Chthon by Piers Anthony Page B

Moon station had been bypassed. Yet not a single case appeared outside the stricken colony, though the sick travelers cooled and died in public hospitals. The Particlists strained to explain the paradoxes, and could not. One of the victims had happened to be a popular call girl who continued her practice until her clientele complained of her literal frigidity. She died; the clients lived. The particle theory had been exploded.
    “The Wavists pounced on the third coordinate with enthusiasm and triangulated for the fabled source. The third point was seventy-three light-years from the first; location was elementary. A ship of experts was dispatched. It found only empty space. If there had been a source, it had departed long since. And the disgruntled Particlists were quick to point out that a number of unaffected colonies lay between that so-called source point and the affected planets. How had those other colonies been missed? Was the wave discriminating? But in any event, the particular beam to strike the third colony could now be extrapolated. Volunteers planted themselves squarely in it—and were not affected. There was no beam, and the Wavists had been swamped.
    “Time passed and the mystery deepened. Additional colonies were devastated, yet any victim removed within a day of the first symptom recovered promptly. If the chill were a contagious disease, why did time and location set such capricious limits? If it were a wave, why did so many escape?
    “Gradually the unwilling answers appeared. Compromise gained the day. The chill did travel in lightspeed wave formation—but that wave was neither singular nor local. There were many waves, approximately a light-month in depth and ninety-eight light-years apart. The intersection of any wave with any colony meant pandemic until it passed. But within that wave there seemed to be random particles of infection that struck solely by the law of averages. Presumably there was a nutrient ether that guaranteed the progress of the illness unless the victim was promptly removed from its field. As with the ether of yore, none of this was detectable by instrument of man. He understood its presence by dying.
    “The source was simply the center of the galaxy. There were other intelligent forms of life between man and that center, forms that also suffered variants of the illness, and it was rapidly understood that investigation was useless. The larger band of the chill impulse was twenty thousand light-years deep, and the source had been demolished long ago by a species now defunct. Yes, the chill was of artificial origin; no more was known.
    “Meanwhile the waves were locally charted and schedules set up. The rich saved themselves by vacationing elsewhere during the critical month, while the majority simply waited and ferried the stricken out of range, if they found them in time. Great numbers were discovered too late.
    “And Earth,” Hastings finished, “populous Earth, with far too many billions to transport, could do nothing but wait for the first of the waves to strike. This is the time: the year §400. I’m glad I’m not there.”
    The crowd drifted off. Hastings had made light of the threat, but the chill was frightening, deep inside, to all of them. For no prisoner knew where Chthon was located.
    The chill could strike tomorrow.
     
    8
    “Hey Fiver, pal—know what Garnet just done to me?” Framy was bursting with news.
    “I can guess.” Aton halted his chipping and sat down.
    Framy rushed right on. “She gimme a whole chow for free. I held out my garnet and she never took it. Just handed over my meal and went away, sort of dreamy. She ain’t never been so careless before.”
    Aton reclined against the wall, rubbing grit off his forearms as Framy ate. “It wasn’t carelessness.”
    Framy spoke around a mouthful. “But she never took the—you mean she done it on purpose?”
    Aton nodded.
    “She’d be crazy to do a thing Eke that. She hates me ‘most as much as she