The Blue Dwarfs - Kurt Mahr, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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8000 INTERSTELLAR EXILES
The 2nd Adventure of The colonists. In an Unknown Sector of the Milky Way. On the grey
beast of a planet which they have named…Grauntier.
These belligerent ex-Terranians, exiled from Earth, have begun to subjugate a new world.
They could have created another Paradise on this unchartered globe but for the enmity of 2
strong men: one a determined defender of democracy, the other a fanatic disciple of
dictatorship.
The democratic leader of the Free Settlers has suffered near fatal wounds…and this is
where the medical knowledge of an alien life form enters the picture.
Learn, now, of the way of life on Grautier…and the role of—
THE
BLUE DWARFS
1/ ASSASSINS’ MISSION
"IT’S PRETTY WEIRD!" said Milligan. "Booster’s sick and whatever it is he’s got is plenty strange."
Mullon, though not one for strict observance of the finer rules of etiquette, had originally been muchly
miffed when Milligan threw open his door without knocking first but was instantly mollified by his report.
"Where is Booster?" he asked.
"At home. He just wanted to—"
"Alright. Have you told Doc Flaherty?"
"No, not yet. I—"
"Then run right over, man! Flaherty will have to take a look at Booster. Freddy will certainly go along."
A woman’s voice rang out from the small house’s 2nd room: "Of course I’ll come! Milligan, go get the
doctor!"
Milligan turned and raced out.
Freddy came out of the room she proudly called her kitchen although it served for more than that single
 function and had been constructed accordingly.
"I’ll be going, then," she said, brushing a vagrant strand of hair out of her face. "You finish up your list."
"At your command, Madame General!" Mullon smiled. "I’ll be done by the time you get back."
Freddy left, leaving Mullon to his list, which he had been working on when Milligan came crashing in.
When finished, the list would contain all the things a 4 man expedition to the northern mountains would
require. The People’s Assembly, of which Mullon was President, had accepted his proposal to send out
an exploration party to scout the neighbouring areas to the west of Grautier’s new city, Greenwich.
Mullon had maintained that no one could guarantee the town’s safety if the surrounding territory remained
unexplored. That much was evident to everyone—with the exception of a handful of Hollander’s
supporters—and a decision had been reached to send out at least 2 parties: one to the western
mountains, the other to the east where the lowland jungles cut off the wide grasslands with an
impenetrable wall. Since only a single helicopter had been salvaged from the wreckage of the
Adventurous
—the spaceship that had carried the 8000 deportees from Earth—it would have to be
used by both expeditions: first by the one into the mountains, then by the one down into the jungle.
Mullon himself had been charged with leading both parties and he threw himself into the task of
preparing for them with unparalleled energy and enthusiasm.
Even so, he did not succeed in completing his list before Freddy came back. Mullon turned to her—and
her terrified expression frightened him.
"What is it…?" he asked.
"Booster’s dead!" Freddy cried. "It was awful—it went so fast!"
Mullon leaped up. "What did he die of?"
"Nobody knows," Freddy sobbed. "Flaherty’s at a loss. He called Weeney and Ashbury in but neither
of them know any more than he does."
"What was the disease like?"
Freddy wiped the tears out of her eyes and answered: "Booster was about to plough up some ground so
he could test some seeds. Suddenly he felt weak in the knees. At first he thought it was just an attack of
weakness brought on by moving to another planet. You know—we’ve all experienced it at one time or
another. So he laid down to wait for it to pass. But it didn’t. When he tried to stand up, he fell down. He
called for help. Milligan found him and dragged him home. By this time Booster had blue swellings all
over his skin. When Flaherty and I arrived, he was hardly even able to talk. 10 minutes later, he was
dead."
"What did they do with the body?"
"The doctors took it with them for an autopsy."
Mullon had grown extremely earnest. "I hope the disease isn’t contagious!" he murmured.
It did not seem to be, as things worked out. 2 days passed without a new outbreak of the disease being
reported but on the 3rd day 2 men came down with it. It was known that these 2 had never had anything
 to do with Booster in the past.
From them the disease followed a completely different pattern. As before, an attack of weakness came
first, but some hours went by before the blue pustules appeared—and above all, in neither case did the
disease end in the patient’s death. Or, at least, not yet. Both of the sick men were put under the care of
Drs. Flaherty, Weeney and Ashbury in their ‘Hospital’—a cabin somewhat larger than usual in the middle
of the small town.
Nevertheless the recent events were so disquieting that Mullon called a special session of the People’s
Assembly to hear the 3 doctors’ report.
They did not have much to say. On the Earth they had all been general practitioners, after all, and now
they had been forced to deal with Bacteriology for the first time in their lives. That branch of medicine
was nothing easily learned and they were having their share of difficulty.
Weeney, youngest of the 3 doctors and giving the impression of being inordinately ambitious, stated that
he had been successful in identifying the cause of the strange disease, isolating it and starting a culture of
it. According to Weeney’s opinion, the results of the research done so far indicated that the virus would
react to the strongest Earthly medicines like an elephant would to a fly: which is to say, not at all. In any
event, Weeney went on, more exhaustive research would require at least several weeks, so people
should not let lack of success at the beginning terrify them.
The People’s Assembly then decided that although the situation was quite serious, the planned
expeditions should not be delayed because of it. On the strength of that, Mullon set the following morning
for the first expedition’s departure.
* * * *
3 more outbreaks of the disease were reported the next morning. The newly infected persons were
brought to the hospital, as well, and placed under round-the-clock observation. The disease was not
taking with them the rapid course it had with Booster. Meanwhile, Weeney and his 2 colleagues had
come to the conclusion that Booster’s quicker death had been an exceptional case.
To accompany him on the expedition, Mullon had chosen Freddy, his wife; Milligan, a former member
of the
Adventurous
’ crew; and Pashen, once an enthusiastic follower of Hollander but who now said
that he had realized Hollander’s plans were ultimately a fast way for the settlers to bring ruin upon
themselves. Pashen had been a medical orderly on Earth, which was why Mullon had chosen him. He
could not take a doctor along, since all of them were needed in Greenwich, so he selected someone who
at least knew a little about medicine.
In the early morning hours the helicopter was loaded with the things Mullon had put on his list: among the
more important were food, weapons and a small short-wave radio for keeping in touch with Greenwich
while the expedition was in the mountains.
Mullon started at 7 o’clock, local time, as the eastern horizon was becoming just a little lighter. The
helicopter rotors, moved by small jets, began to revolve and the heavy craft lifted from the ground,
humming and trembling, then shot upwards into the sky and disappeared into the early-dawn gloom.
 No one noticed the 4 men at the small town’s north-eastern boundary who were attentively watching the
helicopter’s takeoff. One of the 4 was a small, heavyset man who, as one could see when he moved,
limped in the tight leg. Walter S. Hollander, formerly the leader of the sect of Natural Philosophy and
now Mullon’s bitterest enemy, had recovered from his wound but the stiffness in his right leg remained as
a constant reminder.
"Alright, let’s go!" Hollander ordered. "It’ll be light in an hour at most and by then you must be so far
away that you can’t be seen from Greenwich. You know what you have to do, of course?"
"Of course," answered one of the 3 others. "I just hope you know what you’re asking from us."
Hollander nodded. "I’m well aware of that and you’ll get your reward afterwards. You’ll become my
closest associates as soon as Mullon is out of the way. Now get going!"
The 3 men followed the order without a word. They went first off to the left, where the grass had been
so trampled by preparations for the helicopter’s taking off that it would no longer show their tracks, then
turned to the west and in a few minutes disappeared in the early morning half-light.
Hollander watched them go. He was a hardened man but as he saw his 3 hirelings vanish, unseen by
anyone else, into the faintly luminous gloom, their stolen weapons over their shoulders, he felt a
premonition of what would happen.
No one would know where the 3 men who had stolen the weapons out of the arsenal had gone off to.
When anyone started looking for them—and it would be at least a day before a search was begun—a
letter would be found according to which ‘3 conscientious men have left the city on their own initiative to
scout the immediate vicinity and thus contribute their share to the safety of Greenwich.’ Under such
circumstances the thievery of the weapons—all the city’s arms were held by the People’s
Assembly—would not count for much.
However the 3 men—Harper, Glannon and Cislarczik—would ambush Mullon when he least expected
an attack and return to a city where Hollander had long before taken advantage of the death of his enemy
by taking over the rulership for himself.
If the plan fell through… well, a few men would stand ready west of the city to make sure that Harper,
Glannon and Cislarczik were never seen again in Greenwich. Mullon would never then be able to use one
of the 3 as a star witness against his enemy Hollander.
No, there would be no failures… only a delay at most. Satisfied with his plans, Hollander returned
home, arriving before it was light enough for anyone to see where he had come from.
* * * *
The distance from Greenwich to the first foothills in the north was about 60 miles. Mullon, sitting at the
controls himself, flew the helicopter along at a moderate speed, several hundred yards above the ground.
He thus reached the western end of the grasslands, which ascended gently all the way from the jungle at
the other end, and crossed into the rocky mountain area just as the sun was coming up.
 To the 4 occupants of the helicopter, the view offered by the radiantly clear light of the blue-white sun
was overpowering in its size and loneliness. Mountains that no human eye had ever seen at close range
reared far distant into the blue-white heavens, torn by faults and crevices that seemed to stretch deep into
the heart of the planet itself. Where the mountainsides had consisted of relatively soft rock, rain, frost and
storm had eaten away weird and uncanny shapes that seemed to stand guard over the ravines.
Mullon brought the helicopter up to 12000 feet for an overview of the foothills. Next to him sat Freddy,
operating the built-in camera. Foot after foot of film sped humming through the machine from one reel to
the other.
Meanwhile Milligan and Pashen surveyed the terrain below with their naked eyes. Shortly Milligan
spotted a whitish-grey spot immediately below, moving swiftly across the face of a steeply rising
mountain wall. So the mountains were not as devoid of life as they had seemed at first glance. There were
animals down there and if one could see them from an altitude of about 6000 feet, they had to be rather
large.
Mullon was a technician and knew his way around helicopters. He knew, therefore, that he could not
descend much farther before he would be required to determine the patterns of air movements over the
mountains. To descend suddenly into the confusion of conflicting winds and collisions of air masses of
differing temperatures would be sheer folly.
Mullon spent the next 2 hours finding where the dangerous areas were and where he could move without
risk. Then he let the helicopter drop to a low altitude and glide along just above the sides of the
mountains.
But the animals Milligan had seen earlier had disappeared.
Mullon sent the helicopter through a narrow pass whose bottom lay some 7500 feet above the foot of
the mountains. The pass stretched for some miles through the mountains, beneath extremely high rock
walls that seemed to touch the sky on either side. On the other side of the mountain ridge, the pass
opened up on a deep and broad valley which, to Mullon’s surprise, was heavily overgrown with bushes
and isolated trees. The valley ran more or less exactly from north to south and with its shadow-casting
plant growth seemed so fitting for a temporary camp that Mullon landed the helicopter without further
hesitation. He brought it down next to a huge plant growth that stood by itself in the midst of the valley
floor.
The silence that followed the landing of the helicopter was not unimpressive. A soft wind blew through
the wide valley and slightly rustled the smallest branches on the trees—and that was the only sound to be
heard.
Freddy shut the camera off. Mullon turned around and addressed Milligan and Pashen. "Break out the
tent and put it up under the tree. We’re going to stay here for awhile, I think."
Milligan and Pashen responded by setting to work with energetic fervour while Freddy and Mullon
remained sitting in the helicopter cab.
Freddy stared off into the sun-splashed valley where heat waves seemed to dance in the distance. She
murmured: "A strange world… but a wonderful one!"
Mullon was less inclined to sentimentality. "It might as well be hell if we can’t find any water nearby!"
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