financial structure of the Etlan Empire.
Their first discovery was that the Plague Planet was out of sight but most definitely not out of mind. On every street intersection and at frequent intervals along the intercity roads there were display boards advertising the plight of their desperately ill brothers on Etla the Sick in graphic and often horrifying detail, all pleading for contributions for the relief of their suffering. Every one of the vision channels ran supporting stories at frequent intervals, and the appeal was invariably mentioned by candidates seeking political office. It was the most promoted and popular charity, not only on Imperial Etla but on every other planet of the empire, and the contributions were continuous and generous.
It was impossible to believe that the donations funded the dispatch of only one aid ship every ten years.
They already knew that the ship arrived, unloaded, and left without delay, because none of the crew would stay a moment longer than necessary on that planetary pesthole. The cargo was transferred to Imperial Representative Teltrenn’s estate, a large, parklike tract of land surrounding a palace and barracks whose perimeter was guarded by a heavily armed, elite force. The reason given for the military presence among the unarmed colonists, who were required to supply them with food and low-ranking support personnel, was that they were there to guard against a possible offworld invasion. At intervals of a few months, there seemed to be no great urgency about the process, Teltrenn traveled to distant parts of the colony world to distribute the new medication, information on its administration, and news of the continuing research being done on Imperial Etla.
It would have been faster and more efficient to supply the colonist medics with the new material and instructions simultaneously, but Teltrenn insisted on bringing it to them in person so that he could pass on the personal sympathy as well as the good wishes of their emperor.
This lack of urgency aroused the suspicions of Conway and the other Corps medics, who analyzed the various plague vectors going back over several decades. They found that many of the earlier diseases were disappearing, probably because the sufferers and their families were developing a natural resistance to them. But invariably a new disease appeared to replace the old, usually one involving visually horrifying skin eruptions, multiple limb deformities, or uncontrollable palsies that were, against all the laws of medical probability, rarely fatal.
All of the evidence pointed to the incredible and horrifying conclusion that the much loved and respected Imperial Representative Teltrenn was deliberately and systematically spreading diseases, not trying to cure them, and that the reason was financial.
CHAPTER 21
Even the pennies donated by a poor but sympathetic population in response to a local disaster appeal could amount to a significant total, and the Etlans were a generous and caring people who were constantly being reminded of the dreadful plight of their brothers on Etla the Sick. Those continuing contributions from the population of fifty inhabited worlds were vast beyond belief, and with a single relief ship being dispatched every decade, it was obvious that only a tiny fraction of the total donations was going to the people for whom it was intended. Instead it was being treated as a covert form of taxation and diverted into the imperial treasury for the benefit of the emperor and the proliferating families and personal armies of his hereditary representatives.
This was not a situation that the Federation could tolerate, and when direct questions regarding the misappropriation of the funds were asked, on Etla the Sick and on Imperial Etla, Teltrenn and his emperor panicked. Missiles with chemical warheads-plainly they wanted to avoid the destruction of their spaceports by using nuclear devices-were directed at the Monitor vessels, which deployed their meteorite shields and escaped.
The medic who had been visiting Imperial Etla was never heard from again.
On the Plague Planet there was enough advance warning from the ship on Imperial Etla for the Monitor Corps personnel to be withdrawn safely before Lonvellin, who insisted that it was safe inside its ship’s screens, died in a nuclear fireball.
The emperor could not allow the truth of what he was doing to be known by the imperial citizens, so he blamed the Federation for what had happened on Etla the Sick, accusing it of the crimes he himself had been committing for over a century. He said that while the Monitor Corps personnel they had seen resembled human beings like themselves, he had discovered from one of them that the majority of their Galactic Federation was composed of visually horrifying, depraved, and sadistic monsters rendered even more terrible because of their high intelligence. For the first time in its long history the very existence of the Etlan Empire was being threatened from space, and their only defense was an all-out offensive war. The imperial propagandists and the xenophobia instilled into them from earliest childhood did the rest, and a vast, crusading war fleet was assembled.
“But we are neither stupid nor completely trusting when meeting strangers,” Stillman went on. “We do not tell them where we live until we are sure that they will be friendly visitors. On both Imperial Etla and here nobody with knowledge of the coordinates of Federation worlds was allowed to meet an Etlan. That is standard first- contact procedure. But one set of coordinates is known to every spacegoing medical officer in the Corps, those for Sector General, and the imperial advisors had a Corps medic in their hands.
“That was why the Etlan war fleet attacked the hospital,” he continued, “to capture rather than destroy it in the hope of finding more addresses. That information had to be concealed for as long as possible, which was the reason why Sector General’s patients and all of the medical and maintenance staff with any knowledge of astrogation had been evacuated, leaving only a few hundred volunteers on duty…”
An unforeseen result of the staff shortage was that the battle casualties from both sides were treated in the hospital, it being impossible to tell the difference between Earth-human and Etlan wounded, and the medics refused to make the distinction anyway. The casualties overflowed the wards and corridors not blasted open to space, so that patients who had been enemies found themselves recovering in adjacent beds with, in the Etlan case, visually horrifying monsters caring for them. The opposing sets of patients continued fighting with the only weapons left to them: words. It was a bitter, bloodless battle in which the Etlans learned the truth about what was happening on their Plague Planet. The end result was that the two highest-ranking patients, each representing one side, brought the external hostilities to an end.
The Etlan war fleet re-formed and left to visit every world in the empire to spread newly discovered truth and to offer their help in removing the emperor, his hereditary representatives, and the private armies they maintained.
“It was the biggest and most widespread rebellion in known history,” Stillman went on, “but the Etlans were proud as well as angry. They told us that it was a family fight and to stay away from all of the worlds called Etla, with one exception, until they had settled the matter for themselves. And it was here, in this area, that the war on Etla the Sick began and ended. It began when Teltrenn launched a nuclear missile at Lonvellin’s ship; there is a crater marking the spot about ten miles to the west. The end came when the inhabitants, supported by the locally recruited personnel who had captured some armored vehicles, fought the climactic battle that led to the surrender of Teltrenn’s army. But the natives are still a little ashamed about what they did, even though they had every reason to do it. That was why Shech-Rar didn’t want you blundering around on a nonspecified investigation and in your ignorance trampling on some very sensitive feelings.”
He looked at one of Prilicla’s delicate limbs, which was hanging within a few inches of his head, and added, “I don’t think the colonel has anything to worry about.
“Thank you, friend Stillman,” said the empath.
The monitor officer gave a long, satisfied sigh and went on, “Before he left Sector General, the Etlan fleet commander, who had firsthand experience of Federation medical science as practiced in Sector General, asked us to please return to Etla the Sick and complete the work interrupted by the war. We did that and, as you have seen for yourselves, the xenophobia has disappeared along with all the other diseases imported by the late emperor. This is no longer a sick planet.”
There was a long silence that was broken by Murchison, who said, “I like happy endings, too, and I don’t want to spoil yours. But how sure are you that this place is clean? I know cross-species infection is supposed to be
