Chapter II

Human beings are notoriously rapid breeders. Give a group of men and women a chance, and, with plenty of room to spread, they will nearly triple their population in each generation. Many will die, if the circumstances are adverse, but many more will live. Thus, in spite of the depredations of the Plague, the population of Cardigan's Green when Hale landed was well over thirty thousand souls, scattered thinly across the rich farmland near the coast of the channel.

On the coast itself, near the edge of a rocky outcropping which sheltered a tiny harbor, was the fishing village of Taun. The colonists of Cardigan's Green had learned quickly enough which of the local fauna and flora were edible and which were not; it was a case of learn or die. Those sea denizens which could be eaten were in great demand, and commanded a fairly large price; those who were successful in catching them were affluent men of position in Taun.

Such a one was Yon the Fisher.

The Fisher was well thought of in Taun; he was a hard worker and a hard dealer in business, but one had to be in order to live on Cardigan's Green. Yon the Fisher had lived in Taun all his life; his father and his father's father had been Fishers before him. He possessed great wealth, as was attested by his ownership of a great many Crystals, which had, in twelve short years, become the medium of exchange on Cardigan's Green. He was the owner of five magnificent twenty-foot fishing smacks and a large, two-story house. The house was of stone, but this, in itself was not a sign of affluence; large trees were rare on Cardigan's Green, and had to be used to build ships, not houses.

But, in spite of his wealth, Yon the Fisher did not have enough. He wanted more. He dreamed of the stars.

Twelve years before, an interstellar ship--the _Morris_--had cracked up near the farm of Dornis the Fat. It had not been a bad accident; the crewmen had been able to repair it, and were almost ready to leave before the Plague had killed them all. Now, no one would go near the ship, in fear of the Plague. It was a shunned and taboo place--to all except Yon the Fisher. Yon simply didn't believe the Plague stayed around places where people had died of it--and, in a manner of speaking, he was perfectly right.

There had been a period when the crew of the downed ship had needed help in repairing their vessel, the like of which had not been seen on Cardigan's Green for two centuries. The crewmen had paid off in Crystals and in small machines that did various things. After the crew had died of the Plague, Yon the Fisher had waited for fifteen days; then, in the dead of night, he had entered the ship. The hold had been almost entirely full of Crystals.

Yon the Fisher was not an uneducated man; the books which had been brought with Cardigan's ship, two hundred years before, had been carefully preserved and used in spite of the heavy death toll of the Plague. The Crystals alone meant nothing to him; what he wanted was the _Morris_ itself. But the Crystals could be used--they represented wealth.

The Commander, the elected head of Cardigan's Green, liked jewels, and the beauty of the Crystals had caught his eyes, as they had everyone else's, and that made them valuable. If Yon played his cards right, he could become one of the wealthiest men on Cardigan's Green.

Eventually, the old Commander would die, and Yon intended to get himself elected in the Commander's place. Then he would finish repairing the spaceship.

He had dreams--big ones. He would rule Cardigan's Green. He would have a spaceship, all his own. He would have....

There would be no limit to the things he would have.

That was Yon the Fisher--intelligent, shrewd, and an excellent politician. He had a knack for making people like and respect him. He was wealthy, but he was not greedy for anything material. He wanted only one thing--power.

He, then, was a part of the second factor that entered into this phase of the history of Cardigan's Green.

* * * * *

The third factor was a hospital ship of the Interstellar Health Commission, the _IHCS Caduceus_.

The ship was _en route_ from Praxilies to Aldebaran, but she had to go off course to avoid an ion storm. A star went supernova in the Skull Nebula, and for six months or so the whole area was full of cosmic ray particles and mesons, which blocked the regular route.

Lieutenant Riggs Blair, the sub-radio operator, picked up a very weak distress call as they were making the loop around the Skull Nebula. He listened to it as it was repeated twice and then called the ship's commander, Captain Doctor Latimer Wills.

"Captain, I've got a distress signal. The freighter _Morris_ developed generator trouble four weeks ago, when they got caught in that storm. Ruined their infraspace drive and fouled up their subspace radio--almost no power left."

"Put a call through to the police," the captain replied. "Just relay it through, that's all. Why bother me with something as simple as that?"

"There's more to it, sir; the men are dying. They're sick with some sort of disease."

"What are the symptoms?" the captain asked. There was a marked change in the tone of his voice. This was his meat.

Lieutenant Blair tried to raise the _Morris_ again, but got no response.

"Very well," said Captain Doctor Wills, "call Health Central, tell 'em what's happened. We're going down."

"I can't call Central, sir," the lieutenant objected. "That ion storm is between us. I'll try to relay it around."

"Good. We're going down, anyway."

It is a matter of record that the call never reached Health Central. Exactly where it got lost on the way isn't known, but a century ago such losses were by no means unusual.

Lieutenant Blair had pinpointed the spot where the _Morris_ had landed within a hundred miles. The _Caduceus_ hovered over the area and then settled slowly towards a fairly large offshore island, some forty miles from the mainland.

"There's a level area there," the captain said. "It would be the logical place for them to come down. If they didn't, we'll use the air ambulances to look the place over."

It had taken them twenty days to reach Cardigan's Green since they had heard the distress call.

* * * * *

Yon the Fisher saw the ship in the air. It was only a dot, fifty miles away, but it seemed to be dropping too slowly and too regularly to be anything natural. He was standing on the deck of one of his fishing vessels, looking toward the east, when the ship gleamed suddenly in the rays of the setting sun. Yon watched it for a moment, then he grabbed a small brass telescope. It was a ship--no doubt about it!

Were they coming to rescue the other ship? Whatever it was, they were up to no good, and Yon didn't like to see the vision of his future power go glimmering. He didn't know exactly what he could do, but he knew he'd have to do something.

He turned and bellowed to his first officer: "Prepare to cast off! We're heading for Stone Island!"

Precisely what happened in the next ten days isn't too clear. The crew of the _Caduceus_ was in no condition to record it, and their memories were evidently not too good.

This much has been established: Yon the Fisher visited the ship and offered his help. It took the doctors a little time--an hour or so--to decipher his strange dialect, but they finally found that the help offered was worthless. Yon professed no knowledge of the wrecked _Morris_. He was dismissed, and he returned to the mainland. Within the next week, every man jack aboard the _Caduceus_ was down with the Plague.

Yon returned, in force, to try to capture the ship. He nearly succeeded, but the crew of the hospital ship fought him off, weak as they were. Yon had not counted on their being ill, evidently, or he would never have gone near them. It was lucky for him they were, or his whole force would have been wiped out.

Yon and his men managed to gain entrance into the ship, and the fighting raged for twenty minutes or so before he and the sailors with him were driven off.

The physicians aboard the _Caduceus_ were not in the unfortunate position that the men on the _Morris_ had been. They were able to use the medical supplies they had aboard, and came through with less than ten per cent dead, in spite of the Plague.

But the battle between the crew and Yon's men had done irreparable damage to the ship. It could neither leave nor communicate with the outside. The crew of the _Caduceus_ was stranded.

They could hold off any attacks; they had plenty of power. But they couldn't, they didn't dare, leave the island. If the Plague struck again--and they had no way of knowing whether it would or not--they would not have enough medicine to be effective.

Stalemate.

And thus it remained for twelve long years, until the day that Leland Hale came plodding along the beach toward the little village of Taun.