Not too long ago Frederick Pohl, science fiction editor and writer, wrote on his blog about Murray Leinster, a fellow science fiction writer. I did a search for the author and found a bunch of his work available at manybooks.net. I loaded up my Kindle and started reading. Some of his stuff I'd already read. But there's one story in particular I'd like to direct you to.
In "This World is Taboo" mankind has settled hundreds of planets. There's no galactic empire as we usually see it. All planets do, however, respect the medical corps. In one sector the medical corps is severely backlogged. Planets that are supposed to be visited every 4 years haven't been visited for 12-20. To get caught up they've brought in help from other sectors. Our main character is part of that help.
The planet Weald is neurotic about Blueskins. Sure, they don't have any, haven't seen any, never dealt with any, but they're believed to be the biggest threat ever. See, a neighboring planet, Dara, had a plague that left all survivors and their children with blue splotches on their skin.
When a ship full of dead miners arrives near Weald the Blueskins are blamed. The pressure is on to wipe out Dara.
It's up to the man from the medical corps to heal the neurosis, find out where the dead miners came from, deal with the famine on Dara, and write up a respectable report about these planets. The way he sorts out the situation would appeal to people who loved the original "Foundation" book.
You can download the book for free from these sites: [manybooks.net] [Google Books] [Project Gutenberg]
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