Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard

an economic principle that when land is to be had for little,
then there are but few men to work it and wealth begins to consist not of vast
titlings of soil but numbers of men to work it. Inevitably, when man not earth
is the scarcity, capital invests itself in human beings; and slavery,
regardless of the number of laws which may be passed against it, is practiced
everywhere.
    But
George Jasper Arlington, thunderous lord of Dorab, had evolved two answers and
so he had become rich.
    The
first of these was the simple transportation plan whereby people in “less
advantageous” areas were given transport to and land on Dorab in return for
seven years’ labor for George Jasper Arlington. He had created a space fleet of
some size and he could afford this. But sooner or later it was certain to be
discovered that the man who could live on Dorab seven years as a laborer had
not been born, and so there came a time
when recruits for his project answered not the lurid advertisements of George
Jasper Arlington. Indeed in some systems, they threw filth at the posters.
    But
none of this was the business of the Universal Medical Society, for man, it
seemed, would be man, and big fleas ate smaller ones inevitably. It was the
second method which brought the Soldiers of Light down upon the magnificent G . J. Arlington, in the form of one of their renowned members,
Ole Doc Methuselah.
    Located
here and there throughout space were worlds which held no converse with man.
Because of metabolism, atmosphere, gravity and such, many thousands of
“peoples” were utterly isolated and unapproachable. Further, they did not want
to be approached, for what possible society could they have formed with a
carbon, one-G being? Man now and then explored such worlds in highly insulated
ships and suits, beheld the weird beings, gaped at the hitherto unknown physiological
facts and then got out rapidly. For a two-foot “man,” for instance, who ate
pumice and weighed two tons—Earth—had about as much in common with a human
being as a robot with a cat. And so such worlds were always left alone. And
therein lay the genius of George Jasper Arlington, lordly in his empire on
Dorab.
    He
had sent out expeditions to surrounding systems, had searched and sifted
evidence and had at last discovered the people of Sirius Sixty-eight. These he had
investigated, sampled, analyzed and finally fought and captured. He had brought
nine hundred of them to Dorab to labor in the wastes—and then the employees,
the overseers, of George Jasper Arlington had begun to sicken and die. He
reacted violently.
    Â 
    Ole
Doc Methuselah, outward bound in the Morgue on important affairs,
received the Medical Center flash.
    IF
CONVENIENT YOU MIGHT LOOK IN ON DORAB-MIZAR WHERE UNKNOWN DISEASE DECIMATES
PLANET. DR. HOLDEN WON INTERGALACTIC TAMERLANE CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP. MISS ROGERS
WOULD LIKE A FLASK OF MIZAR MUSK IF YOU STOP. BEST, FOLLINGSBY.
    Ole
Doc altered course and went back to the dining salon to eat dinner. The only
controls he had there were the emergency turn, speed and stop buttons, but
recently the Morgue had been equipped with the Speary Automatic Navigator—Ole
Doc had not trusted the thing for the first hundred and twenty years it had
been out but had finally let them put one in—and she now responded to the
command “Dorab-Mizar, capital” and went on her own way.
    Hippocrates,
his ageless slave, bounced happily about the salon, ducking into the galley for
new dishes, quoting Boccaccio ,
a very ancient author, phonograph-recordwise. When he had served the main
course on a diamond-set platter of pure gold and when he saw that his beloved
Ole Doc was giving the wild goose all the attention it deserved, the weird
little creature began to chant yet another tale, Rappaccini’s Daughter , wherein an aged medic, to revenge
himself upon a rival, fills up his own daughter on poison to which he immunizes
her and then sets her in the