Read Ebook: Cancer World by Warner Harry

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Ebook has 131 lines and 7693 words, and 3 pages

Marta laughed openly. Dr. Haskett shot a glare in her direction, then looked calculatingly at Greg.

"You're talking like a child," he said. "If I implant cancerous tissue in your body, you can't submit to a check for at least six months. The examiners would find the scars of the operation. There are laws against what you want me to do for you."

Greg stared at the tie he had finally pulled loose. "But I can't wait six months," he said helplessly. "If Dora gets sent to Mars alone, you know what will happen as well as I do. Deported people are automatically divorced from their husbands and wives on Earth. They have to marry again as soon as possible on Mars. The women need someone to support them and their kids, the men need the women to run the houses up there...."

The woman straightened her face with an effort, took off the white robe, and tossed it on the floor. Then she unlocked the door and returned to her office. Dr. Haskett turned his back on Greg, saying, "I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for you, sir."

Greg drove from the rundown district faster than the law allowed. Did the ordinary man on the street submit calmly when this happened to his wife or did he have contacts that Greg had never known?

Still, it seemed unlikely that many persons could escape the law. Every nation on Earth cooperated to send cancerous persons to Mars, not only to breed the disease out of Earth, but to relieve the tremendous pressure of a growing population. The effort was succeeding, even though it was taking much of Earth's resources to send the people and supplies to Mars, even though the project had delayed the opening of colonization on a real paradise planet, Venus.

Pulling into the apartment's parking cell, Greg rode the elevator to his floor.

The apartment was dark and silent. A single lamp glowed faintly on the living room desk, and then he saw the note beside the viewphone.

"I didn't exactly lie about the date of my passage," the note said, "but I misled you. The children and I went at noon today. It's the best way. We couldn't stand the torture of a week, so I asked for immediate passage. Try to smuggle through a message to the children and me later on, but don't try to do anything more dangerous. I pray that someday the laws will change and we'll see each other again." There were a few more lines of writing, but they had been carefully scratched out. Dora's signature, barely recognizable in its shakiness, was at the bottom of the paper....

The smoke in the tavern was too thick to permit easy breathing. But Greg had been choking somewhere deep inside before he had wandered into the place. He placed his glass carefully over the well in the counter, pressed the stud at the edge of the counter, and watched the mixed drink squirt up through the patent bottom of the glass. There was a slight click as the bottom tightened automatically, the price appeared on the inset beside the stud, and Greg drank. Then he put down the glass, aware that the man beside him was studying him intently.

"There comes a time," the man said carefully, "when the fingers refuse to clench the glass with sufficient resistance. At that point, you begin to pass out." The stranger raised his glass with only slight effort, and watched Greg apply time and thought to the same procedure.

"You remind me of the way some doctors talk," Greg said.

"I never forget a patient," the stranger said, peering intently at Greg, "and you aren't one of mine, even though you're not quite sober enough to look natural. But people tell me that all doctors act somewhat alike, even when they aren't very good doctors." He drained his glass with one gulp.

"My wife was sent to Mars," Greg blurted the words out. He turned to the stranger.

"There must be some way I can bring her back!"

"Don't proposition me, fellow," the strange doctor said, blinking but keeping his eyes boring into Greg's face. "You're talking to the wrong person, if you want one of those little operations."

Greg shook his head. "I thought of that. I went to one doctor. He told me the scar wouldn't heal for six months.... She'll be married again by that time."

The stranger pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment. Then he looked away from Greg and began to speak lowly, as if he were talking to himself.

"I've run across other people in your situation. Space freighters go close to Mars' surface and parachute equipment down. The passenger ships stay further away and send people down in little auxiliary ships. I've never heard of anyone smuggling himself to Mars, you understand, but if you tried to--"

"What I want is a freighter that actually will land on Mars."

"You won't find any," the doctor said. "It takes too much fuel to take off again. This way, they can carry twice as much load, by just circling the planet close to the surface." He stopped, looked at Greg quizzically. "Funny thing about cancer--you study it since you learned the bad news? No? Well, the cure is something like the disease these days. Cancer is caused by cells that are harmful to the other cells in the body and grow too fast. So we're deporting people who might be harmful to other people by propagating the disease. Then there's metastasis."

"What's that?"

"Metastasis--the migration of cancer cells. They move from one part of the body to the other."

"Like we're moving people to Mars?" Greg laughed tiredly and started to get up.

"Take it easy, bud." A hand was on Greg's shoulder, and the doctor's voice was in his ear. "We've all got troubles. Look up this guy, if you really want to do something about the wife and kids." A hand slipped a card into Greg's pocket.

"What can you do?" The recruiting officer eyed Greg suspiciously.

"Anything." Greg spoke slowly, his eyes on the officer. "A fellow gave me this card, and told me I could get work on a freighter at this address."

The man glanced at the card and shrugged. "Sign this." He shoved a dogeared form toward Greg. The table shook slightly as a spaceship blasted off. Greg signed, glancing over the form.

"This isn't a contract," he said, handing it back. "It's just a release for you in case something happens to a crew member."

"So we aren't running pleasure trips or slumming expeditions for rich guys. You were born yesterday if you don't know the freighters are a little dangerous. We don't know how much money we'll make out of a trip until we've made it. So we can't settle on any pay now."

"Get me onto the surface of the planet and you get my services free the whole trip out," Greg said. "Isn't that fair enough?"

"So you want to hop out before the return trip?" The agent's face darkened. "Just when you've started to learn something useful aboardship?" A man standing at the door started to move slowly toward them.

Someone was shaking Greg, trying to dislodge his consciousness from the black, cramped niche into which it was wedged. The hand at his shoulder gripped hard, shook roughly, and a voice was bellowing into Greg's ears. Greg moved a hand, experimentally. Instantly he was jerked upright.

"Time to get to work," the voice rumbled loudly. "Let's get this show on the road. My name's Moore. What's yours?"

Greg poked with stiff fingers at his eyes. Light blinded him. He was in a small room that might have been an overgrown closet. He sat on the lower half of a two-tier bunk. There was a webbing of ropes at the other side, and a couple of small lockers around the other sides. The hand that had been shaking him belonged to a giant blond fellow who might have been in his forties.

"Feel better?" The blond giant steadied Greg in a sitting position.

"What's this all about?" Greg felt for the lump on his head.

"Well, they haven't told me about you," the fellow grinned, "but I can guess. When someone starts to ask about a berth on a freighter, they figure that he's either a potential crew member or a spy. Either way, they figure they'd better take him aboard. I got took just the same way, ten years ago. I'm not sorry now. It's a pretty good life."

"Look, I've got some money." Greg struggled to his feet. "Who can I see to get out of here?"

"Too late," Moore said. "We've blasted off. You've been out cold for two days. Don't you feel the ship?"

Greg sat down again, and suddenly he felt better. After all wasn't he on his way to Mars, where he had wanted to go all along? He could worry about smuggling himself onto the planet later, when they started to toss out the cargo....

Moore introduced him to his duties in the hours that followed, and later joined him in their tiny cabin.

"You'll have to take the upper bunk as soon as you feel better," Moore warned. "I got seniority, you know."

"Maybe I won't be around long. How do you go about skipping ship at delivery point?"

"It can be done if you've got the money," Moore said. "They run these boats to make money and they aren't particular about where the money comes from. They never are sure what sort of a price they can get for the refrigeration equipment and dehumidifiers and stuff."

"Refrigeration--dehumidifiers?" Greg stared at Moore. "Are they crazy? Mars is the last place in the world to dispose of stuff like that!"

"Mars? Who said anything about Mars, bud?" Moore looked at him curiously. "They need that stuff on Venus, because it gets hot and damp there in the summer time. We're going to Venus, my friend!"

The words stunned Greg's mind. "But my wife and kids were sent to Mars, and if I'm heading for Venus it'll be too late--"

"But you ought to have known that these birds only go to Venus--" Moore began. Greg didn't give him a chance to finish, rising abruptly and running from the cabin.

All the fear, worry and despair that he had felt since Dora's check day transmuted magically into an alloy of anger and hatred against any authority.

He searched for the officers' quarters, his feet stamping loudly against the metal flooring, the noise thrusting new aches into his head, the aches in his head increasing his fury.

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