Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard Page A

closed.
    Still,
there was much to talk about and the crowd, half hopeful that Ole Doc would
come back, hung about the ship. Some space rangers found the ashes and the two identification
tags and rumors began to fly around that it hadn’t been Blanchard who had gone
into the ship. New waves of pessimism went through the crowd. If that was
Blanchard there, in the ashes, then what had happened to the money? Maybe it
had been burned with Blanchard. People began to drift back to the ship and
scream for Ole Doc to come out again.
    Several
lost interest and recalling the doctor’s admonition to drain the reservoirs,
followed the lead of a local common physician who sought some reflected glory
and went off to do what they were told.
    But
those who remained were suddenly stricken in their tracks by the sound,
peculiarly fiendish and high pitched, of a dynamo within the ship. They first
mistook it for some wail of a savage beast and then identified it. Shortly
afterwards lights began to arc in the midship ports and so brilliant was their
flare that they sent green, yellow and red tongues licking across the field and
lighted up the rows of attentive faces near at hand.
    Other
dynamos began to cut in and the golden ship vibrated from bow to tubes. There
were some who held that she was about to take off and so went well back from
her, but others, more intelligent, found in these weird manifestations no such
message—nor any message at all—and so hung about in fascination.
    It
was the little boy, hero of the earlier episode, who again adventured. He
climbed up to the emergency entrance hatch which was still open and started to
climb down.
    Within
the instant he shot forth again, his face ghastly in the torches. He came
stumbling down the hull ladder and collapsed at its foot. One hand on the last
rung kept him from sinking to the ground and in this position he was ill.
    Eager
people crowded about him and lifted him up, volleying questions at him. But the
child only screamed and beat at them to be let go. When he was finally released
he sped nimbly past the crowd and sought sobbing comfort in his mother’s arms.
    Rumors
began to double, then. There were those in the crowd who held that some devil’s
work was afoot inside that ship. Others hazarded the wild theory that it had
not been the doctor at all who had come to the spaceport, but Blanchard in the
doctor’s clothes. Others began to retell mysterious and awful things they had
heard about the Soldiers of Light, doctors whom no one knew, who were too
powerful to be under any government. Somebody began to say that the System
Patrol cruisers should be informed, and shortly, an authoritative youth, a
radioman on one of the spaceships in the other port, walked away to send the
message, promising a patrol ship there before morning.
    With
this new stimulus reaching out, people of the town began to cluster back around
the ship in great numbers and there were many ugly comments in the crowd.
Finally Mayor Zoran himself was called upon for action and he was pressed to
the fore where he rapped imperiously upon the spaceport of the Morgue.
    The
weird screaming dynamos whined on. The lights flashed and arced without
interruption. An hour went by.
    People
remembered then something they had heard about Soldiers of Light, that it was
enough to be banished for them to interfere with politics anywhere. This
convinced them that something violent should be done to the man in that ship
and blasters began to appear here and there and a battering ram was brought up
to force the door. Nobody would risk the emergency port.
    The
difference between the loud whinings within and the sudden silence was so sharp
that the battering-ram crew hesitated. In the silence ears rang. Crickets could
be heard chirping near the river. No one spoke.
    With
a slow moan, the spaceport opened from within. Bathed in the glare of half a
hundred torches, a gray-haired, noble-visaged man stood there. He looked