“You better not have thrown our cure out that door, doc, or I’m shootin’ you here and now.” Simon did not confirm anything, particularly as the gun was pointed barely two inches from his nose. Actually he was pretty certain that whatever this Captain and crew had, the cure had gone out of the bay door, but he was not about to give himself a death sentence either.

“You will have to let me examine you to find that out,” he replied. The Captain shouted to another member of his crew and pushed the doctor forward.

“Jesse! Go with the doc and let him find out what those shee-niou settlers gave us.” Jesse also pushed Simon roughly and he led him to the Med Bay. In the time it had taken for him to walk up the ramp and for them to close it, Simon had been able to diagnose the disease. Tiny red spots at first, profuse sweating; it had to be Fingal’s plague. It was a quick and deadly disease that affected most newly settled planets and formed part of the standard settler inoculation pack. He had examined most of the colonists that Serenity had transported, they had all had their compulsory shots, which would have included one for Fingal’s plague. As spacers it was pure stupidity for this crew not to have had their inoculations. However, in those brief moments before the ramp closed, he had remembered with horror that Kaylee had not been up-to-date with her jabs, having a dislike of needles, and she had a terribly persuasive way of making him change the subject. That was what had made him throw the bag out of the closing ramp.

He made a show of examining Jesse carefully, but there really was no doubt. They were still in the early stages, which meant that they had only been exposed for about a day. By this evening they would likely lapse into comas. The unconscious part was the unpredictable bit about the disease, sometimes it lasted days and for others, hours, depending on how strong they were. The antidote could be administered at any time to provide a full recovery. After the unconscious stage