and shipped the third directly to Earth for study. That one was intercepted by the efficient quarantine station and retained for proper dispensation. He was dead by the time the medic Officer of the Day had been notified, but Standard Operating Procedure had been upheld to the letter of the death certificate. Autopsy revealed the cause: malfunction of vital tissues owing to insufficient temperature. The body’s natural regulatory mechanism had lapsed. No cause for that had been determined.
“A month later over half of the colony’s 2,000 person complement was dead, and more were dying. The planet was quarantined. Earth shipped supply capsules, charging their cost against the colony’s Earthside performance bond, but refused to accept any person or anything from the settlement itself. Thirty-six days after the onset—officially fixed at the moment of the first victim’s initial shakes—ten additional men and women suffered the warning siege and set their affairs in order, each in the manner befitting himself and his religion. On the following day no new cases were reported; nor were any on the days thereafter. The ten recovered, and the epidemic (for so it was then regarded) was over, as mysteriously as it had commenced. The colony was held in quarantine for five years, during which time it accumulated a debt it would take a century to exonerate, but there was no recurrence, either there or anywhere else.
“Fifteen years later the chill broke out again, however, at a colony twenty-five light-years distant from the first. The pattern was identical, with the exception that the authorities alertly slapped on the quarantine within hours of the first death. Half the pioneers had been fatally infected within thirty-six days; the rest lived. Humanity breathed a collective sigh of relief when no contagion was detected.
“Now the debate of the first century § raged hotly over the chill. What was it? How did it spread? For the first question there was no satisfactory answer. For the second there were several. One vociferous group held that the chill propagated by etheric waves traveling at the speed of light, a kind of death ray engulfing entire planets and moving on after a suitable interval to others. This was quickly labeled the Wave theory. Another leading group claimed that the contamination spread by personal contact, transmitted by some short-lived virus that rapidly mutated into impotence: specifically in thirty-six days. This was known as the Particle theory.
“The Wavists were challenged to demonstrate just how a wave traveling at lightspeed could traverse twenty-five lightyears in just twenty years. But they rationalized that the inclining beam emanated from some third point, twenty years closer to the first afflicted colony than to the second. They waited eagerly for a third colony to be struck, so that triangulation could locate the origin. And in turn they challenged the Particlists to explain why no member of the moon-based quarantine party had contracted the illness, since many had been exposed before the full danger was understood. And why the chill showed no abatement whatever prior to its fixed termination, if it were really mutating its steady way into oblivion. The reply was that the quarantine experts had been exceedingly careful at all times, as proven by their ability to avoid contagion by the chill; and that the chill itself abated even though the symptoms displayed by man did not. When the causative virus weakened so that it dropped below the threshold of effectiveness, the body’s natural defenses were able to repel it.
“Five years later both theories had their trials. A third colony was struck—but because its medic had been too busy publishing the learned tracts required for tenure and promotion to keep up with the medical literature, he failed to recognize the chill until several deaths had occurred. Infected colonists by this time had visited five other planets, including Earth itself.
“A month later over half of the colony’s 2,000 person complement was dead, and more were dying. The planet was quarantined. Earth shipped supply capsules, charging their cost against the colony’s Earthside performance bond, but refused to accept any person or anything from the settlement itself. Thirty-six days after the onset—officially fixed at the moment of the first victim’s initial shakes—ten additional men and women suffered the warning siege and set their affairs in order, each in the manner befitting himself and his religion. On the following day no new cases were reported; nor were any on the days thereafter. The ten recovered, and the epidemic (for so it was then regarded) was over, as mysteriously as it had commenced. The colony was held in quarantine for five years, during which time it accumulated a debt it would take a century to exonerate, but there was no recurrence, either there or anywhere else.
“Fifteen years later the chill broke out again, however, at a colony twenty-five light-years distant from the first. The pattern was identical, with the exception that the authorities alertly slapped on the quarantine within hours of the first death. Half the pioneers had been fatally infected within thirty-six days; the rest lived. Humanity breathed a collective sigh of relief when no contagion was detected.
“Now the debate of the first century § raged hotly over the chill. What was it? How did it spread? For the first question there was no satisfactory answer. For the second there were several. One vociferous group held that the chill propagated by etheric waves traveling at the speed of light, a kind of death ray engulfing entire planets and moving on after a suitable interval to others. This was quickly labeled the Wave theory. Another leading group claimed that the contamination spread by personal contact, transmitted by some short-lived virus that rapidly mutated into impotence: specifically in thirty-six days. This was known as the Particle theory.
“The Wavists were challenged to demonstrate just how a wave traveling at lightspeed could traverse twenty-five lightyears in just twenty years. But they rationalized that the inclining beam emanated from some third point, twenty years closer to the first afflicted colony than to the second. They waited eagerly for a third colony to be struck, so that triangulation could locate the origin. And in turn they challenged the Particlists to explain why no member of the moon-based quarantine party had contracted the illness, since many had been exposed before the full danger was understood. And why the chill showed no abatement whatever prior to its fixed termination, if it were really mutating its steady way into oblivion. The reply was that the quarantine experts had been exceedingly careful at all times, as proven by their ability to avoid contagion by the chill; and that the chill itself abated even though the symptoms displayed by man did not. When the causative virus weakened so that it dropped below the threshold of effectiveness, the body’s natural defenses were able to repel it.
“Five years later both theories had their trials. A third colony was struck—but because its medic had been too busy publishing the learned tracts required for tenure and promotion to keep up with the medical literature, he failed to recognize the chill until several deaths had occurred. Infected colonists by this time had visited five other planets, including Earth itself.
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