-eight thousand kids suffering from skin allergy without the other labors. And to complicate things, members of the hostile ship kept coming down with it, one by one. A scribbled message from Smalley's fourth successor, for instance, finally carried it back to the ship itself. And when the crew tried to bring up the ailing members for treatment, they came down.

Shoot with a hypo gun to cure the blotches. Shoot seven times with seven different things in seven different places for each patient. Shoot again to put them into a few hours slumber.

Ole Doc didn't sleep. He kept himself going on multithyroid, which Hippocrates said was very bad for him indeed. But O'Hara keeled over in nervous and physical exhaustion before they had reached the ten thousandth case. They put him under the influence of the second hypo gun and left him in his own lion pen to snooze it off.

And Hippocrates and Ole Doc went on.

It takes a long while to handle thirty-eight thousand babies and one hundred and ten crewmen, much less treat them. But within three days they were done.

Ole Doc stood up and looked at the still snoring acres of babies. And at the rows of sleeping crewmen. And at the five who, nervously aloof, still covered the gate with powerful weapons and barred any escape.

Ole Doc pondered giving them something. But he was too tired to take off. He went into the bungalow and stretched out and soon was sleeping the sleep of the innocent and just.

Eighteen hours later, fully refreshed, he rose and washed his face. He looked out of the window at the vigilant guards and sighed.

"Hippocrates, go gather up our gear."

"We leaving?"

"On the double," said Ole Doc.

With a swish and a swoosh the little being collected their scattered equipment into a portable pile.

"Now go gather up O'Hara and bring him along," said Ole Doc.

Hippocrates swept off to get the chief of the experimental station and came back lugging him with ease. Then he took up the mountain of heavy equipment in his other two hands and with O'Hara's heels trailing in the dust, tagged after Ole Doc, who walked, buckling on his blasters.

The five at the gate were wary. They had been on the post, in the two enfilading towers, when all the illness began and they weren't going to tolerate anything now. But they 102