Science Fiction Leinster, Murray: Pariah Planet v1 19 jul 2009

[mtravellerh]

Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 in Norfolk, Virginia- June 8, 1975) was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.

Pariah Planet is a part of the med ship series:

It isn't easy being blue.

Calhoun and his tormal assistant are off again:

"The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a preposterous number of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely solid, absolutely firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as if it were buried deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no sign of anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is only utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make one's eardrums crack."

...

"It doesn't hurt him," Calhoun explained. "Right after he's born there's a tiny spot on his flank that has the pain-nerves desensitized. Murgatroyd's all right. That's what he's for." "But he's your friend!" said Maril. Murgatroyd, despite his small size and furriness, had all the human attributes an animal which lives with humans soon acquires. Calhoun looked at him with affection. "He's my assistant. I don't ask anything of him that I can do myself. But we're both Med Service. And I do things for him that he can't do for himself. For example, I make coffee for him." Murgatroyd heard the familiar word. He said, "Chee!"

The blueskins are people afflicted with a skin condition, outcast, and now very hungry. So Calhoun only has to find a cure, get in some good blaster-bolt work, solve a hunger crisis, and stop a fusion bomb space war standoff.

Free SF Reader

Pariah Planet is also part of a free library Baen book: Med Ship.

This is a special edition, as it is fully illustrated and features the original cover and is unedited. This book was first published in Amazing Stories, July 1961 and the copyright was not renewed.