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VI

"The probable complete success of a human enterprise which affects non-co-operating other human beings may be said to vary inversely as the fourth power of the number of favorable happenings necessary for complete success. This formula is admittedly empirical, but its accordance with observation is remarkably close. In practice, the probability of absolute, total success in any undertaking is negligible. For this reason, mathematics and sanity alike counsel the avoidance of complex plannings, and most especially of plans which must succeed totally to succeed at all."
Probability and Human Conduct
Fitzgerald

When morning came, Calhoun very wryly considered the situation. He couldn't know the actual state of things, to be sure. He'd been shot at. But even so—though that fact did not allow his hopes to be realized in every detail—the probability of a considerable success remained. It was not likely that the invaders would ascribe the finding of unconscious, stertoriously breathing members of their number to Calhoun. Making men unconscious was not the kind of warfare a plague-refugee would use. Still more certainly, it was not what the invaders themselves would practice. To devise and spread a plague, of course, was not beyond them. That had been done. But they would not disable an enemy and leave him alive. They would murder him or nothing. So when men of their group were found in something singularly close to the terminal coma of the plague, they'd think them victims. They'd guess that their supposed immunity was only to the early symptoms, not to the final ones and death.
It should not be an encouraging opinion.
But this morning Calhoun found himself hungry. He looked remorsefully at Murgatroyd.
"I gave our rations to those refugees," he said regretfully. "I took no thought for the morrow—which has turned out to be today. I'm sorry, Murgatroyd!"
Murgatroyd said nothing.
"Maybe," suggested Calhoun, "we can find some of these invaders at a meal."
It was reckless, but recklessness was necessary in the sort of thing Calhoun had started. He and Murgatroyd ventured out into the streets. The emptiness of the city was appalling. If it had been dilapidated, if it had been partly ruined—the emptiness might have seemed somehow romantic. But every building was perfect. Each was complete but desolately unused.
Calhoun spotted a ground-car at a distance, stopped before a long, low, ground-hugging structure near the landing grid. It was perfectly suited to be the headquarters of the strangers in the city. Calhoun considered it for a long time, peering at it from a doorway.
"We shouldn't try it," he said at last. "But we probably will. If we can make these characters so panic-stricken that they run out of the city like the earlier refugees—it would be a highly favorable happening. They might do it if their bosses were knocked out by what they thought was the plague. And besides, we should get a meal out of it. There'll be food in there."
He backtracked a long way. He darted across a road with Murgatroyd scampering beside him. He stalked the building, approaching it behind bushes, carrying the paint gun. He reached its wall. He began to crawl around the outside to reach the doorway. He heard voices as he passed the first windows.
"But I tell you we're immune!" cried a voice furiously. "It can't be the same thing those Dettrans died from! It can't! And there was that man who ran from the ship last night—"
Calhoun crawled on. Murgatroyd skipped. Calhoun heard an exclamation behind him. He turned his head, and Murgatroyd was fifteen feet away from the building-wall, and plainly visible to those inside. And he'd been seen fleeing with Calhoun from the ship.
Calhoun swore softly. He ran. He reached the door before which a ground-car stood. He wrenched it open and set the paint gun at work firing a steady stream of vortex rings into the interior. He drew his blaster and faced the outside world.
There was a crashing of glass. Somebody had plunged out a window. There were rushing feet inside. They'd be racing toward this doorway from within. But the hallway—anteroom—foyer—whatever was immediately inside the door would be filled with dextrethyl vapor. Men would gasp and fall.
A man did fall. Calhoun heard the crash of his body to the floor. But also a man came plunging around the building's corner, blaster out, searching for Calhoun. But he had to sight his target and then aim for it. Calhoun had only to pull trigger. He did.
Shoutings inside the building. More rushing feet. More falls. Then there was the beginning of the rasping snarl of a blaster, and then a cushioned, booming, roaring detonation which was the explosive dextrethyl vapor, ignited by it. The blast lifted the building's roof. It shattered partitions. It blew every window out.
Calhoun sprinted for the ground-car. A blaster-bolt flashed past him. He halted and deliberately traversed the building with the trigger held down. Smoke and flame leaped up. At least one more invader crumpled. Calhoun heard a voice yelling inside somewhere.
"We're attacked! Those refugees are throwing bombs! Rally! Rally! We need help!"
It would be a broadcast call for assistance. Wherever men lolled or loafed or tried desultorily to find something to loot, they would hear it. Even the standby crew in the spaceship would hear it. Those who repaired the grid-transformers Calhoun had burned out would hear it. Men would come running. Hunters would come. Men in cars—
Calhoun snatched Murgatroyd to the seat beside him. He turned the key and the tires screamed and he shot away.
The highways were of course, superb. He raced forward, and the car's communicator began to mutter as somebody in the undamaged part of the building chattered that he'd gotten in a car and away. It described his course. It commanded that he be headed off. It hysterically demanded that he be killed, killed, killed—
Another voice took its place. This voice was curt and coldly furious. It snapped precise instructions.
Calhoun found himself on a gracefully curving, rising road. He was midway between towers when another car flashed toward him. He took his blaster in his left hand. In the split second during which the cars passed each other, he blasted it. There was a monster surge of smoke and flame as the stricken car's Duhanne cell shorted and vaporized half the metal of the car itself.