CONTAGION
 
 
 By KATHERINE MacLEAN
 
 [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 
 


 Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
 
 
 
 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 in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
 
 They lowered their guns.
 
 "It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
 
 The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
 
 Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
 
 "English?" gasped June.
 
 "We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
 
 

 
 June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
 
 "We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
 
 Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
 
 "Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
 
 The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
 
 "What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
 
 He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
 
 "Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
 
 "Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
 
 They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
 
 "I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
 
 "Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
 
 June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
 
 She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
 
 He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
 
 June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
 
 "In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
 
 Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
 
 "For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
 
 Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
 
 "Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
  Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
 
 "Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
 
 "You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
 
 Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
 
 "Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
 
 "No."
 
 "Any other diseases?"
 
 "Not a one."
 
 Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
 
 

 
 Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
 
 The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
 
 "Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
 
 "It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
 
 The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
 
 

 
 "May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
 
 Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
 
 "Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
 
 Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
 
 "Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
 
 "You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
 
 "Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
 
 Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
 
 High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
 
 "What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
 
 Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
 
 "The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
 
 "We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
 
 "If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
 
 "Starting with me?" Pat asked.
 
 "Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
 
 "More needles?"
 
 "Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
 
 "Rough?"
 
 "It isn't easy."
 
 A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
 
 In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
 
 But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
 
 Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
 
 Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
 
 All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
 
 

 
 June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
 
 "I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
 
 Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
 
 "Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
 
 The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
 
 "Are you hungry?"
 
 "No food since yesterday."
 
 "We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
 
 They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
 
 One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
 
 "How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
 
 "Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
 
 On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
 
 Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
 
 

 
 Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
 
 "Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
 
 "People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
 
 "One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
 
 "May I go see him?"
 
 "Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
 
 "Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
 
 

 
 They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
 
 They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
 
 "—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
 
 The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
 
 Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
 
 Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
 
 "Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
 
 A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
 
 "Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
 
 Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
 
 Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
 
 "He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
 
 June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
 
 

 
 Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
 
 "When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
 
 "Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
 
 "That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
 
 They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
 
 Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
 
 There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
 
 Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
 
 June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
 
 June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
 
 "That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
 
 "Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
 
 Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
 
 Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
 
 Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
 
 

 
 "Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
 
 "Why?" Len was aggrieved.
 
 "Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
 
 Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
 
 "Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
 
 "It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
 
 "Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
 
 "Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
 
 

 
 She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
 
 Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
 
 "Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
 
 "What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
 
 "I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
 
 "A character," Max said.
 
 Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
 
 "Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
 
 "It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
 
 "Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
 
 "It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
 
 Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
 
 "We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
 
 The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
 
 

 
 Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
 
 Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
 
 June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
 
 "We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
 
 June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
 
 Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
 
 She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
 
 "Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
 
 "Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
What is the plot of the story?
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The story begins with the Explorer ship landing on an unknown planet. The ships inhabitants are careful of any potential diseases and so do not readily disembark to explore their new surroundings. Instead, they send a crew of four medical doctors to go on a hunt party to understand the types of pathogens on the planet. The four doctors in the hunt party are June Walton, George Barton, Hal Barton, and Max. George and Hal are brothers. Max and June are in a relationship together. 

They walk through the forest, shooting different animals that they encounter to test for diseases. As they walk through the forest, they encounter a man who speaks English. His name is Patrick Mead and he introduces the party to the planet, known as Minos. The man explains how his group was 300 miles away from their ship.  

Patrick and the group asks questions of each other. Patrick notes that he is shocked to see a variety of different looking people as those on Minos all look very similar to each other. The group and Pat all head back to the ship where they explain to Pat that he has to go through a process of decontamination. They begin by taking specimen from Pat and spinal fluid samples from him. Pat then continues on to the rest of the decontamination process that the others do not have to go through. 

While Pat is going through decontamination, so is the rest of the doctors – but in a different process. During June’s process, she is seen admiring her body. Once they are done, they go to the dining hall to eat. A woman asks the doctors when they will be able to let out of the ship to explore the new land, and Max answers that it might happen soon. Many people are excited about the possibility because they have all been isolated in space for the past year and a half. When they enter the cafeteria, they can hear passengers excitedly gossiping about Pat’s arrival. As soon as pat enters the room, people approach him eagerly awaiting to talk to him. During the meal, Pat explains how a geneticist on the planet adapted the citizens’ cells to their planet so that they would not destroy the planet foraging for food. 

During the conversation over food, Hall enters the room to inform them that the hamsters showed signs of infection. This means that Pat’s people still do carry the disease, the morning sickness. Pat assures them that his people would be willing to be de-infected. The crew then send Reno Ulrich to go to Pat’s town to make relations with the people.

After eating, June goes back to the laboratory. She sees Pat and the beautiful Shelia Davenport walking in her direction. She mockingly acknowledges his presence when he walks past her.  

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The hunt party of the 'Explorer' proceeds through a forest on planet Minos in spacesuits and communicates through earphones. The forest reminds Earth but can be dangerous, so the rest of the people stay on the ship, longing to be outside. At that time, the party of doctors is hunting animals to test for contagion, which has been the reason for massive deaths on other planets. Suddenly, an animal-like man, Patrick Mead, appears, who was sent by the Mayor from far away. The party is surprised to see an English-speaking human as there is no colony on Minos according to the map. Patrick informs them that the population of Minos is one hundred and fifty, and the planet has room for more. The variety of the group's appearances puzzles Patrick as in his opinion all people should look like June, a member of the party. She looks similar to Patrick himself - tanned, tall, with freckles and wavy red hair. He tells about a plague which happened in the past and killed everyone except the Mead families who were immune. As all the people alive are related, they look similar. The disease was called the melting sickness and it killed all the doctors before they studied it. The colony's ship went off forever to avoid the contagion and took everything with them. The party returns to the ship with Pat, considering the planet the desirable home. Pat admires the ship as he was raised on Minos without any luxuries or technologies. Max, June's boyfriend and also a doctor, tests Pat for the melting sickness before letting him into the ship. Reno's scout plane comes in surprise and is updated about the local colony. The newcomers have cureall, a multi-purpose cure from any alien intrusion to the body, but for safety the ship equipment for testings is fully mechanical. Pat's positive attitude is opposite to the usual ship talk and, therefore, pleasing for June. The passengers abroad are staring outside and stake places for their future houses. People are eager to meet Pat after a year and a half in isolation. Soon, he comes into the cafeteria and is surrounded by curious passengers. June becomes jealous of the female attention to Pat and compares him to Max, with the least significantly losing in appearance. Pat mentions that local food won't digest for the newcomers unless they are adapted by a test-tube evolution, a method used by his ancestor to avoid destroying the local flora but rather adapt the Mead's genes to local food. That leads to the inability to digest the ship's food, only the products of Minos. For some reason June feels fear. Hal comes and reports the hamsters tested before Pat was de-infected to be dead. Reno sets off to the colony to persuade the locals to be de-infected and to give their agreement through voting. The dead hamsters have nothing wrong in their bodies and the reasons are unknown. June sees Pat and admires him from afar. 
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490e912a069149f2b56aa99e6d745665
The story begins on Minos, an Earthlike planet where The Explorer has landed in hopes of colonization. The medical crew on the ship, consisting of June Walton, Max Stark, and Hal and George Barton, step outside with their spacesuits to hunt animals and test them for disease, cautious of potential plagues that could wipe out their ship. They surprisingly come across a human who speaks English, finding out that Minos had been colonized prior to their arrival. The man introduces himself as Patrick Mead. He explains that the population on Minos is small, only consisting of the Mead family, all which look alike. Pat goes on to tell the crew that a plague had struck the original colony when they arrived, called the melting sickness. The mysterious disease killed everyone except for the Mead family, and the people on Minos had tried to fly back into space for escape, but the crew never came back. The crew takes Pat back to their ship, and explains to him that in order to protect themselves against disease, tests and precautions are necessary. They run several procedures on Pat, including drawing his blood, bathing him in disinfectant, and injecting his blood into hamsters to see if he carried disease. June, having developed an interest in Pat, finds herself to be drawn to him as time passes. Dinner time eventually comes, and all the people aboard The Explorer eventually hear news of the new stranger. In the meantime, Reno flies a plane to and from the ship, carrying messages to the town on Minos. Pat arrives to the dining hall, and is immediately swarmed with interest and excitement. He tells stories of Minos and answers the many questions he is asked, and is given particular attention by the women on the ship, which June feels upset about. Len Marlow, a plant geneticist, listens as Pat tells him about food on Minos; when they had first arrived, they were unable to digest the plants and animals due to genetic differences. Their head of the clan, Alexander Mead, had managed to take human cells and adapt them to the life on Minos, ultimately allowing for them to eat and digest the food there. Pat implies that this process is necessary if the people on The Explorer want to settle on Minos. Hal Burton appears and informs the crew that three of the hamsters have died, and calls for the people on Minos to be disinfected. As June observes the hamsters, she walks past Pat, who kindly acknowledges her.
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e08e84abd4cd44febaa259b58f3f1635
The medical party of the Explorer is going hunting along a narrow trail in the forest. June Walton asks if George Barton has gotten anything from his shot, and he says it looks like a duck. Hal Barton, his brother, says that the creatures won’t look like ducks. Max tells June that he loves her and not to get eaten by a dragon. Many people wait on the Explorer spaceship to go outside, but it is up to the four medicos to hunt the animals and test them for disease. Someone fires at a specimen they see, but it turns out to be a man who has the three-day growth of red stubble. The man introduces the planet as Minos and says that the mayor sends his greetings from Alexandria. June is shocked to hear that after thirty-six light years of space travel, there is already a colony of one hundred and fifty living here. The man introduces himself as Patrick Mead, and he is shocked to see the wide variety of humans who have come from the Explorer. He mentions that there was a plague too, but it has disappeared, and there are no other illnesses. Pat goes with them back to the Explorer and admires all of the technology since he has been raised on Minos his entire life. When Pat asks to go abroad, Hal tells him that he must go through a few tests for melting sickness. Max performs various tests on him as Hal signals for Reno Unrich to drop a note in Pat’s town to explain that contact has been made. Pat goes through more tests, which the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall called the Nucleocat Cureall could help ensure. June checks on Pat again and tells him that there will be a banquet after he has finished the tests. A Canadian woman named Bess St. Clair asks when the people will be let out. Max tells her that they will be going out soon because of the castaway colony. Bess is excited, and Max tells her that she can show Pat the way to the dining hall. Shortly after June and Max go into the dining hall, Pat appears and gets swarmed by a large crowd. They rescue him so that he can eat, but people come by anyway. All of the women linger longer, and June even begins to question her love for Max. Pat reveals that the people on Minos have been chemically adapted by Alexander P. Mead, who had turned human cells and made them into phagocytes. Eventually, these leucocytes are put back into humans once they have become successful. Hal then says that the colony people have the germs of melting sickness, to which Pat says that health is a top priority; the colony will need to vote on first, however. Reno is excited to study the people further, while June and George study the hamsters. As June wanders down the hall, Pat walks by, and they make contact. 
How does June feel and interact with Patrick Mead?
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41bd29f3bdd44a808405f00b9e3a87c7
Upon meeting Patrick, June makes note of his tall frame and how his appearance resembles her own. She seems to admire his looks. She in turn feels guilty as Max, her partner, seems to not compare well to Patrick in her own eyes. She also notes that Max is frailer than Pat. Back on the ship, June admires herself during the spacesuit decontamination process. Evident from Max’s reaction, it is unusual for her to do so in such a manner. It is hinted that Pat’s appearance prompted her examination. 

Further, into the story, June begins to express more uneasiness with Max’s figure. She also does not appear to like that so many women are giving Pat a lot of attention. She continues to feel guilty as she sees her feelings toward Pat as being disloyal to Max, who she thinks she loves. 

She again shows her jealously when Pat is seen walking down a hallway with Shelia Davenport, who June herself describes as gorgeous. 

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0c8a174fa10e4c81ae94812ae1c590c0
June has been isolated with the passengers of the ship for one year and a half, and Pat is the first new man she meets. He is tall and handsome, especially on the contrast with her boyfriend Max, who is of the same height as she is and not handsome. She didn't care about Max's appearance before as she loves him, but presence of Max evokes some feeling of admiration in her. She is disappointed in how Max looks on the contrast. Pat also possesses a cheerful and gay attitude, especially on the contrast with the crew, which is tired of constant searching. Pat seems an attractive movie character for June and she tries to stay afar as she feels guilty before Max. She is also jealous of all the women approaching Pat. In the end the two even flirt slightly. 
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490e912a069149f2b56aa99e6d745665
June is in a romantic relationship with Max. However, throughout the story, she finds herself drawn to Pat and cannot seem to explain why. Upon meeting Pat, June is stunned by his appearance, and immediately becomes aware of her looks and behavior, smiling around him. When Pat meets the rest of the people aboard The Explorer, he gains a lot of attention from the women on the ship, who are evidently flirting with him. June feels herself becoming jealous, but tries to deny her emotions and reassures herself of her love for Max. However, she still finds herself wanting to be near Pat. 
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e08e84abd4cd44febaa259b58f3f1635
When June first meets Patrick Mead, she is instantly friendly towards him. He smiles at June and says that many people in the colony look like them because of their similar features. Pat is very handsome, and June even feels guilty for pitying Max because he is smaller and frailer in comparison. When she goes to the shower stall later, she even remarks how she has a good figure. When Max asks if they are going to eat, she chooses to dial Pat first instead. June realizes that Pat’s voice is full of vitality and enjoyment. After Pat is swarmed in the dining hall, June is very happy to have been the one who rescues him. She gets jealous when the other female specialists swarm the man. Even when she looks at Max again, he feels shrunken and shorter than before. She is angry at herself and feels guilty for doubting the love that she shares with Max, despite being immensely attracted to Pat. During her encounter with Pat in the hallway later, he touches her arm lightly, and she says, “Oh, pioneer!” to his passing profile. 
What is the melting sickness?
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41bd29f3bdd44a808405f00b9e3a87c7
The melting sickness is described as a type of plague by Pat. He informs the doctors that it arrived soon after the colony settled on the planet and killed all but one particular familiar which happened to be immune to the disease. The disease is described as being brutal and not even doctors were able to avoid it. According to Pat, there has not been any recurrence of the melting sickness and no other diseases to note. 
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0c8a174fa10e4c81ae94812ae1c590c0
The melting sickness is the name the local colonists gave to some kind of a plague which killed all the colonists except the Meads families. It happened in a couple years after arrival and only the Meads turned out to be immune, that's why all the people on Minos look similar - they are related. The disease was so rapid and furious that it killed all the doctors and, therefore, wasn't studied. The rest of the colonists took off on the ship to escape, and left the Meads without any books or technologies, so they don't have doctors and hunt with bows. This disease is still carried by the Meads without harming them, it's also unable to record through testings - all the tests are good but the hamsters die.
101
490e912a069149f2b56aa99e6d745665
The melting sickness is a plague that spread across the first colony on Minos. The melting sickness killed everyone except for the Mead family, who seemed to be immune to the disease. It is unsure what exactly the melting sickness is or its cure, because the doctors working to learn about it ended up dying during the plague. Since the, plague, there have been no more cases of the melting sickness on Minos, but the people on The Explorer still need to take precautions in case the germs prevailed. When the experiment is run on the hamsters, three of them die, one of them losing its hair. 
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e08e84abd4cd44febaa259b58f3f1635
Melting sickness is the equivalent of a plague-type disease on Minos. Patrick does not know much about the melting sickness, but his father had explained it to him as being pretty gruesome. The doctors died too soon to find out what the disease was and what to do to cure it. It was also impossible to train more doctors or send them to civilization because their spaceship that served as a power plant with all of the necessary books went into the sky and never came back. Although Patrick says that there are no more recurrences of melting sickness, it is revealed that the colony peoples still carry the germs of the disease, which means that they must disinfect before establishing contact. The hamsters can fight off melting sickness alone, but the ones who died had strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine. George also says that they can not find any external micro-organisms. Everything present is leucosis and anemia; fever is only for the ones who fought it off. 
What criteria for health safety do the members of the Explorer follow?
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41bd29f3bdd44a808405f00b9e3a87c7
Potential pathogens are of grave concern to the members of the Explorer. To ensure their safety, they send out a hunting party of medical doctors to gather data on the diseases present on the planet Minos. The doctors wear protective gear during this trip. 

When they bring Pat back to their ship, they require him to go through tests before he is allowed onto the ship. They include needing to de-microbe him and taking specimens from him. Max takes spinal fluid samples from Pat during this process. Pat then went through a long process where he was guided by mechanical voices to go through many different stages of decontamination. 

While the group of doctors do not have to go through the same process as Pat to board the ship, they go through their own decontamination process. There is a stall for spacesuit decontamination that shoots out disinfectants and baths of ultraviolet radiation for sterilization. 

The ship was also governed by interplanetary health laws. These laws demanded that ship equipment protecting against diseases had to be completely mechanical in operation and efficient. 

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0c8a174fa10e4c81ae94812ae1c590c0
There is a protocol developed to prevent any danger. The ship has been to various planets and faced plague, so they are very cautious. The doctors exit the ship in spacesuits to explore the planet, while common people have to stay inside. The animals are tested on diseases. There are many laboratories and tools on the ship, even hamsters for experiments. There is a cureall stored aboard - a cure from any alien illness. All the procedures are done mechanically to avoid contact. There are different rooms for conducting all the possible testings and experiments. No contact is allowed before the test results. 
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490e912a069149f2b56aa99e6d745665
In order to avoid any risk of contracting disease, people on The Explorer do not interact with foreign people or environments unless they are sure that there is no present disease that can be spread. Because of this, people on The Explorer have been in isolation. When the medical crew first encounters Pat, they are wearing spacesuits outside to protect themselves from the atmosphere, and before he boards the ship, they run several tests on him and make him go through several cleansing procedures. In order to find out if Pat has any diseases, they draw his blood and inject it into hamsters, running an experiment to see if there is cause for concern.
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e08e84abd4cd44febaa259b58f3f1635
The criteria for safety that all members of the Explorer follow involves many tests and disinfecting. Before Pat can enter, they must first check if he carries the germs of melting sickness. Even when the doctors go on, they must stand in stalls for spacesuit decontamination. This decontamination involves being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant and being bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation. The Explorer also houses the Nucleocat Cureall, a solution of enzymes that disintegrates any non-human cell. However, as an extra precaution, there are stalls that loop similar to a rabbit maze. There is an area for soap and shower, a blood test, solutions to drink, a germicidal ultraviolet bath, sonic blast shaking, germicidal mists, and immunizing solutions. After all of this, there is also a room with high temperature and extreme dryness; more fluids are also dripped into the disinfecting person’s veins during this time. These are all necessary measures to ensure absolute cleanliness and destroy any chance of anyone being a suspected carrier of infection.
What is the setting of the story?
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41bd29f3bdd44a808405f00b9e3a87c7
The story begins with the ship, the Explorer, landing on an unknown planet. It has an Earth-like forest in the fall. The leaves were of various colors, green, copper, purple, and red. To get to this planet, known as Minos, it took 36 light-years from Earth. The ship they traveled on is described as being like a silver and black column. It was previously a yacht that was retrofitted to become the Explorer. 

They take Pat back to the ship and they all decontaminate. Once they are done, they go to the dining hall for food. After eating their food in the dining, June and some of the other doctors return to the laboratory to inspect the mice. 

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0c8a174fa10e4c81ae94812ae1c590c0
The story begins on Minos, a lovely planet reminding Earth. A party of doctors in spacesuits and earphones are moving through the forest, which looks like a beautiful Earth forest in the fall. The trail is narrow, and the spaceship, 'Explorer', towers behind. The ship is huge and it looks like a skyscraper within the forest. It is a polished silver and black column which used to be a yacht. There are many passengers abroad, staring at the planet through the windows. There are cabins, a cafeteria, a control room, a library and laboratories inside. Before coming in, Pat is tested on the ground near the ship. The ship has a cureall - a cure from any disease. Not to get sick before it's used, then testings are done by machines. There is Reno's plane which travels with the news and notions. There are hamsters in one of the laboratories. From the view plate mountains, forests, hills and fields are visible. The ship used to have ballrooms and dining rooms but all was transformed. 
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490e912a069149f2b56aa99e6d745665
The story is set on Minos, a planet that Earthmen had found and landed on in hopes of finding a habitable place to colonize. Minos is visually and physically very similar to Earth, with forests, meadows, clouds, and breathable air. The animals are also similar to Earth animals. However, there is uncertainty about Minos, and risk of the planet carrying diseases that would kill the humans. Part of the story takes place aboard The Explorer, a large yacht-converted-spaceship. The Explorer is silver and black and towers over the forests of Minos, and inside the ship has several compartments, including precautionary medical rooms, staterooms, and a dining hall.
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e08e84abd4cd44febaa259b58f3f1635
The story is set on the planet of Minos. The forest that the doctors trek through is said to be similar to Earth in the fall, but it is not fall. The colors of the leaves themselves are green, copper, purple, and fiery red. There are also patches of bright greenish sunlight and wind. On the planet, the small town of Alexandria is also there. The Explorer itself is converted from a yacht with a synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals. However, it does not have the newest speed drives. Inside of the ship, there are multiple stalls and rooms for disinfecting. There is also a locker room with shower stalls and a wall mirror. The room has a wall phone too. The Explorer has a viewplate, showcasing the outside landscape of mountains on the horizon. The low rolling hills are bronze and red, with patches of clear green in the fields. The cafeteria is converted from an old dining room, so it still has the original finely grained wood of the ceilings and walls. It also features sound absorbance, soft music spools, and intimate small light tables to eat at. There are trays to use to take food back to a table too. The ship has many working and living quarters as well, including a laboratory to do experiments in and study the hamsters. 