Kenny shrugged. 'Another plague with no name. Symptoms are simple enough. Boils which become suppurating sores that seem to heal only to break open again. A complex of viruses and bacteria, reinforced with modified immune deficiency syndrome. So far, no cure. Decontamination sterilized the hostel room completely, and we haven't seen anyone else come down with this thing. And, thank the spirits of space, once he checked into the hostel, door records show he never left his room.'
'There is no reason for a pirate to come down with something like that,' Tia pointed out, 'but an artifact smuggler.'
'Precisely why I asked for you two,' Kenny replied, 'and precisely why the Institute loaned you to us. Oh, Alex, in case you wondered, I'm in this because, despite my specialty, I seem to have become the expert in diseases associated with archeology.'
Alex cast an inquiring glance at her column. Tia knew what he was asking. Could this be the same disease their mysterious 'Sinor' had told them about? Could it be that the man had given them a true story, though not his true name?
She printed her answer under Dr. Kenny's image. It's a coincidence. Not the same as Sinor's phony plague, he would have been frantic if he truly had this to contend with.
He signaled his question with his eyes. Why?
'Immune deficiency. Contact or airborne. Think about it.'
His eyes widened, and he nodded, slowly. The nightmare that had haunted the human world since the twentieth century; the specter of an immune deficiency disease communicated by an airborne or simple contact vector. No one wanted to think about it, yet in the minds of anyone connected to the medical professions, it was an ever-present threat.
'You two are a unique combination that I think has the best chance to track this thing to its source,' Kenny said. 'Medical Services will have more than one team on this, but you're the only BB team available. The Institute doesn't want any of their people to stumble on the plague the hard way, so they subcontracted you to Medical for the duration. I'm delegating the planning of search patterns to you. Got any ideas on how to start?'
'Right,' Alex replied. 'Then if that's what you want, let's do this the smart way, instead of the hard way. First off, what's the odds this could have come off a derelict station or ship, out in hard vacuum?'
'Odds? Not likely. Hard vacuum kills all of the bugs involved. That does eliminate anything like an asteroid or EsKay situation though, doesn't it?' Kenny looked fairly surprised, as well as pleased. 'Let me get Lars in on this, he's been monitoring the poor devil.'
It took a few moments for Lars to clear his boards enough to have attention to devote to a vocal circuit. During that time, Tia thought of a few questions she'd like to ask.
'Lars, has he said anything?' she asked, as soon as Lars joined the conference call. 'Something that could give us clues?'
'Ravings mostly, do you think you can get anything out of that?' Lars sounded fairly dubious. 'It's not as if he was an astrogator or anything. Mostly he's been yammering on about the weather, besides the usual; either pain and hallucinations, or about treasure and gold.'
'The weather?' Tia responded immediately. 'What about it?'
'Here, I'll give you what I've got, cleaned up so you can understand it, of course.'
A new voice came over the circuit; harsh, with a guttural accent. 'Treasure... gold... never saw s'much. Piles'n'piles... no moon, frag it, how c'n a guy see anythin'... anythin' out there. No moon. Dark 'sa wormhole. Crazy weather. Nothin' but crazy weather... snow, rain, snow, sleet, mud... how ya s'pposed t' dig this stuff up in this?'
'That's basically it,' Lars said, cutting the recording off. 'He talks about treasure, moonless, dark nights, and crazy weather.'
'Why not assume he's complaining about where he was? Put that together with an atmosphere and...?' Tia prompted. 'What do you get?'
'Right. Possible eccentric orbit, probably extreme tilt, third in Terra-type position, and no satellites.' Lars sounded pleased. 'I'll get Survey on it.'
'What about the likely range of the ship that left him?' Tia asked. 'Check with CenSec and Military; the docks at Yamahatchi had to have external specs and so forth on that ship. What kind of fuel did they take on, if any? Docks should have external pictures. Military ought to be able to guess at the range, based on that. That should give us a search area.'
'Good.' Kenny made notes. 'I've got another range, how long it probably took for our victim to come down with the disease once he was infected. Combine that one with yours, and we should have a sphere around Yamahatchi.'
