The Silver Plague
By ALBERT DE PINA
Like a tide, the horror of the silver
death was sweeping to inundate the
inhabited worlds—with only Varon to
halt its flood—and he was already
marked by the plague he fought.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Fermin, the Arch-Mutant, had risen before dawn and in the garnet-colored light that passed for morning on Ganymede, repaired to the magnificent austerity of his cloister where he received an endless series of reports.
He had been reading Seville-Lorca the previous evening, delighting in the incredible pages which had been the great historians' dying contribution to their worlds, and to which he had every intention of adding an ironic anti-climax of his own. He sat in an austere Jadite chair basking in the archaic warmth of an open hearth, and watched whimsically for a moment how the darting flames reflected a bright patina on the fur of the somnolent Felirene at his feet. There was a chapter on the Jovian Societies he wanted to re-read. Not for the brilliant, facile style in which Seville-Lorca presented the distilled chronicles of the Jovian Moons, but for that deeper purport which is the notation of the heart.
Slowly, Fermin became absorbed in the photo-plastic record on the stand before him, unrolling in synchronized timing with his own reading speed.