Contagion
()
About this ebook
Read more from Katherine Mac Lean
The Man Who Staked the Stars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMidnight Water: A Psychedelic Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRegeneration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Games Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Natives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContagion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPictures Don't Lie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKatherine MacLean: Golden Age Space Opera Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Carnivore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Contagion
Related ebooks
Bad Company: The Brother's Creed, #4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hotel: The Phoenix Curse, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlague Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZ-Burbia: The Asheville Trilogy, Books 1-3: Z-Burbia, #123 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMount Terror: Short Reads, #7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHalo Around The Moon: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFALLEN ANGEL Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSnarl Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen Two Worlds Collide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsValley of the Wild Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom a Barren Seed Grown: Colony of Edge, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmy Foster: "A man's most open actions have a secret side to them." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Blood Girl: Blood Girl, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Drowning Earth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZoo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arisen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrowing the American Way Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings365 Days Hunted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Darlington Rogue: The Second Book in the “Conch Conversion” Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Run for the Money Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContagion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Nice Place to Die: A DS Ryan McBride Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Darlington Rogue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUndead: FINITUM, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spring Upon a Crime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEyes in the Doorway Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZombie Dawn Exodus (Zombie Dawn Trilogy, book 2) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Disturbing the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dictator of the Americas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCursed Blood: The Harvesters Series, #0 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Science Fiction For You
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brandon Sanderson: Best Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Authority: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alas, Babylon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roadside Picnic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Her Body and Other Parties: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Contagion
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Contagion - Katherine MacLean
Contagion
by Katherine MacLean
Start Publishing LLC
Copyright © 2015 by Start Publishing LLC
Cover image © NIAID
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
First Start Publishing eBook edition July 2015
Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 13: 978-1-68146-509-8
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
Got anything?
asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
Took a shot at something,
explained George Barton’s cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. It looked like a duck.
This isn’t Central Park,
said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. They won’t all look like ducks,
he said soberly.
Maybe some will look like dragons. Don’t get eaten by a dragon, June,
came Max’s voice quietly into her earphones. Not while I still love you.
He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
*
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June’s gun into line, and behind her someone’s gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even