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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: This World Is Taboo
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS WORLD IS TABOO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's note:
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright
+                   on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              THIS WORLD
+                               IS TABOO
+
+
+                                  by
+                           MURRAY LEINSTER
+
+
+
+
+                           ACE BOOKS, INC.
+               23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THIS WORLD IS TABOO
+
+1
+
+
+The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange
+and the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the
+Milky Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an
+unaccustomed angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying
+magnitudes.
+
+But Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to
+port, which was good. A breakout at no more than sixty light-hours
+from one's destination wasn't bad, in a strange sector of the galaxy
+and after three light-years of journeying blind.
+
+"Arise and shine, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "Comb your whiskers. Get
+set to astonish the natives!"
+
+A sleepy, small, shrill voice said: "_Chee!_"
+
+Murgatroyd the _tormal_ came crawling out of the small cubbyhole which
+was his own. He blinked at Calhoun.
+
+"We're due to land shortly," Calhoun observed. "You will impress the
+local inhabitants. I will get unpopular. According to the records,
+there's been no Med Ship inspection here for twelve standard years.
+And that was practically no inspection, to judge by the report."
+
+Murgatroyd said: "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers and
+then his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and looked
+interestedly at Calhoun. _Tormals_ are companionable small animals.
+They are charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deep
+satisfaction in imitating the actions of humans, as parrots and
+mynahs and parakeets imitate human speech. But _tormals_ have certain
+valuable, genetically transmitted talents which make them much more
+valuable than mere companions or pets.
+
+Calhoun got a light-reading for the banded sun. It could hardly be an
+accurate measure of distance, but it was a guide.
+
+"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd!" he said.
+
+Murgatroyd watched. He saw Calhoun make certain gestures which
+presaged discomfort. He popped back into his cubbyhole. Calhoun threw
+the overdrive switch and the Med Ship flicked back into that
+questionable state of being in which velocities of hundreds of times
+that of light are possible. The sensation of going into overdrive was
+unpleasant. A moment later, the sensation of coming out was no less
+so. Calhoun had experienced it often enough, and still didn't like it.
+
+The sun Weald burned huge and terrible in space. It was close, now.
+Its disk covered half a degree of arc.
+
+"Very neat," observed Calhoun. "Weald Three is our port, Murgatroyd.
+The plane of the ecliptic would be ... Hm...."
+
+He swung the outside electron telescope, picked up a nearby bright
+object, enlarged its image to show details, and checked it against the
+local star-pilot. He calculated a moment. The distance was too short
+for even the briefest of overdrive hops, but it would take time to get
+there on solar-system drive.
+
+He thumbed down the communicator button and spoke into a microphone.
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_ reporting arrival and asking coordinates
+for landing," he said matter-of-factly. "Purpose of landing is
+planetary health inspection. Our mass is fifty tons, standard. We
+should arrive at a landing position in something under four hours.
+Repeat. Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_...."
+
+He finished the regular second transmission and made coffee for
+himself while he waited for an answer. Murgatroyd came out for a cup
+of coffee for himself. Murgatroyd adored coffee. In minutes he held a
+tiny cup in a furry small paw and sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.
+
+A voice came out of the communicator:
+
+"_Aesclipus Twenty_, repeat your identification."
+
+Calhoun went to the control board.
+
+"_Aesclipus Twenty_," he said patiently, "is a Med Ship, sent by the
+Interstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection on
+Weald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first
+Med Ship visit in twelve standard years, I believe--which is
+inexcusable. But your health authorities will know all about it. Check
+with them."
+
+The voice said truculently:
+
+"What was your last port?"
+
+Calhoun named it. This was not his home sector, but Sector Twelve had
+gotten into a very bad situation. Some of its planets had gone
+unvisited for as long as twenty years, and twelve between inspections
+was almost commonplace. Other sectors had been called on to help it
+catch up.
+
+Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the
+emergency he'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be
+inspected one after another, instead of reporting back to sector
+headquarters after each visit. He'd had minor troubles before with
+landing-grid operators in Sector Twelve.
+
+So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one
+from which he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the
+communicator said sharply:
+
+"What port before that?"
+
+Calhoun named the one before the last.
+
+"Don't drive any closer," said the voice harshly, "or you'll be
+destroyed!"
+
+Calhoun said coldly, "Listen, my fine feathered friend! I'm from the
+Interstellar Medical Service. You get in touch with planetary health
+services immediately! Remind them of the Interstellar Medical
+Inspection Agreement, signed on Tralee two hundred and forty standard
+years ago. Remind them that if they do not cooperate in medical
+inspection that I can put your planet under quarantine and your space
+commerce will be cut off like that!
+
+"No ship will be cleared for Weald from any other planet in the galaxy
+until there has been a health inspection! Things have pretty well gone
+to pot so far as the Med Service in this sector is concerned, but it's
+being straightened up. I'm helping straighten it! I give you twenty
+minutes to clear this! Then I am coming in, and if I'm not landed a
+quarantine goes on! Tell your health authorities that!"
+
+Silence. Calhoun clicked off and poured himself another cup of coffee.
+Murgatroyd held out his cup for a refill. Calhoun gave it to him.
+
+"I hate to put on an official hat, Murgatroyd," he said, annoyed, "but
+there are some people who demand it. The rule is, never get official
+if you can help it, but when you must, out-official the official who's
+officialing you."
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" and sipped at his cup.
+
+Calhoun checked the course of the Med Ship. It bore on through space.
+There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings
+and rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful
+musical notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are
+carried by electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave lengths,
+are not likely to be the fabled music of the spheres.
+
+In fifteen minutes a different voice came from the speaker.
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus_! Med Ship _Aesclipus_!"
+
+Calhoun answered and the voice said anxiously:
+
+"Sorry about the challenge, but we have the blueskin problem always
+with us. We have to be extremely careful! Will you come in, please?"
+
+"I'm on my way," said Calhoun.
+
+"The planetary health authorities," said the voice, more anxiously
+still, "are very anxious to be cooperative. We need Med Service help!
+We lose a lot of sleep over the blueskin! Could you tell us the name
+of the last Med Ship to land here, and its inspector, and when that
+inspection was made? We want to look up the record of the event to be
+able to assist you in every possible way."
+
+"He's lying," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, "but he's more scared than
+hostile."
+
+He picked up the order folio on Weald Three. He gave the information
+about the last Med Ship visit.
+
+"What?" he asked, "is a blueskin?"
+
+He'd read the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward
+through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical
+inspection had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier--instead of
+three--a Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official
+conferences with health officials. There was a report on the birth
+rate, the death rate, the anomaly rate, and a breakdown of all
+reported communicable diseases. But that was all. There were no
+special comments and no overall picture.
+
+Presently Calhoun found the word in a Sector dictionary, where words
+of only local usage were to be found:
+
+     "_Blueskin: Colloquial term for a person recovered from a plague
+     which left large patches of blue pigment irregularly distributed
+     over the body. Especially, inhabitants of Dara. The condition is
+     said to be caused by a chronic, nonfatal form of Dara plague and
+     has been said to be noninfectious, though this is not certain. The
+     etiology of Dara plague has not been worked out. The blueskin
+     condition is hereditary but not a genetic modification, as markings
+     appear in non-Mendelian distributions_."
+
+Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sector
+directory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solar
+systems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously through
+indices and cross-references while the ship continued to travel
+onward.
+
+He found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was
+listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with
+a landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a
+flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently
+added to the entry in some change of editions: "_Since plague, special
+license from Med Service is required for landing._"
+
+That was all. Absolutely all.
+
+The communicator said suavely:
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_! Come in on vision, please!"
+
+Calhoun went to the control board and threw on vision.
+
+"Well, what now?" he demanded.
+
+His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.
+
+"We have--ah--verified your statements," said the third voice from
+Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"
+
+"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.
+
+"Quite alone?" insisted the voice.
+
+"Obviously!" said Calhoun.
+
+"No other living creature?" insisted the voice again. "Of--oh!" said
+Calhoun, annoyed. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come
+here!"
+
+Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
+bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.
+
+"Very good!" it said. "Very, very good! Blueskins do not have
+_tormals_! You are Med Service! By all means come in! Your coordinates
+will be...."
+
+Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
+growled to Murgatroyd, "So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And
+you're my passport, because only Med Ships have members of your tribe
+aboard! What the hell's the matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they
+think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of
+plague germs!"
+
+He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
+exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
+overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
+aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
+questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have
+reached this planet or that, and the supplying of information about
+such as have not arrived.
+
+Then the lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to repeat
+the process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man because two
+could not stand the close contact without quarreling with each other.
+But Med Ships do carry _tormals_, like Murgatroyd, and a _tormal_ and
+a man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a highly
+unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.
+
+Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been
+operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct
+the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in this sector.
+But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for
+somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs
+to be done.
+
+The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in
+point. Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin
+pigmentation from other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly
+maintained a one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is
+normally an emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over,
+wiped out the need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't
+been done.
+
+Calhoun fumed to himself.
+
+The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a disk.
+The disk had icecaps and a reasonable proportion of land and water
+surface. The ship decelerated, voices notifying observation from the
+surface, and the little ship came to a stop some five planetary
+diameters out from solidity. The landing field's force-field locked on
+to it, and its descent began.
+
+The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
+appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the
+singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still
+lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly
+a mile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift
+them out to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for
+everyone.
+
+It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to
+greet Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit.
+There would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by
+whatever title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd
+would be petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to
+impress Calhoun with the splendid conduct of public health matters on
+Weald. He would be told much scandal.
+
+He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately labored to advance
+the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how to keep them well
+or, failing that, how to make them well when they got sick. And in two
+days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to the landing-grid,
+and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days in overdrive
+and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again.
+
+It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every
+human being he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins
+and the idea of blueskins obsessed everyone. Calhoun listened without
+asking questions until he had the picture of what blueskins meant to
+the people who talked of them. Then he knew there would be no use
+asking questions at random.
+
+Nobody mentioned ever having seen a blueskin. Nobody mentioned a
+specific event in which a blueskin had at any named time taken part.
+But everybody was afraid of blueskins. It was a patterned, an
+inculcated, a stage-directed fixed idea. And it found expression in
+shocked references to the vileness, the depravity, the monstrousness
+of the blueskin inhabitants of Dara, from whom Weald must at all costs
+be protected.
+
+It did not make sense. So Calhoun listened politely until he found an
+undistinguished medical man who wanted some special information about
+gene selection as practised halfway across the galaxy. He invited that
+man to the Med Ship, where he supplied the information not hitherto
+available. He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe
+a man feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly
+to know.
+
+"Now," said Calhoun, "tell me something? Why does everybody on this
+planet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobody
+claims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of
+hating them?"
+
+The Wealdian doctor grimaced.
+
+"They've blue patches on their skins. They're different from us. So
+they can be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make an
+election issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us from
+them. They had a plague on Dara, once. They're accused of still having
+it ready for export."
+
+"Hm," said Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagion
+here, eh? Doesn't anybody"--his tone was sardonic--"doesn't anybody
+urge that they be massacred as an act of piety?"
+
+"Yes-s-s-s," admitted the doctor reluctantly. "It's mentioned in
+political speeches."
+
+"But how's it rationalized?" demanded Calhoun. "What's the argument to
+make pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I'm
+assured is the case?"
+
+"In the public schools," said the doctor, "the children are taught
+that blueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived--three
+generations ago! That they hate everybody who isn't a blueskin. That
+they are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most of
+us will die and the rest will become blueskins. That's beyond
+rationalizing. It can't be true, but it's not safe to doubt it."
+
+"Bad business," said Calhoun coldly. "That sort of thing usually costs
+lives in the end. It could lead to massacre!"
+
+"Perhaps it has, in a way," said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't
+like to think about it." He paused. "Twenty years ago there was a
+famine on Dara. There were crop failures. The situation must have been
+very bad: They built a spaceship.
+
+"They've no use for such things normally, because no nearby planet
+will deal with them or let them land. But they built a spaceship and
+came here. They went in orbit around Weald. They asked to trade for
+shiploads of food. They offered any price in heavy metals--gold,
+platinum, irridium, and so on. They talked from orbit by vision
+communicators. They could be seen to be blueskins. You can guess what
+happened!"
+
+"Tell me," said Calhoun.
+
+"We armed ships in a hurry," admitted the doctor. "We chased their
+spaceship back to Dara. We hung in space off the planet. We told them
+we'd blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take to
+space again. We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched on
+visionscreens as it was done."
+
+"But you gave them food?"
+
+"No," said the doctor ashamedly. "They were blueskins."
+
+"How bad was the famine?"
+
+"Who knows? Any number may have starved! And we kept a squadron of
+armed ships in their skies for years--to keep them from spreading the
+plague, we said. And some of us believed it!"
+
+The doctor's tone was purest irony.
+
+"Lately," he said, "there's been a move for economy in our government.
+Simultaneously, we began to have a series of overabundant crops. The
+government had to buy the excess grain to keep the price up. Retired
+patrol ships, built to watch over Dara, were available for storage
+space. We filled them up with grain and sent them out into orbit.
+They're there now, hundreds of thousands or millions of tons of
+grain!"
+
+"And Dara?"
+
+The doctor shrugged. He stood up.
+
+"Our hatred of Dara," he said, again ironically, "has produced one
+thing. Roughly halfway between here and Dara there's a two-planet
+solar system, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to
+build an outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed
+to run wild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle
+there.
+
+"They did, but nobody wants to move near to blueskins! So Orede stayed
+uninhabited until a hunting party, shooting wild cattle, found an
+outcropping of heavy-metal ore. So now there's a mine there. And
+that's all. A few hundred men work the mine at fabulous wages. You may
+be asked to check on their health. But not Dara's!"
+
+"I see," said Calhoun, frowning.
+
+The doctor moved toward the Med Ship's exit port.
+
+"I answered your questions," he said grimly. "But if I talked to
+anyone else as I've done to you, I'd be lucky only to be driven into
+exile!"
+
+"I shan't give you away," said Calhoun. He did not smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the doctor had gone, Calhoun said deliberately, "Murgatroyd, you
+should be grateful that you're a _tormal_ and not a man. There's
+nothing about being a _tormal_ to make you ashamed!"
+
+Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of the
+Med Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to
+the planet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about the
+splendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion
+of the planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement. It was a domed
+city in the polar regions, where nobody ever had to go outdoors.
+
+He was less than professionally enthusiastic about the moving streets,
+and much less than approving of the dream broadcasts which supplied
+hypnotic, sleep-inducing rhythms to anybody who chose to listen to
+them. The price was that while asleep one would hear high praise of
+commercial products, and might believe them when awake.
+
+But it was not Calhoun's function to criticize when it could be
+avoided. Med Service had been badly managed in Sector Twelve. So at
+the banquet Calhoun made a brief and diplomatic address in which he
+temperately praised what could be praised, and did not mention
+anything else.
+
+The chief executive followed him. As head of the government he paid
+some tribute to the Med Service. But then he reminded his hearers
+proudly of the high culture, splendid health, and remarkable
+prosperity of the planet since his political party took office. This,
+he said, despite the need to be perpetually on guard against the
+greatest and most immediate danger to which any world in all the
+galaxy was exposed.
+
+He referred to the blueskins, of course. He did not need to tell the
+people of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was
+necessary against that race of deprived and malevolent deviants from
+the norm of humanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the
+torch of all that humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the
+lives of its people against blueskin contagion, but their noble
+heritage of ideals against blueskin pollution.
+
+When he sat down, Calhoun said very politely, "It looks as if some day
+it should be practical politics to urge the massacre of all blueskins.
+Have you thought of that?"
+
+The chief executive said comfortably, "The idea's been proposed. It's
+good politics to urge it, but it would be foolish to carry it out.
+People vote against blueskins. Wipe them out, and where'd you be?"
+
+Calhoun ground his teeth--quietly.
+
+There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with
+a written note for the chief executive. He read it and passed it to
+Calhoun. It was from the Ministry of Health. The spaceport reported
+that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian
+solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signaled its
+arrival from the mining planet Orede.
+
+But, having sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space.
+It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals. It
+drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and
+since it came from Orede, the planet nearest to Dara of the blueskins,
+the health ministry informed the planet's chief executive.
+
+"It'll be blueskins," said that astute person firmly. "They're next
+door to Orede. That's who's done this. It wouldn't surprise me if
+they'd seeded Orede with their plague, and this ship came from there
+to give us warning!"
+
+"There's no evidence for anything of the sort," protested Calhoun. "A
+ship simply came out of overdrive and didn't signal further. That's
+all!"
+
+"We'll see," said the chief executive ominously. "We'll go to the
+spaceport. There we'll get the news as it comes in, and can frame
+orders on the latest information."
+
+He took Calhoun by the arm. Calhoun said sharply, "Murgatroyd!"
+
+During the banquet, Murgatroyd had been visiting with the wives of the
+higher-up officials. They had enough of their husbands normally,
+without listening to their official speeches. Murgatroyd was brought,
+his small paunch distended with cakes and coffee and such delicacies
+as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose from overfeeding and
+overpetting, but he was glad to see Calhoun.
+
+Calhoun held the little creature in his arms as the official groundcar
+raced through traffic with screaming sirens claiming the right of way.
+It reached the spaceport, where enormous metal girders formed a
+monster frame of metal lace against a star-filled sky. The chief
+executive strode magnificently into the spaceport offices. There was
+no news; the situation remained unchanged.
+
+A ship from Orede had come out of overdrive and lay dead in emptiness.
+It did not answer calls. It did not move in space. It floated eerily
+in no orbit, going nowhere, doing nothing. And panic was the
+consequence.
+
+It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter
+accounted for the terror that he could feel building up. The
+unexplained bit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald.
+There was nobody awake of all the world's population who did not
+believe that there was a new danger in the sky. Nobody doubted that it
+came from blueskins. The treatment of the news was precisely
+calculated to keep alive the hatred of Weald for the inhabitants of
+the world Dara.
+
+Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the
+spaceport office. A small spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling
+grain ships from time to time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had
+thrust it swiftly out most of the way. Now it droned and drove on
+sturdily toward the enigmatic ship.
+
+Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials
+and news reporters at the spaceport. But he listened to the talk about
+him. As the investigating small ship drew nearer to the deathly-still
+cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of its breakout and
+following silence grew more and more wild.
+
+But, singularly, there was no single suggestion that the mystery might
+not be the work of blueskins. Blueskins were scape-goats for all the
+fears and all the uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.
+
+Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery ship and
+circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo ship
+dark. No lights anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surges
+from even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger craft
+maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported that
+microphones detected no motion whatever inside.
+
+"Let a volunteer go aboard," commanded the chief executive. "Let him
+report what he finds."
+
+A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name,
+from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompous
+heroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routine
+behavior.
+
+Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketed
+himself across the emptiness between the two again separated ships. He
+had opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the
+outer airlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported--
+
+The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and
+incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. The
+ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and
+Weald with cargos of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five
+men. There was no cargo in her holds now, though.
+
+Instead, there were men. They packed the ship. They filled the
+corridors. They had crawled into every space where a man could find
+room to push himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity.
+And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off
+with so preposterous a load of living creatures.
+
+But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been
+designed for a crew of five. It would purify the air for possibly
+twenty or more. But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in
+plain view in the cargo ship from Orede. There were many, many times
+more than her air apparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have
+taken care of. They couldn't even have been fed during the journey
+from Orede to Weald.
+
+But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship came
+out of overdrive.
+
+A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship's
+log which referred to its takeoff. There was no memorandum of the
+taking on of such an impossible number of passengers.
+
+"The blueskins did it," said the chief executive of Weald. He was
+pale. All about Calhoun men looked sick and shocked and terrified. "It
+was the blueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned
+to Calhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship--he'll have to stay
+there, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing
+contagion."
+
+Calhoun raged at him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald
+spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular
+because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,
+where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to react
+explosively when the word _blueskin_ was uttered in their hearing, and
+its adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness entered
+their minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formed
+and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.
+
+The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was
+safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship
+he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been
+doomed but for Calhoun.
+
+The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship he
+might have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of the
+plague still existed, and _if_ the men in the ship had caught it (but
+they certainly hadn't died of it), and _if_ there had been blueskins
+on Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and _if_
+blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the moment
+pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Weald
+if he were allowed to return.
+
+Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to its
+airlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. The
+combination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,
+after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and
+air from the ship let into the lock.
+
+If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,
+and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outside
+by a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd fling
+after it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.
+
+Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'd
+persuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.
+
+There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had been
+unpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy
+those people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as
+a pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not only
+the ship from Orede but other incidents which they interpreted as
+crimes against Weald.
+
+They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn
+out fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for an
+anti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusion
+bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, no
+fish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of the
+blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.
+
+One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that
+no other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar Medical
+Service. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it by
+broadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which a
+planet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.
+
+He did.
+
+So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'd
+curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
+come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft until
+Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
+cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was
+not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.
+
+He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,
+"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"
+
+He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
+while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
+dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Then
+there was silence.
+
+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.
+
+But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and
+there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.
+The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and
+meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all
+of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.
+
+Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
+Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
+unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical
+affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a
+civilization can be destroyed more surely and more terribly than by
+any imaginable war or plague germs. A plague kills off those who are
+susceptible to it, leaving immunes to build up a world again. But
+immunes are the first to be killed when a mass neurosis sweeps a
+population.
+
+Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another.
+And when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo spaceship
+which could not furnish them with air to breathe, and took off and
+went into overdrive before the air could fail.... Orede called for no
+less of worry.
+
+"I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."
+
+_Coffee_ was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized. Ordinarily
+he stirred immediately on hearing it, and watched the coffeemaker with
+bright, interested eyes. He'd even tried to imitate Calhoun's motions
+with it, once, and had scorched his paws in the attempt. But this time
+he did not move.
+
+Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tail
+coiled reflectively about a chair leg. He watched the door of the Med
+Ship's sleeping cabin.
+
+"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "I mentioned coffee!"
+
+"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd.
+
+But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lower
+in the other cabin, and the look of things was different than the
+control compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a
+man was able to be alone for weeks on end--alone save for his
+_tormal_--without becoming ship-happy.
+
+There were other carefully thought out items in the ship with the same
+purpose. But none of them should cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly and
+fascinatedly at the sleeping cabin door. Not when coffee was in the
+making!
+
+Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion that
+occurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to be
+impartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely with
+Weald in its enmity to blueskins.
+
+And the people of Weald had refused to help Dara in a time of famine,
+and had blockaded that pariah world for years afterward. And they had
+other reasons for hating the people they'd treated badly. It was
+entirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to consider that Calhoun
+must be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Weald abhorred.
+
+In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on the
+Med Ship to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of any
+report favorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such a
+stowaway would be in the sleeping cabin now, waiting for Calhoun to
+walk in unsuspiciously, only to be shot dead.
+
+So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where it
+would be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large one
+for himself, and then a second large one.
+
+He tapped on the sleeping cabin door, standing aside lest a
+blaster-bolt come through it.
+
+"Coffee's ready," he said sardonically. "Come out and join us."
+
+There was a long pause. Calhoun rapped again.
+
+"You've a seat at the captain's table," he said more sardonically
+still. "It's not polite to keep me waiting!"
+
+He listened, alert for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperate
+attempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared to
+shoot quite ruthlessly, because he was on duty and the Med Service did
+not approve of the extermination of populations, however justified
+another population might consider it.
+
+But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls whose
+sound made Calhoun start. The door of the cabin slid slowly aside. A
+girl appeared in the opening, desperately white and desperately
+composed.
+
+"H-how did you know I was there?" she asked shakily. She moistened her
+lips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enter
+the room!"
+
+Calhoun said grimly, "I've sources of information. Murgatroyd told me
+this time. May I present him? Murgatroyd, our passenger. Shake hands."
+
+Murgatroyd moved forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny,
+furry paw. She did not move. She stared at Calhoun.
+
+"Better shake hands," said Calhoun, as grimly as before. "It might
+relax the tension a little. And do you want to tell me your story? You
+have one ready, I'm sure."
+
+The girl swallowed. Murgatroyd shook hands gravely. He said,
+"_Chee-chee!_" in the shrillest of trebles and went back to his former
+position.
+
+"The story?" said Calhoun insistently.
+
+"There--there isn't any," said the girl unsteadily. "Just that I--I
+need to get to Orede, and you're going there. There's no other way to
+go, now."
+
+"To the contrary," said Calhoun. "There'll undoubtedly be a fleet
+heading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'm
+afraid that as a story yours isn't good enough. Try another."
+
+She shivered a little.
+
+"I'm running away...."
+
+"Ah!" said Calhoun. "In that case I'll take you back."
+
+"No!" she said fiercely. "I'll--I'll die first! I'll wreck this ship
+first!"
+
+Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But it
+shook visibly as she tried to aim it.
+
+"I'll shoot out the controls!"
+
+Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate of
+the situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now he
+had to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disable
+the ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't use
+energy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girl
+threatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was not
+actually an assassin at all.
+
+"I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'd
+get deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air
+and food to give out."
+
+Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter the
+conversation:
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee!_"
+
+"A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and
+have a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,
+since that's where you say you want to go."
+
+"I have a sweetheart there...."
+
+Calhoun shook his head.
+
+"No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packed
+itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But not
+all. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what
+men weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your
+sweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or
+saccho, and do you take cream?"
+
+She trembled a little, but she took the cup.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether he
+spoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go around
+trying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we even
+try to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practise
+it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you make
+such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
+Especially since we're going there anyhow."
+
+"You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.
+
+"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
+more believable presently. When did you eat last?"
+
+"Yesterday."
+
+"Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Or
+would you permit me to ready a snack?"
+
+"I--I'll do it," she said.
+
+She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how
+to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from
+storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at
+dialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food for
+oneself, in one's own chosen manner--again an item to help make
+solitude not unendurable.
+
+Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory,
+looking up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no
+reason to inform himself about it before. Now he read with every
+appearance of absorption.
+
+The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable
+interest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable.
+
+Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the micro-film reels
+which contained more information. He was specifically after the Med
+Service history of all the planets in this sector. He went through the
+filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.
+
+But Sector Twelve had not been run well. There was no adequate account
+of a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an
+inhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit,
+and was over before another Med Ship came by.
+
+There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after the
+fact. There should have been a collection of infectious material and a
+reasonably complete identification and study of the agent. It hadn't
+been made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it
+slipped by. Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector,
+resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and its
+consequences.
+
+He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man has
+resources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself during
+overdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of those
+resources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of the
+stowaway. But Murgatroyd watched her with charmed attention.
+
+Hours after her discovery, she said uneasily, "Please?"
+
+Calhoun looked up.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I don't know exactly how things stand."
+
+"You are a stowaway," said Calhoun. "Legally, I have the right to put
+you out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. When
+you're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well out
+here. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat.
+When we land on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business you
+have there. That's all."
+
+She stared at him.
+
+"But you don't believe what I've told you!"
+
+"No," agreed Calhoun, but didn't add to the statement.
+
+"But--I will tell you," she offered. "The police were after me. I had
+to get away from Weald! I had to! I'd stolen--"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No," he said. "If you were a thief, you'd say anything in the world
+except that you were a thief. You're not ready to tell the truth yet.
+You don't have to, so why tell me anything? I suggest that you get
+some sleep. Incidentally, there's no lock on the cabin door because
+there's only supposed to be one person on this ship at a time. But you
+can brace a chair to fasten it somehow or other. Good night."
+
+She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but then
+she went into the other cabin and closed herself in. There was the
+sound of a chair being wedged against the door.
+
+Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and then
+climbed up into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. He
+settled himself and was silent for moments. Then he said, "_Chee!_"
+
+"I believe you're right," said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald,
+or with the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one place
+she'd dread worse than Orede, which would be Dara. But I doubt she'd
+be afraid to land even on Dara."
+
+Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carried
+on a conversation, like humans.
+
+"_Chee-chee!_" he said with conviction.
+
+"Definitely," agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personal
+advantage. Whatever she thinks she'd doing, it's more important to her
+than her own life. Murgatroyd...."
+
+"_Chee?_" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone.
+
+"There are wild cattle on Orede," said Calhoun. "Herds and herds of
+them. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots of
+them. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have been
+slaughtered on Orede lately?"
+
+Murgatroyd yawned. He settled himself still more comfortably in
+Calhoun's lap.
+
+"_Chee_," he said drowsily.
+
+He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highly
+condensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate of
+increase, with other data, among herds of _bovis domesticus_ in a wild
+state, on planets where there are no natural enemies.
+
+It wasn't unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of
+Terran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran
+life-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems--very
+much to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard
+vegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise
+alien worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.
+
+They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of
+men to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo ship which couldn't
+possibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was
+in overdrive.
+
+Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, he
+had calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose on
+a suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens
+or even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably
+elapsed.
+
+The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound
+from without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at
+all that it was not buried in the heart of a planet instead of
+flashing through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.
+
+Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in
+the control room. Murgatroyd regarded her with great interest. Calhoun
+nodded politely and went back to what he'd been doing before she
+appeared.
+
+"Shall I have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+"Murgatroyd and I have," he told her. "Why not?"
+
+Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a very
+good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but
+who was busy with activities remote from stowaways.
+
+About noon, ship-time, she asked, "When will we get to Orede?"
+
+Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.
+
+"What--what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedy
+in the ship."
+
+"I don't know," said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities on
+Weald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins."
+
+"Wh-what are blueskins?" asked the girl.
+
+Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.
+
+"When lying," he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretend
+isn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!"
+
+"But what do you think they are?" she asked.
+
+"There used to be a human disease called smallpox," said Calhoun.
+"When people recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skin
+had little scar pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, it
+was expected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, and
+a large percentage would die of it.
+
+"And it was so much a matter of course that if they printed a picture
+of a criminal they never mentioned it if he were pock-marked. It was
+no distinction. But if he didn't have the markings, they'd mention
+that!" He paused. "Those pock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwise
+a blueskin is like a man who had them. He can't be anything else!"
+
+"Then you think they're human?"
+
+"There's never yet been a case of reverse evolution," said Calhoun.
+"Maybe Pithecanthropus had a monkey uncle, but no Pithecanthropus ever
+went monkey."
+
+She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during that
+day. He continued to busy himself with those activities which make Med
+Ship life consistent with retained sanity.
+
+Next day she asked without preliminary, "Don't you believe the
+blueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Weald
+and spread plague there?"
+
+"No," said Calhoun.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her. "With only dead men on
+board, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid
+could bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken
+living men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They
+might ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on
+Weald if they were found to be plague victims. So that would be no
+good, either! No, the ship wasn't intended to land plague on Weald."
+
+"Are you friendly to blueskins?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+"Within reason," said Calhoun, "I am a well-wisher to all the human
+race. You're slipping, though. When using the word _blueskin_ you
+should say it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined person
+liked to pronounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by the
+way. If you ever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much time
+left."
+
+She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced
+him and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again.
+Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He
+carefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald
+would willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a
+shipload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in,
+like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. Nobody from
+Weald would dream of landing on Orede! Not now!
+
+A little before the Med Ship was due to break out from overdrive, the
+girl said very carefully, "You've been very kind. I'd like to thank
+you. I--I didn't really believe I would live to get to Orede."
+
+Calhoun raised his eyebrows.
+
+"I wish I could tell you everything you want to know," she added
+regretfully. "I think you're ... really decent. But some thing...."
+
+Calhoun said caustically, "You've told me a great deal. You weren't
+born on Weald. You weren't raised there. The people of Dara--notice
+that I don't say blueskins, though they are--the people of Dara have
+made at least one space ship since Weald threatened them with
+extermination. There is probably a new food shortage on Dara now,
+leading to pure desperation. Most likely it's bad enough to make them
+risk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freeze beef to help. They've
+worked out--"
+
+She gasped and sprang to her feet. She snatched out the tiny blaster
+in her pocket. She pointed it waveringly at him.
+
+"I have to kill you!" she cried desperately. "I--I have to!"
+
+Calhoun reached out. She tugged despairingly at the blaster's trigger.
+Nothing happened. Before she could realize that she hadn't turned off
+the safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. He stepped
+back.
+
+"Good girl!" he said approvingly. "I'll give this back to you when we
+land. And thanks. Thanks very much!"
+
+She wrung her hands. Then she stared at him.
+
+"Thanks? When I tried to kill you?"
+
+"Of course!" said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know that
+they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one.
+Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in
+touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be
+pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable thing
+to get done!"
+
+He went to the ships' control board and sat down before it.
+
+"Twenty minutes to breakhour," he observed.
+
+Murgatroyd peered out of his little cubbyhole. His eyes were anxious.
+_Tormals_ are amiable little creatures. During the days in overdrive,
+Calhoun had paid less than the usual amount of attention to
+Murgatroyd, while the girl was fascinating.
+
+They'd made friends, awkwardly on the girl's part, very pleasantly on
+Murgatroyd's. But only moments ago there had been bitter emotion in
+the air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyhole to escape it. He was
+distressed. Now that there was silence again, he peered out unhappily.
+
+"_Chee?_" he queried plaintively. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"
+
+Calhoun said matter-of-factly, "It's all right, Murgatroyd. If we
+aren't blasted as we try to land, we should be able to make friends
+with everybody and get something accomplished."
+
+The statement was hopelessly inaccurate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+There was no answer from the ground when breakout came and Calhoun
+drove the Med Ship to a favourable position for a call. He patiently
+repeated, over and over again, that the Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_
+notified its arrival and requested coordinates for landing. He added
+that its mass was fifty standard tons and that the purpose of its
+visit was a planetary health inspection.
+
+But there was no reply. There should have been a crisp description of
+the direction from the planet's center at which, a certain time so
+many hours or minutes later, the force-fields of the grid would find
+it convenient to lock onto and lower the Med Ship. But the
+communicator remained silent.
+
+"There is a landing-grid," said Calhoun, frowning, "and if they're
+using it to load fresh meat for Dara, from the herds I'm told about,
+it should be manned. But they don't seem to intend to answer. Maybe
+they think that if they pretend I'm not here I'll go away."
+
+He reflected, and his frown deepened.
+
+"If I didn't know what I know, I might. So if I land on emergency
+rockets the blueskins down below may decide that I come from Weald.
+And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before I could
+land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship from
+Weald would conceivably land without impassioned assurance that it
+was safe. It would drop bombs." He turned to the girl. "How many
+Darians down below?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You don't know," said Calhoun, "or won't tell, yet. But they ought to
+be told about the arrival of that ship at Weald, and what Weald thinks
+about it! My guess is that you came to tell them. It isn't likely that
+Dara gets news directly from Weald. Where were you put ashore from
+Dara, when you set out to be a spy?"
+
+Her lips parted to speak, but she compressed them tightly. She shook
+her head again.
+
+"It must have been plenty far away," said Calhoun restlessly. "Your
+people would have built a ship, and made fine forged papers for it,
+and they'd travel so far from this part of space that when they landed
+nobody would think of Dara. They'd use make-up to cover the blue
+spots, but maybe it was so far away that blueskins had never been
+heard of!"
+
+Her face looked pinched, but she did not reply.
+
+"Then they'd land half a dozen of you, with a supply of make-up for
+the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various
+roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be
+done there to--" He stopped. "When did you find out positively that
+there wasn't any plague any more?"
+
+She began to grow pale.
+
+"I'm not a mind reader," said Calhoun. "But it adds up. You're from
+Dara. You've been on Weald. It's practically certain that there are
+other ... agents, if you like that word better, on Weald. And there
+hasn't been a plague on Weald so you people aren't carriers of it. But
+you knew it in advance, I think. How'd you learn? Did a ship in some
+sort of trouble land there, on Dara?"
+
+"Y--yes," said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the people
+didn't catch--they didn't die. They lived--"
+
+She stopped short.
+
+"It's not fair to trap me!" she cried passionately. "It's not fair!"
+
+"I'll stop," said Calhoun.
+
+He turned to the control board. The Med Ship was only planetary
+diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining
+stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous
+shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy
+color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and
+forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and
+squinted at it.
+
+"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
+killing wild cattle for sport."
+
+Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
+a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
+by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
+sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
+if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
+zone.
+
+Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
+would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
+near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
+would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.
+
+Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
+Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
+could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
+But its shadow would be distinctive.
+
+Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a
+temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
+mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
+cast a long, lacy shadow: the landing-grid.
+
+"But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down
+unwelcomed."
+
+He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency rockets boomed. The ship
+plunged planetward.
+
+A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of
+its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforce
+the sound.
+
+"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd," commanded Calhoun. "We may have to
+dodge some ack."
+
+But nothing came up from below. The Med Ship again inverted itself,
+and its rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin,
+blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued
+to descend. It was not directly above the grid.
+
+It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains
+in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the
+mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley
+in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an
+erratic course, lest there be opposition.
+
+But there was no sign. Then the rockets bellowed, and the ship slowed
+its forward motion, hovered momentarily, and settled to solidity
+outside the framework of the grid. The grid was small, as Calhoun
+reasoned. But it reached interminably toward the sky.
+
+The rockets cut off. Slender as the flames had been, they'd melted and
+bored thin drill-holes deep into the soil. Molten rock boiled and
+bubbled down below. But there seemed no other sound. There was no
+other motion. There was absolute stillness all around. But when
+Calhoun switched on the outside microphones a faint, sweet melange of
+high-pitched chirpings came from tiny creatures hidden under the
+vegetation of the mountainsides.
+
+Calhoun put a blaster in his pocket and stood up.
+
+"We'll see what it looks like outside," he said with a certain
+grimness. "I don't quite believe what the vision screens show."
+
+Minutes later he stepped down to the ground from the Med Ship's exit
+port. The ship had landed perhaps a hundred feet from what once had
+been a wooden building. In it, ore from the mines was concentrated and
+the useless tailings carried away by a conveyer belt to make a
+monstrous pile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building.
+
+Next to it there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The
+massive machinery could still be seen, but the structure was in
+fragments. Next to that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of
+the mine. They also were shattered practically to matchsticks.
+
+The look of the ground about the building sites was simply and purely
+impossible. It was a mass of hoofprints. Cattle by thousands and tens
+of thousands had trampled everything. Cattle had burst in the wooden
+sides of the buildings. Cattle had piled themselves up against the
+beams upholding roofs until the buildings collapsed.
+
+Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there
+was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died
+in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders
+which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by
+the smell of carrion.
+
+The settlement had been destroyed, positively by stampeded cattle in
+tens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and
+upon it. Senselessly, they'd trampled each other to horrible
+shapelessness. The mine shaft was not choked, because enormously
+strong timbers had fallen across and blocked it. But everything else
+was pure destruction.
+
+Calhoun said evenly, "Clever! Very clever! You can't blame men when
+beasts stampede. We should accept the evidence that some monstrous
+herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and
+bolted for the plains. This settlement got in the way and it was too
+bad for the settlement! Everything's explained, except the ship that
+went to Weald.
+
+"A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was a man
+stampede. Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattle
+trampled down this little town. The ship stampeded off into space as
+insanely as the cattle. But a stampede of men and cattle, in the same
+place? That's a little too much!"
+
+"But what--"
+
+"How," asked Calhoun directly, "do you intend to get in touch with
+your friends here?"
+
+"I--I don't know," she said, distressed. "But if the ship stays here,
+they're bound to come and see why. Won't they? Or will they?"
+
+"If they're sane, they won't," said Calhoun. "The one undesirable
+thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If
+your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they
+should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and
+pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered. That
+would be their best first move, certainly!"
+
+"What should I do?" she asked helplessly.
+
+"I'm far from sure. At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.
+I'll work something out. I've got the devil of a job before me,
+though. I can't spend but so much time here."
+
+"You can leave me here...."
+
+He grunted and turned away. It was naturally unthinkable that he
+should leave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet,
+with the knowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the
+future knowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of
+possible reasons to hide themselves away.
+
+He believed that there were Darians here, and the girl in the Med
+ship, so he also believed, was also a Darian. But any who might be
+hiding had so much to lose if they were discovered that they might be
+hundreds or even thousands of miles from anywhere a space ship would
+normally land--if they hadn't fled after the incident of the
+spaceship's departure with its load of doomed passengers.
+
+Considered detachedly, the odds were that there was again a food
+shortage on Dara; that blueskins, in desperation, had raided or were
+raiding or would raid the cattle herds of Orede for food to carry back
+to their home planet; that somehow the miners on Orede had found that
+they had blueskin neighbors, and died of the consequences of their
+terror. It was a risky guess to make on such evidence as Calhoun
+considered he had, but no other guess was possible.
+
+If his guess were right, he was under some obligation to do exactly
+what he believed the girl considered her mission--to warn all
+blueskins that Weald would presently try to find them on Orede, when
+all hell must break loose upon Dara for punishment. But if there were
+men here, he couldn't leave a written warning for them in default of
+friendly contact.
+
+They might not find it, and a search party of Wealdians might. All he
+could possibly do was try to make contact and give warning by such
+means as would leave no evidence behind that he'd done so. Weald
+would consider a warning sure proof of blueskin guilt.
+
+It was not satisfactory to be limited to broadcasts which might or
+might not be picked up, and were unlikely to be acknowledged. But he
+settled down with the communicator to make the attempt.
+
+He called first on a GC wave length and form. It was unlikely that
+blueskins would use general communication bands to keep in touch with
+each other, but it had to be tried. He broadcast, tuned as broadly as
+possible, and went up and down the GC spectrum, repeating his warning
+painstakingly and listening without hope for a reply.
+
+He did find one spot on the dial where there was re-radiation of his
+message, as if from a tuned receiver. But he could not get a fix on
+it: nobody might be listening. He exhausted the normal communication
+pattern. Then he broadcast on old-fashioned amplitude modulation which
+a modern communicator would not pick up at all, and which therefore
+might be used by men in hiding.
+
+He worked for a long time. Then he shrugged and gave it up. He'd
+repeated to absolute tedium the facts that any Darians--blueskins--on
+Orede ought to know. There'd been no answer. And it was all too likely
+that if he'd been received, that those who heard him took his message
+for a trick to discover if there were any hearers.
+
+He clicked off at last and stood up, shaking his head. Suddenly the
+Med Ship seemed empty. Then he saw Murgatroyd staring vexedly at the
+exit port. The inner door of that small airlock was closed. The
+telltale light said the outer door was not locked. Someone had gone
+out quietly. The girl. Of course.
+
+Calhoun said angrily, "How long ago, Murgatroyd?"
+
+"_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd indignantly.
+
+It wasn't an answer, but it showed that Murgatroyd was vexed that he'd
+been left behind. He and the girl were close friends, now. If she'd
+left Murgatroyd in the ship when he wanted to go with her, then she
+wasn't coming back.
+
+Calhoun swore. He made certain she was not in the ship. He flipped the
+outside-speaker switch and said curtly into the microphone, "Coffee!
+Murgatroyd and I are having coffee. Will you come back, please?"
+
+He repeated the call, and repeated it again. Multiplied as his voice
+was by the speakers, she should hear him within a mile. She did not
+appear. He went to a small and inconspicuous closet and armed himself.
+A Med Ship man was not ever expected to fight, but there were
+blast-rifles available for extreme emergency.
+
+When he'd slung a power-pack over his shoulder and reached the
+airlock, there was still no sign of his late stowaway. He stood in the
+airlock door for long minutes, staring angrily about. Almost certainly
+she wouldn't be looking in the mountains for men of Dara come here for
+cattle. He used a pair of binoculars, first at low-magnification to
+search as wide an area down-valley as possible, and then at highest
+power to search the most likely routes.
+
+He found a small, bobbing speck beyond a faraway hill crest. It was
+her head. It went down below the hilltop.
+
+He snapped a command to Murgatroyd, and when the _tormal_ was on the
+ground outside, he locked the port with that combination that nobody
+but a Med Ship man was at all likely to discover or use.
+
+"She's an idiot!" he told Murgatroyd sourly. "Come along! We've got to
+be idiots too!"
+
+He set out in pursuit.
+
+There was blue sky overhead, as was inevitable on any
+oxygen-atmosphere planet of a Sol-type yellow sun. There were
+mountains, as is universal in planets whose surface rises and falls
+and folds and bends from the effects of weather or vulcanism. There
+were plants, as has come about wherever microorganisms have broken
+down rock to a state where it can nourish vegetation. And naturally
+there were animals.
+
+There were even trees of severely practical design, and underbrush and
+ground-cover equivalent to grass. There was, in short, a perfectly
+predictable ecological system on Orede. The organic molecules involved
+in life here would be made up of the same elements in the same
+combinations as elsewhere where the same conditions of temperature and
+moisture and sunshine obtained.
+
+It was a distinctly Earthlike world, as it could not help but be, and
+it was reasonable for cattle to thrive and increase here. Only men's
+minds kept it from being a place where humans would thrive, too.
+
+But only Calhoun would have considered the splintered settlement a
+proof of that last.
+
+The girl had a long start. Twice Calhoun came to places where she
+could have chosen either of two ways onward. Each time he had to
+determine which she'd followed. That cost time. Then the mountains
+abruptly ended and a vast undulating plain stretched away to the
+horizon. There were at least two large masses and many smaller clumps
+of what could only be animals gathered together. Cattle.
+
+But here the girl was plainly in view. Calhoun increased his stride.
+He began to gain on her. She did not look behind.
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a complaining tone.
+
+"I should have left you behind," agreed Calhoun dourly, "but there was
+and is a chance I won't get back. You'll have to keep on hiking."
+
+He plodded on. His memory of the terrain around the mining settlement
+told him that there was no definite destination in the girl's mind.
+But she was in no such despair as to want deliberately to be lost.
+She'd guessed, Calhoun believed, that if there were Darians on the
+planet, they'd keep the landing-grid under observation.
+
+If they saw her leave that area and could see that she was alone, they
+should intercept her to find out the meaning of the Med Ship's
+landing. Then she could identify herself as one of them and give them
+the terribly necessary warning of Weald's suspicions.
+
+"But," said Calhoun sourly, "if she's right, they'll have seen me
+marching after her now, which spoils her scheme. And I'd like to help
+it, but the way she's going is too dangerous!"
+
+He went down into one of the hollows of the uneven plain. He saw a
+clump of a dozen or so cattle a little distance away. The bull looked
+up and snorted. The cows regarded him truculently. Their air was not
+one of bovine tranquility.
+
+He was up the farther hillside and out of sight before the bull worked
+himself up to a charge. Then Calhoun suddenly remembered one of the
+items in the data about cattle he'd looked into just the other day. He
+felt himself grow pale.
+
+"Murgatroyd!" he said sharply. "We've got to catch up! Fast! Stay with
+me if you can, but--" he was jog-trotting as he spoke--"even if you
+get lost I have to hurry!"
+
+He ran fifty paces and walked fifty paces. He ran fifty and walked
+fifty. He saw her, atop a rolling of the ground. She came to a full
+stop. He ran. He saw her turn to retrace her steps. He flung off the
+safety of the blast-rifle and let off a roaring blast at the ground
+for her to hear.
+
+Suddenly she was fleeing desperately, toward him. He plunged on. She
+vanished down into a hollow. Horns appeared over the hillcrest she'd
+just left. Cattle appeared. Four, a dozen fifteen, twenty! They moved
+ominously in her wake.
+
+He saw her again, running frantically over another upward swell of
+the prairie. He let off another blast to guide her. He ran on at top
+speed with Murgatroyd trailing anxiously behind. From time to time
+Murgatroyd called "_Chee-chee-chee!_" in frightened pleading not to be
+abandoned.
+
+More cattle appeared against the horizon. Fifty or a hundred. They
+came after the first clump. The first group of a bull and his harem
+were moving faster, now. The girl fled from them, but it is the
+instinct of beef-cattle on the open range--Calhoun had learned it only
+two days before--to charge any human they find on foot. A mounted man
+to their dim minds is a creature to be tolerated or fled from, but a
+human on foot is to be crushed and stamped and gored.
+
+Those in the lead were definitely charging now, with heads bent low.
+The bull charged furiously with shut eyes, as bulls do, but the cows,
+many times more deadly, charged with their eyes wide open and wickedly
+alert, and with a lumbering speed much greater than the girl could
+manage.
+
+She came up over the last rise, chalky-white and gasping, her hair
+flying, in the last extremity of terror. The nearest of the pursuing
+cattle were within ten yards when Calhoun fired from twenty yards
+beyond. One creature bellowed as the blast-bolt struck.
+
+It went down and others crashed into it and swept over it, and more
+came on. The girl saw Calhoun now, and ran toward him, panting. He
+knelt very deliberately and began to check the charge by shooting the
+leading animals.
+
+He did not succeed. There were more cattle following the first, and
+more and more behind them. It appeared that all the cattle on the
+plain joined in the blind and senseless charge. The thudding of hoofs
+became a mutter and then a rumble and then a growl.
+
+Plunging, clumsy figures rushed past on either side. But horns and
+heads heaved up over the mound of animals Calhoun had shot. He shot
+them too. More and more cattle came pounding past the rampart of his
+victims, but always, it seemed, some elected to climb the heap of
+their dead and dying fellows, and Calhoun shot and shot....
+
+But he split the herd. The foremost animals had been charging a
+sighted human enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of
+cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they
+feel. There was a dense, pounding, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising
+thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which hid everything but
+galloping beasts going past on either side.
+
+It lasted for minutes. Then the thunder of hoofs diminished. It ended
+abruptly, and Calhoun and the girl were left alone with the gruesome
+pile of animals which had divided the charging herd into two parts.
+They could see the rears of innumerable running animals, stupidly
+continuing the charge, hardly different, now, from a stampede, whose
+original objective none now remembered.
+
+Calhoun thoughtfully touched the barrel of his blast-rifle and winced
+at its scorching heat.
+
+"I just realized," he said coldly, "that I don't know your name. What
+is it?"
+
+"Maril," said the girl. She swallowed. "Th--thank you."
+
+"Maril," said Calhoun, "you are an idiot! It was half-witted at best
+to go off by yourself! You could have been lost! You could have cost
+me days of hunting for you, days badly needed for more important
+matters!"
+
+He stopped and took breath. "You may have spoiled what little chance
+I've got to do something about the plans Weald's already making! You
+have just acted with the most concentrated folly, and the most
+magnificent imbecility that you or anybody else could manage!"
+
+He said more bitterly still, "And I had to leave Murgatroyd behind to
+get to you in time! He was right in the path of that charge!"
+
+He turned away from her and said dourly, "All right! Come on back to
+the ship. We'll go to Dara. We'd have to, anyhow. But Murgatroyd--"
+
+Then he heard a very small sneeze. Out of a rolling wall of
+still-roiling dust, Murgatroyd appeared forlornly. He was
+dust-covered, and draggled, and his tail dropped, and he sneezed
+again. He moved as if he could barely put one paw before another, but
+at sight of Calhoun he sneezed yet again and said "_Chee!_" in a
+disconsolate voice. Then he sat down and waited for Calhoun to come
+and pick him up.
+
+When Calhoun did so, Murgatroyd clung to him pathetically and said
+"_Chee-chee!_" and again "_Chee-chee!_" with the intonation of one
+telling of incredible horrors and disasters endured. And as a matter
+of fact the escape of a small animal like Murgatroyd was remarkable.
+He'd escaped the trampling hoofs of at least hundreds of charging
+animals. Luck must have played a great part in it, but an hysterical
+agility in dodging must have been required, too.
+
+Calhoun headed back for the valley where the settlement had been, and
+the Med Ship was. Murgatroyd clung to his neck. The girl Maril
+followed discouragedly. She was at that age when girls--and men of
+corresponding type--can grow most passionately devoted to ideals or
+causes in default of a promising personal romance. When concerned with
+such causes they become splendidly confident that whatever they decide
+to do is sensible if only it is dramatic. But Maril was shaken, now.
+
+Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way. A mile back toward
+the mountains, they began to see stragglers from the now-vanished
+herd. A little farther, those stragglers began to notice them. It
+would have been a matter of no moment if they'd been domesticated
+dairy cattle, but these were range cattle gone wild. Twice, Calhoun
+had to use his blast-rifle to discourage incipient charges by
+irritated bulls or even more irritated cows. Those with calves darkly
+suspected Calhoun of designs upon their offspring.
+
+It was a relief to enter the valley again. But it was two miles more
+to the landing-grid with the Med Ship beside it and the reek of
+carrion in the air.
+
+They were perhaps two hundred feet from the ship when a blast-rifle
+crashed and its bolt whined past Calhoun so close that he felt the
+monstrous heat. There had been no challenge. There was no warning.
+There was simply a shot which came horribly close to ending Calhoun's
+career in a completely arbitrary fashion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a
+mass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood
+afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around
+the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have
+killed him ten times over, but it was more desirable to open
+communication. So he missed intentionally.
+
+Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, but
+they did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty
+blast-rifles. One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding
+place. That man's rifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained.
+
+One, so Calhoun presently discovered--was working his way behind
+underbrush to a shelf from which he could shoot down at Calhoun.
+Calhoun had dropped into a hollow and pulled Maril to cover at the
+first shot. The second man happily planned to get to a point where he
+could shoot him like a fish in a barrel.
+
+The third man had fired half a dozen times and then disappeared.
+Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to the rear, hoping
+there was no protection from that direction for Calhoun. It would take
+some time for him to manage it.
+
+So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying to
+get above him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to
+Calhoun's breastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at
+which the other man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless.
+
+Then Calhoun sent a dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It
+heated up. Steam rose in a whitish mass and blew directly away from
+Calhoun. He saw that antagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he
+was positive that there was a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand
+side of the back of his neck.
+
+He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thick
+undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading
+flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle tactics
+with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But
+something from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground
+directly upwind from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.
+
+It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl
+Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the
+flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril
+altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not
+scorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and
+plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them.
+They were then halfway to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.
+
+But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles
+twitched and tensed. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of
+agitation. He swore, but a Med Ship man would not react to such
+symptoms as a non-medically-trained man would have done. Calhoun was
+familiar enough with tear gas, used by police on some planets.
+
+But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged Maril
+onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it--panic
+gas. Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.
+Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering
+terror.
+
+A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physical
+sensations: wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and a
+frantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physical
+sensations are induced by other means will, ordinarily, find his mind
+yielding to terror.
+
+Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude
+enabled him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base
+of the Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not
+be counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some
+moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only
+feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let
+loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the rifle of all
+its charges.
+
+Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook and
+trembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outer
+airlock door just as another blast-bolt hit.
+
+"They--they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they only
+knew...."
+
+"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and he
+raged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.
+
+He pushed a button on the control board. He pointed to a microphone.
+He got at an oxygen bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously,
+should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to
+increase the oxygenation of the bloodstream and muscles, and to make
+superhuman exertion possible if necessary.
+
+Breathing ninety-five percent oxygen produced the effect the
+terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normal
+and his body relaxed. He held out his hand and it did not tremble.
+He'd been affronted to see it shake uncontrollably when he pushed the
+microphone button for Maril.
+
+He turned to her. She hadn't spoken into the mike.
+
+"They may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! They
+could be somebody else, maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine
+for a shipload of its ore."
+
+"Nonsense," said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be
+sure. But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more
+on the way here from wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we
+know some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and
+we'll go on."
+
+He took the microphone. An instant later his voice boomed in the
+stillness outside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill whirring
+of invisible small creatures.
+
+"This is the Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_," said Calhoun's voice,
+amplified to a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the
+cargo ship from here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald
+they don't know how it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or
+later they'll search here.
+
+"Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've ever been
+here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talk of
+fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your traces, they'll
+be still more scared! So cover up your tracks and get away from here!"
+
+The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. But
+it was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, and
+it could be heard for miles.
+
+But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time.
+Then he shrugged and seated himself at the control board.
+
+"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they've
+outsmarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"
+
+The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end all
+noises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By the
+time it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clear
+space and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether.
+
+He busied himself with those astrogational chores which began with
+orienting oneself to galactic directions after leaving a planet which
+rotates at its own individual speed. Then one computes the overdrive
+course to another planet, from the respecting coordinates of the world
+one is leaving and the one one aims for.
+
+Then, in this case at any rate, there was the very finicky task of
+picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose planets one was his
+destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine precision.
+
+"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"
+
+Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation
+of falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity,
+and the blackness outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in
+overdrive again.
+
+After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily, "I don't know what
+you plan now--"
+
+"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the
+blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know.
+But this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine people
+shouldn't do things out of desperation! Being desperate jogs the brain
+off-center. One doesn't think straight!"
+
+"I know now that I was ... very foolish."
+
+"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I
+run into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and
+cleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service
+obligation; it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at the
+basic problem, those idiots on Orede--It'd happened before I reached
+Weald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead men
+that nobody intended to kill."
+
+Maril shook her head.
+
+"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun, annoyed, "shouldn't have gone
+to Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at least
+have stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald
+digging a mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They
+could be spotted! I believe they were.
+
+"And again, if it had been a long way from the mine installation, they
+could probably have wiped out the people who sighted them before they
+could get back with the news! But it looks like miners saw men
+hunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins, and then got
+back to the mine with the news!"
+
+She waited for him to explain.
+
+"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "So
+something had to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped
+out or the story that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited.
+The blueskins tried for both. They used panic gas on a herd of cattle
+and it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like the
+four-footed lunatics they are!
+
+"And the blueskins used panic gas on the settlement itself as the
+cattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.
+After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd been
+out of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of the
+settlement to think about.
+
+"He wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen or heard before-hand. They
+might try to verify the blueskin story later, but they wouldn't
+believe anything with certainty. It should have worked!"
+
+Again she waited.
+
+"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the
+ship. Also unfortunately, panic gas got into the ship with them. So
+they stayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off. They
+headed for Weald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set for
+Weald anyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away from
+whatever he imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship
+were still crazy with panic from the gas they kept breathing until
+they died!"
+
+Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked, "You don't think the
+Darians intended to kill?"
+
+"I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always
+urging the police to use panic gas in case of public tumult. But it's
+too dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take a
+hundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit to
+their craziness! The whole thing was handled wrong!"
+
+"But you don't blame them?"
+
+"For being stupid, yes," said Calhoun fretfully. "But if I'd been in
+their place, perhaps--"
+
+"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly.
+
+Calhoun jerked his head around. "No! Not where you're guessing, or
+hoping. Not on Dara. Just because I act as if Darians were human
+doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a Med Service man, and I'm acting
+as I think I should." His tone became exasperated.
+
+"Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual, and
+possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it finds proof
+that blueskins are in space again and caused the death of Wealdians,
+it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombs
+on Dara to wipe it out!"
+
+Maril said fiercely, "They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker
+than starvation, at least!"
+
+Calhoun looked at her, more exasperated than before.
+
+"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he said
+bitterly, "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he said
+drearily, "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of health
+problems! And that's right in my lap with all the rest!"
+
+He stood up. Then he sat down again.
+
+"I'm tired!" he said flatly. "I'd like to get some sleep. Would you
+mind taking a book or something and going into the other cabin?
+Murgatroyd and I would like a little relaxation from reality. With
+luck, if I go to sleep, I may only have a nightmare. It'll be a
+terrific improvement on what I'm in now!"
+
+Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was not
+possible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and brooded. There
+is brooding and brooding. It can be a form of wallowing in self-pity,
+engaged in for emotional satisfaction. But it can be, also, a way of
+bringing out unfavorable factors in a situation. A man in optimistic
+mood can ignore them. But no awkward situation is likely to be
+remedied while any of its elements are neglected.
+
+Calhoun dourly considered the situation of the people of the planet
+Dara, which it was his job as a Med Service man to remedy or at least
+improve. Those people were marked by patches of blue pigment as an
+inherited consequence of a plague of three generations past. Because
+of the marking, which it was easy to believe a sign of continuing
+infection, they were hated and dreaded by their neighbors. Dara was a
+planet of pariahs--excluded from the human race by those who feared
+them.
+
+And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were of
+no mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede,
+monstrous herds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for
+Darians to build a ship or ships and try to bring food back to its
+starving people. But that desperately necessary enterprise had now
+roused Weald to a frenzy of apprehension.
+
+Weald was, if possible, more hysterically afraid of blueskins than
+ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of the starving
+planet's population. Weald itself prospered. Ironically, it had such
+an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them in unneeded spaceships in
+orbits about itself.
+
+Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight
+hulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try to
+steal--if it could be called stealing--some of the innumerable wild
+cattle of Orede.
+
+The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not
+to hear. Or maybe that didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed
+by all of humanity off their world. They'd been threatened and
+oppressed by guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any
+spacecraft they might send aloft....
+
+So Calhoun brooded, while Murgatroyd presently yawned and climbed to
+his cubbyhole and curled up to sleep with his furry tail carefully
+adjusted over his nose.
+
+A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on
+a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises
+carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun
+raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come from
+outside.
+
+He knocked on the door of the sleeping cabin. The noises stopped
+instantly.
+
+"Come out," he commanded through the door.
+
+"I'm--I'm all right," said Maril's voice. But it was not quite steady.
+She paused. "Did I make a noise? I was having a bad dream."
+
+"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth just
+occasionally! Come out, please!"
+
+There were stirrings. After a little it opened and Maril appeared. She
+looked as if she'd been crying. She said, quickly, "I probably look
+queer, but it's because I was asleep."
+
+"To the contrary," said Calhoun, fuming. "You've been lying awake
+crying. I don't know why. I've been out here wishing I could, because
+I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can help me with
+my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I need facts.
+Will you give them to me?"
+
+She swallowed. "I'll try."
+
+"Coffee?" he asked.
+
+Murgatroyd popped his head out of his miniature sleeping cabin.
+
+"_Chee?_" he asked interestedly.
+
+"Go back to sleep!" snapped Calhoun.
+
+He began to pace back and forth.
+
+"I need to know something about the pigment patches," he said jerkily.
+"Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now--first things
+first, you know. But this is a first thing! So long as Darians don't
+look like the people of other worlds, they'll be believed to be
+different. If they look repulsive, they'll be believed to be evil.
+
+"Tell me about those patches. They're different sizes and different
+shapes and they appear in different places. You've none on your face
+or hands, anyhow."
+
+"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+"Not everybody," she said defensively. "Nearly, yes. But not all. Some
+people don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches on
+their skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow
+up they're just like the people of Weald or any other world. And their
+children never have them."
+
+Calhoun stared.
+
+"You couldn't possibly be proved to be a Darian, then?"
+
+She shook her head. Calhoun remembered, and started the coffee.
+
+"When you left Dara," he said, "you were carried a long, long way, to
+some planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where
+the name meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else
+and forgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not a
+blueskin?"
+
+"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters,
+and Korvan--"
+
+Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the
+name she'd mentioned.
+
+"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," he
+said absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once!
+There's a virus, a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans
+are immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical
+condition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do.
+But once they're established they're passed on from mother to child.
+And when they die out it's during childhood, too!"
+
+He poured coffee for the two of them. Murgatroyd swung down to the
+floor and said, impatiently, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
+
+Calhoun absently filled Murgatroyd's tiny cup and handed it to him.
+
+"But this is marvellous!" he said exuberantly. "The blue patches
+appeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered--when
+they recovered?"
+
+Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professional
+considerations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely
+a source of information.
+
+"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating
+questions you want to ask?"
+
+He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully, "I'm stupid, Maril, but you're
+touchy. There's nothing personal--"
+
+"There is to me!" she said fiercely. "I was born among blueskins, and
+they're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on
+Weald if I'd been known as ... what I am! And there's Korvan, who
+arranged for me to be sent away as a spy and advised me to do just
+what you said: abandon my home world and everybody I care about!
+Including him! It's personal to me!"
+
+Calhoun wrinkled his forehead helplessly.
+
+"I'm sorry," he repeated. "Drink your coffee!"
+
+"I don't want it," she said bitterly. "I'd like to die!"
+
+"If you stay around where I am," Calhoun told her, "you may get your
+wish. All right, there'll be no more questions."
+
+She turned and moved toward the door to the cabin. Calhoun looked
+after her.
+
+"Maril."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why were you crying?"
+
+"You wouldn't understand," she said evenly.
+
+Calhoun shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He was a
+professional man. In his profession he was not incompetent. But there
+is no profession in which a really competent man tries to understand
+women. Calhoun, annoyed, had to let fate or chance or disaster take
+care of Maril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with.
+
+But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in the
+reference tapes. He came up with an explicit collection of information
+on exactly the subject he needed. He left the control room to go down
+into the storage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultra
+frigid storage box, whose contents were kept at the temperature of
+liquid air.
+
+He donned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a
+tiny block of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was
+embedded. It frosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage
+box was closed again the block was covered with a thick and opaque
+coating of frozen moisture.
+
+He went back to the control room and pulled down the panel which made
+available a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological
+laboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raise
+it very, very gradually to a specific temperature and hold it there.
+It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity
+of the same culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with
+great exactitude.
+
+"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I
+can rest."
+
+Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med
+Ship. The girl may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in a
+chair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable of
+sleeping places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curled
+over his nose.
+
+There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissable murmurings now and
+again. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for such
+infinitesimal stirrings of sound, carefully recorded for this exact
+purpose, the feel of the ship would have been that of a tomb.
+
+But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the taped
+sounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but nevertheless
+establishing an atmosphere of their own.
+
+Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read the
+instruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the
+block--no longer frosted--in the culture microscope and saw its
+enclosed, infinitesimal particles of life in the process of
+multiplying on the food that had been frozen with them when they were
+reduced to the spore condition. He beamed. He replaced the block in
+the incubation oven and faced the day cheerfully.
+
+Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted, with
+Murgatroyd eating from his own platter on the floor, a tiny cup of
+coffee alongside.
+
+"I've been thinking," said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you a
+hearing for whatever ideas you may have to help Dara."
+
+"Kind of you," murmured Calhoun.
+
+In theory, a Med Service man had all the authority needed for this or
+any other emergency. The power to declare a planet in quarantine, so
+cutting it off from all interstellar commerce, should be enough to
+force cooperation from any world's government. But in practice Calhoun
+had exactly as much power as he could exercise.
+
+And Weald could not think straight where blueskins were concerned, and
+certainly the authorities on Dara could not be expected to be
+levelheaded. They had a history of isolation and outlawry, and long
+experience of being regarded as less than human. In cold fact, Calhoun
+had no power at all.
+
+"May I ask whose influence you'll exert?" asked Calhoun.
+
+"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who thinks a great deal of
+me. I don't know his present official position, but he was certain to
+become prominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your
+attitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help
+you, I'm sure."
+
+"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."
+
+She started. "How did you know?"
+
+"Intuition," said Calhoun dryly. "All right. I'll count on him."
+
+But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day
+and all the next. The girl was very quiet. Murgatroyd tried to enter
+into pretended conversation with her, but she was not able to match
+his pretense.
+
+On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached. While the
+ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look
+forward with confidence to the future. But when contact and, in a
+fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer,
+prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but
+there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.
+
+Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.
+
+"I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out. If
+I can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow my
+advice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideas
+it probably will get; and isn't doing what I suspect it is--why,
+maybe something can be done."
+
+"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
+
+Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock. There was no sensation
+attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. It
+was now time for the end. He might find most anything having happened.
+His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could have
+sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of
+desperation....
+
+As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly a
+light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhoun
+went into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of
+the blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it.
+
+He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for
+coordinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There was
+confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not
+ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the
+ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward.
+
+Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each
+other, until the ship actually touched ground.
+
+Then he opened the exit port--and faced armed men in the darkness,
+with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained
+on the Med Ship itself.
+
+"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Your
+ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were
+emaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the
+ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung
+loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their
+cheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotches
+of pigment of which Calhoun had heard.
+
+The man nearest the Med Ship's port had a monstrous, irregular
+dull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon his
+forehead. The man next to him had a blue throat. The next man again
+was less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed a
+splashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.
+
+The leader of the truculent group--it might have been a firing
+squad--made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, except
+for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter than
+white.
+
+"Out!" said that man savagely. "We're taking over your stock of food.
+You'll get your share of it, like everybody else, but--"
+
+Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence or
+two. It should have amounted to identification but there was
+skepticism in the armed party.
+
+"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard leader sardonically.
+"You'll have a chance to prove that. Come out of there!"
+
+Calhoun spoke abruptly, "This is a Med Ship," he said. "There are
+medicines and bacterial culture inside it. They shouldn't be meddled
+with. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"
+
+The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before, "I said the
+government was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you're
+not taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you're
+leaving!"
+
+"And I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We've
+just come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as he
+named Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping
+fusion-bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the
+authority to take a few sensible precautions!"
+
+He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "_Chee! Chee!_" from
+behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling
+apprehensively to his neck.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A _tormal_" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know
+something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and
+he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and he
+stays with me!"
+
+The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to
+ask you questions. Here!"
+
+A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid
+enclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used
+on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.
+
+"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you
+want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"
+
+The groundcar was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from
+the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior
+and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of
+the grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It picked
+up speed.
+
+There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed
+lights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set a
+pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not
+seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair.
+
+The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds,
+and the groundcar needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a
+paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other
+depressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up to
+perfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleaned
+lately, litter here and there.
+
+Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling of
+wretchedness and gloom and, ultimately, of hunger.
+
+Maril spoke nervously to the driver.
+
+"The famine isn't any better?"
+
+He moved his head in negation, but did not speak. There was a splotch
+of blue pigment at the back of his neck. It extended upward into his
+hair.
+
+"I left two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then.
+Rationing hadn't started."
+
+The driver said evenly, "There's rationing now!"
+
+The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights about
+its perimeter seemed few and pale.
+
+"Everything seems worse. Even the lights."
+
+"Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow
+crops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either."
+
+Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips.
+
+"I was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent and
+then make my way to Weald. I mailed reports of what I found out back
+to Trent. Somebody got them back to here whenever it was possible."
+
+The driver said, "Everybody knows the man on Trent disappeared. Maybe
+he got caught, maybe somebody saw him without make-up. Or maybe he
+just quit being one of us. What's the difference? No use!"
+
+Calhoun found himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. He
+was hopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accept
+hostility from those about them as a device of fate for their
+destruction.
+
+Maril said quickly to Calhoun, "You understand? Dara's a heavy-metals
+planet. There aren't many light elements in our soil. Potassium is
+scarce. So our ground isn't very fertile. Before the Plague we traded
+metals and manufactured products for imports of food and potash. But
+since the Plague we've had no off-planet commerce. We've been
+quarantined."
+
+"I gathered as much," said Calhoun. "It was up to Med Service to see
+that that didn't happen. It's up to Med Service now to see that it
+stops."
+
+"Too late now for anything," said the driver. "Whatever Med Service
+may be! They're talking about cutting down our population so there'll
+be food enough for some to live. There are two questions about it. One
+is who's to be kept alive, and the other is why."
+
+The groundcar aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on
+the far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grew
+nearer. Maril said hesitantly, "There was someone, Korvan--" Calhoun
+didn't catch the rest of the name. Maril said hesitantly, "He was
+working on food plants. I thought he might accomplish something...."
+
+The driver said caustically, "Sure! Everybody's heard about him! He
+came up with a wonderful thing! He and his outfit worked out a way to
+process weeds so they can be eaten. And they can. You can fill your
+belly and not feel hungry, but it's like eating hay. You starve just
+the same. He's still working. Head of a government division."
+
+The groundcar passed through a gate. It stopped before a lighted door.
+The armed men hanging to its outside dropped off. They watched Calhoun
+closely as he stepped out with Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder.
+
+Minutes later they faced a hastily summoned group of officials of the
+Darian government. For a ship to land on Dara was so remarkable an
+event that it called practically for a cabinet meeting. And Calhoun
+noted that they were no better fed than the guards at the spaceport.
+
+They regarded Calhoun and Maril with oddly burning, eyes. It was, of
+course, because the two of them showed no signs of hunger. They
+obviously had not been on short rations. Darians had this, now, to
+increase a hatred which was inevitable anyhow, directed at all peoples
+off their own planet.
+
+"My name is Calhoun," said Calhoun briskly. "I've the usual Med
+Service credentials. Now--"
+
+He did not wait to be questioned. He told them of the appalling state
+of things in the Twelfth Sector of the Med Service, so that men had
+been borrowed from other sectors to remedy the intolerable, and he was
+one of them. He told of his arrival at Weald and what had happened
+there, from the excessively cautious insistence that he prove he was
+not a Darian, to the arrival of the death-ship from Orede.
+
+He was giving them the news affecting them, as they had not heard it
+before. He went on to tell of his stop at Orede and his purpose, and
+his encounter with the men he found there. When he finished there was
+silence. He broke it.
+
+"Now," he said, "Maril's an agent of yours. She can add to what I've
+told you. I'm Med Service. I have a job to do here to carry out what
+wasn't done before. I should make a planetary health inspection and
+make recommendations for the improvement of the state of things. I'll
+be glad if you'll arrange for me to talk to your health officials.
+Things look bad, and something should be done."
+
+Someone laughed without mirth.
+
+"What will you recommend for long-continued undernourishment?" he
+asked derisively. "That's our health problem!"
+
+"I recommend food," said Calhoun.
+
+"Where'll you fill the prescription?"
+
+"I've the answer to that, too," said Calhoun curtly. "I'll want to
+talk to any space pilots you've got. Get your astrogators together and
+I think they'll approve my idea."
+
+The silence was totally skeptical.
+
+"Orede--"
+
+"Not Orede," said Calhoun. "Weald will be hunting that planet over for
+Darians. If they find any, they'll drop bombs here."
+
+"Our only space pilots," said a tall man, presently, "are on Orede
+now. If you've told the truth, they'll probably head back because of
+your warning. They should bring meat."
+
+His mouth worked peculiarly, and Calhoun knew that it was at the
+thought of food.
+
+"Which," said another man sharply, "goes to the hospitals! I haven't
+tasted meat in two years!"
+
+"Nobody has," growled another man still. "But here's this man Calhoun.
+I'm not convinced he can work magic, but we can find out if he lies.
+Put a guard on his ship. Otherwise let our health men give him his
+head. They'll find out if he's from this Medical Service he tells of!
+and this Maril...."
+
+"I can be identified," said Maril. "I was sent to gather information
+and send it in secret writing to one of us on Trent. I have a family
+here. They'll know me! And I--there was someone who was working on
+foods, and I believe he made it possible to use ... all sorts of
+vegetation for food. He will identify me."
+
+Someone laughed harshly.
+
+Maril swallowed.
+
+"I'd like to see him," she repeated. "And my family."
+
+Some of the blue-splotched men turned away. A broad-shouldered man
+said bluntly, "Don't look for them to be glad to see you. And you'd
+better not show yourself in public. You've been well fed. You'll be
+hated for that."
+
+Maril began to cry. Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, "_Chee! Chee!_"
+
+Calhoun held him close. There was confusion. And Calhoun found the
+Minister of Health at hand. He looked most harried of all the
+officials gathered to question Calhoun. He proposed that he get a look
+at the hospital situation right away.
+
+It wasn't practical. With all the population on half rations or less,
+when night came people needed to sleep. Most people, indeed, slept as
+many hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage. It
+was much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly nagged
+at by continued hunger.
+
+And there was the matter of simple decency. Continuous gnawing hunger
+had an embittering effect upon everyone. Quarrelsomeness was a common
+experience. And people who would normally be the leaders of opinion
+felt shame because they were obsessed by thoughts of food. It was best
+when people slept.
+
+Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak. What he found moved
+him to savage anger. There were too many sick children. In every case
+undernourishment contributed to their sickness. And there was not
+enough food to make them well. Doctors and nurses denied themselves
+food to spare it for their patients. And most of that self-denial was
+doubtless voluntary, but it would not be discreet for anybody on Dara
+to look conspicuously better fed than his fellows.
+
+Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the Med
+Ship while the guard in the ship looked on. He demonstrated the
+processes of synthesis and auto-catalysis that enabled such small
+samples to be multiplied indefinitely. He was annoyed by a clamorous
+appetite. There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical
+techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody
+was half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved of
+Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function.
+
+He was, of course, a Med Service _tormal_, and _tormals_ were
+creatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the
+Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals. But the
+remarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract any
+disease. Not any.
+
+They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins,
+and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to which
+a _tormal_ could not more or less immediately develop antibody
+resistance. So that in interstellar medicine _tormals_ were priceless.
+
+Let Murgatroyd be infected with however localized, however specialized
+an inimical organism, and presently some highly valuable defensive
+substance could be isolated from his blood and he'd remain in his
+usual exuberant good health.
+
+When the antibody was analyzed by those techniques of microanalysis
+the Service had developed, that was that. The antibody could be
+synthesized and one could attack any epidemic with confidence.
+
+The tragedy for Dara was, of course, that no Med Ship had come to Dara
+three generations ago, when the Dara plague raged. Worse, after the
+plague Weald was able to exert pressure which only a criminally
+incompetent Med Service director would have permitted. But criminal
+incompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned to
+Sector Twelve to help remedy. He was not at ease, though. No ship
+arrived from Orede to bear out his account of an attempt to get that
+lonely world evacuated before Weald discovered it had blueskins on it.
+Maril had vanished, to visit or return to her family, or perhaps to
+consult with the mysterious Korvan who'd arranged for her to leave
+Dara to be a spy, and had advised her simply to make a new life
+somewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and out-caste
+world.
+
+Calhoun had learned of two achievements the same Korvan had made for
+his world. Neither was remarkably constructive. He'd offered to prove
+the value of the second by dying of it. Which might make him a very
+admirable character, or he could have a passion for martyrdom, which
+is much more common than most people think. In two days Calhoun was
+irritable enough from unaccustomed hunger to suspect the worst of him.
+
+Meanwhile Calhoun worked doggedly; in the hospitals while the patients
+were awake and in the Med Ship, under guard, afterward. He had hunger
+cramps now, but he tested a plastic cube with a thriving biological
+culture in it.
+
+He worked at increasing his store of it. He'd snipped samples of
+pigmented skin from dead patients in the hospitals, and examined the
+pigmented areas, and very, very painstakingly verified a theory. It
+took an electron microscope to do it, but he found a virus in the blue
+patches which matched the type discovered on Tralee.
+
+The Tralee viruses had effects which were passed on from mother to
+child, and heredity had been charged with the observed results of
+quasi-living viral particles. And then Calhoun very, very carefully
+introduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in a
+plastic cube. He watched what happened.
+
+He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he yawned and
+yawned and barely managed to stagger off to bed. The watching guard in
+the Med Ship watched him in amazement.
+
+That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloody
+carcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning
+Maril came back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expression
+was of someone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life.
+
+"I'm all right," she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've been
+visiting my family. I've seen Korvan. I'm quite all right."
+
+"You haven't eaten any better than I have," Calhoun observed.
+
+"I couldn't!" admitted Maril. "My sisters, my little sisters so
+thin.... There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficiently
+arranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I gave
+most of my food to my sisters and they--they squabbled over it!"
+
+Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said, in a no
+less desolate tone, "Korvan said I was foolish to come back."
+
+"He could be right," said Calhoun.
+
+"But I had to!" protested Maril. "And now I--I've been eating all I
+wanted to, in Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they're
+half-starved and I'm not. And when you see what hunger does to
+them.... It's terrible to be half-starved and not able to think of
+anything but food!"
+
+"I hope," said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get hold
+of an astrogator or two--"
+
+"The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told him
+shakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one load's not enough to
+make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us on
+Orede, we daren't go back for more meat."
+
+She said abruptly, "There are some prisoners. They were miners. They
+were crowded out of the ship. The Darians who'd stampeded the cattle
+took them prisoners. They had to!"
+
+"True," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't have been wise to leave Wealdians
+around on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tell
+about a rumor of blueskins. Even if their throats will be cut now. Is
+that the program?"
+
+Maril shivered.
+
+"No. They'll be put on short rations like everybody else. And people
+will watch them. The Wealdians expect to die of plague any minute
+because they've been with Darians. So people look at them and laugh.
+But it's not very funny."
+
+"It's natural," said Calhoun, "but perhaps lacking in charity. Look
+there! How about those astrogators? I need them for a job I have in
+mind."
+
+Maril wrung her hands.
+
+"C--come here," she said in a low tone.
+
+There was an armed guard in the control room of the ship. He'd watched
+Calhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed his
+mysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He was
+bored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control board, though, he
+was uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the way
+into the other cabin and slid the door shut.
+
+"The astrogators are coming," she said swiftly. "They'll bring some
+boxes with them. They'll ask you to instruct them so they can handle
+our ship better. They lost themselves coming back from Orede. No,
+they didn't lose themselves, but they lost time, enough time almost to
+make an extra trip for meat. They need to be experts. I'm to come
+along, so they can be sure that what you teach them is what you've
+been doing right along."
+
+Calhoun said, "Well?"
+
+"They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would do
+something monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stop
+it by being more monstrous sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there are
+enough. So they want to use your ship--it's faster in overdrive and so
+on. And they'll go to Weald in this ship and--they say they'll give
+Weald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"
+
+Calhoun said dryly, "This pays me off for being too sympathetic with
+blueskins! But if I'd been hungry for a couple of years, and was
+despised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I might
+react the same way. No," he said curtly as she opened her lips to
+speak again, "don't tell me the trick. Considering everything, there's
+only one trick it could be. But I doubt profoundly that it would work.
+All right."
+
+He slid the door back and returned to the control room. Maril followed
+him. He said detachedly, "I've been working on a problem outside of
+the food one. It isn't the time to talk about it right now, but I
+think I've solved it."
+
+Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmac
+outside the ship. Both doors of the airlock were open. Four men came
+in. They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as most
+Darians, but there was a reason for that. Their leader introduced
+himself and the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had
+built to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said their
+self-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot their
+destination. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They needed
+instruction.
+
+Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. They
+were, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement was
+a patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a blue
+birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. A
+third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a
+dull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.
+
+"We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board and
+learn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we've
+got."
+
+"I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we
+go along.... Those boxes?"
+
+Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the four
+very carefully brought them inside.
+
+"They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywhere
+without rations, except Orede."
+
+"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," said
+Calhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"
+
+"Yes," said the young man.
+
+He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhoun
+shrugged.
+
+"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there's
+the button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted."
+
+The young man seated himself at the control board. Very
+professionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift by
+landing-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He
+went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him.
+
+"Hold it!"
+
+He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at the
+control board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the
+doors.
+
+The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found
+occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a
+training voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskin
+pilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoun
+grew stern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald.
+
+The young men glanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. He
+made the acting pilot look up the intrinsic brightness of its sun and
+measure its apparent brightness from just off Dara. He made him
+estimate the change in brightness to be expected after so many hours
+in overdrive, if one broke out to measure.
+
+The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour of
+duty with more respect for Calhoun then he'd had at the beginning. The
+second was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilled
+him in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparent
+brightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated with
+angular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearer
+heavens.
+
+It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out on Dara,
+and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and other fine
+points of space-piloting. They'd done enough, in a few trips to Orede,
+to realize that they needed to know more. Calhoun showed them.
+
+Calhoun did not try to make things easy for them. He was hungry and
+easily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and to
+phrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in
+command of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use
+Weald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship
+came out of overdrive pointing in an unknown direction and with a
+precessory motion.
+
+He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestial
+globe containing hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course in
+overdrive toward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute the
+distance to Weald from such data as he could get from observation,
+without reference to any records.
+
+By this time the first man was chafing to take a second turn. Calhoun
+gave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, a
+highly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space.
+His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least
+one breakout from overdrive in each watch.
+
+He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of being
+hungry--though there had been no reason for them to stint on food on
+Orede--in growing pride in what they came to know.
+
+When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highly
+qualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better
+spacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward
+Calhoun was respectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young,
+the combination is impressive.
+
+Maril had served as passenger only. In theory she was to compare
+Calhoun's lessons with his practise when alone. But he did nothing on
+this journey which, teaching considered, was different from the two
+interstellar journeys Maril had made with him.
+
+She occupied the sleeping cabin during two of the six watches of each
+ship-day. She operated the food-readier, which was almost completely
+emptied of its original store of food, it having been confiscated by
+the government of Dara. That amount of food would make no difference
+to the planet, but it was wise for everyone on Dara to be equally
+ill-fed.
+
+On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude of
+minus five-tenths. The electron telescope could detect its larger
+planets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo.
+Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing
+out the difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med
+Ship were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc.
+
+"And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduate
+you as pilots. Maril, four cups of coffee, please."
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee?_" The Med Ship was badly crowded with six
+humans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroyd
+alone. The little _tormal_ had spent most of his time in his
+cubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about on
+what had been a spacious ship before.
+
+"No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "You didn't do your
+lessons. This is for the graduating class only."
+
+Murgatroyd came out of his miniature den. He found his little cup and
+offered it insistently, saying, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
+
+"No!" said Calhoun firmly. He regarded his class of four young men
+with their blueskin markings. "Drink it down!" he commanded. "That's
+the last order I'll give you. You're graduate pilots, now!"
+
+They drank the coffee with a flourish. There was not one who did not
+admire Calhoun for having made them admire themselves. They were,
+actually, almost as much better pilots as they believed.
+
+"And now," said Calhoun, "I suppose you'll tell me the truth about
+those boxes you brought on board. You said they were rations, but
+they haven't been opened in six days. I have an idea what they mean,
+but you tell me."
+
+The four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause.
+
+"They could be," said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped on
+Weald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has
+decided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother
+with you. Is that right?"
+
+The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
+into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
+provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
+not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
+the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
+blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
+four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
+in emptiness.
+
+"Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were ordered
+to do."
+
+"I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald a
+little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
+day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
+imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
+claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
+do anything of the kind."
+
+One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
+closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
+heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
+went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
+attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and
+he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and
+reproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"
+
+He collapsed.
+
+Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
+comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
+throat. Murgatroyd looked agitated. He said anxiously, "_Chee? Chee?_"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "They'll wake up presently."
+
+Maril said in a tense and desperate whisper, "You're betraying us!
+You're going to take us to Weald!"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "We'll only orbit around it. First, though, I want
+to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the
+way. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while a
+fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable
+Cepheids of known period."
+
+He put the four boxes carefully in the disposal unit. He operated it.
+The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of
+metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control desk.
+
+"I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate in
+the spread of plagues, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be
+another matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald
+busy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some
+food for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is thousands of
+tons, or tens of thousands." Then he said, "Overdrive coming,
+Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"
+
+The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied
+the change. Murgatroyd burped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright
+half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had icecaps at its
+poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had
+that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas
+which was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free,
+and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to
+man.
+
+There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a
+sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,
+still bound hand and foot upon the control room floor. Murgatroyd
+regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry
+forehead wrinkled helplessly.
+
+"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as
+his search had no result. "They can't! It would be too sensible for
+them to have done it!"
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a subdued voice.
+
+"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar
+orbit would be ridiculous! They--" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of
+course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
+
+He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian
+landing-grid, which was mapped in the Sector Directory, against the
+look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible
+outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar system
+drive.
+
+"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the
+first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in
+space, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit
+and at what distance will you put it?"
+
+Maril did not answer.
+
+"Obviously," said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from the
+landing-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it on
+the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the
+way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night
+without having to calculate anything.
+
+"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in
+exactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above the
+equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on
+the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the
+landing-grid and directly over the equator."
+
+He scribbled for a moment.
+
+"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few
+hundred, and--here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!"
+
+He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushed
+the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The
+sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.
+Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once
+more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating
+satisfaction.
+
+He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,
+handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said
+depressedly, "_Chee!_"
+
+"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, and
+there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody
+bumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do
+want to bump, but gently."
+
+Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something dark
+appeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril,
+despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly
+larger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Ship
+maneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. A
+fourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.
+
+They were spaceships, huge by comparison with _Aesclipus Twenty_. They
+floated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not in
+formation. They were not at even distances from each other. They did
+not point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like
+derelicts.
+
+Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there
+came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance
+out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med
+Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast surface of welded metal.
+
+Calhoun relaxed. He opened a wall panel and brought out a vacuum suit.
+He began briskly to get it on.
+
+"Things moving smoothly," he commented. "We weren't challenged. So
+it's extremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor
+ought to begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now
+whether I'm a hero or in sure-enough trouble!"
+
+Maril said drearily, "I don't know what you've done, except--"
+
+Calhoun blinked at her, in the act of hauling the vacuum suit up his
+chest and over his shoulders.
+
+"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogation
+lessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them
+dump germ-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see the
+point? These are space ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They're
+not manned and they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing but
+sky-riding storage bins!"
+
+He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his arms
+into the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air tanks over
+his shoulder and hooked them to the suit.
+
+"I'll be back," he said. "I hope with good news. I've reason to be
+hopeful, though, because these Wealdians are very practical men. They
+have things all prepared and tidy. I suspect I'll find these ships
+with stores of air and fuel, maybe even food, so that if Weald should
+manage to make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'd
+only have to bring out crews."
+
+He lifted the space helmet down from its rack and put it on. He tested
+it, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data from
+the lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above his
+eye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking through
+the helmet's opened faceplate.
+
+"If our friends should wake up before I get back," he added, "please
+restrain them. I'd hate to be marooned."
+
+He went waddling into the airlock with the coil of space rope over one
+vacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him. A little
+later Maril heard the outer lock open. Then silence.
+
+Murgatroyd whimpered a little. Maril shivered. Calhoun had gone out of
+the ship to nothingness. He'd said that what he was looking for, and
+what he'd found, was forty-two thousand miles from Weald. One could
+imagine falling forty-two thousand miles, where one couldn't imagine
+falling a light-year.
+
+Calhoun was walking on the steel plates of a gigantic spaceship which
+floated among dozens of its fellows, all seeming derelicts and
+seemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on the nearest because of
+magnetic-soled shoes. He trusted his life to them and to a flimsy
+space rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship's airlock.
+
+Time passed. A clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to the
+second which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Very
+small and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing
+utter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship.
+
+Maril found herself listening tensely for something else. One of the
+four bound blueskins snored, and stirred, and slept again. Murgatroyd
+gazed about unhappily, and swung down to the control room floor, and
+then paused for lack of any place to go or anything to do. He sat down
+and began half-heartedly to lick his whiskers. Maril stirred.
+
+Murgatroyd looked at her hopefully.
+
+"_Chee?_" he asked shrilly.
+
+She shook her head. It became a habit to act as if Murgatroyd were a
+human being. "No," she said unsteadily. "Not yet."
+
+More time passed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintest
+of clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in the
+airlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises.
+
+The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fog
+came out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of the
+lock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly
+heavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two spacesuits and a
+curious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside his
+faceplate, and said briskly, "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it,
+will you, Maril?"
+
+He began to work his way out of his own vacuum-suit.
+
+"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practical
+tribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon as
+they're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat
+enough to keep a ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively
+near zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."
+
+He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where
+their beams played. But the metal spacesuits glistened and steamed,
+and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and
+utterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, which
+re-evaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and was
+immediately replaced.
+
+"Item," said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suit
+sleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping
+friends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble,
+provided only that nobody comes out here to bother us before they
+leave."
+
+He shed the last of the spacesuit, stepping out of its legs.
+
+"And," he finished wryly, "I brought back an emergency supply of ship
+provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough to
+feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving."
+
+Maril said, "But there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!"
+
+He gaped at her.
+
+"What do you think we're here for?"
+
+He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness.
+It was not a difficult task. The dosage mixed in the coffee given them
+as a graduation ceremony--the ceremony which had consisted solely of
+drinking coffee and passing out--allowed for waking-up processes.
+Calhoun took the precaution of disarming them first, but presently
+four hot-eyed young men glared at him.
+
+"I'm calling," said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently in his
+hand, "I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There've
+been unmanageable crop surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government
+grimly rations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been
+buying surplus grain to keep the price up.
+
+"To save storage costs, it's loaded the grain into out-of-date
+spaceships it once used to stand sentry over Dara to keep it out of
+space when there was another famine there. Those ships have been put
+out in orbit, where we're hooked on to one of them.
+
+"It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've brought
+spacesuits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, and
+I've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling for
+volunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it's
+needed. Do I get any volunteers?"
+
+He got four. Not immediately, because they were ashamed that he'd made
+it impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and now
+offered something much better to make up for it. They raged. But half
+a million bushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise die
+might live.
+
+Ultimately, truculently, first one and then another angrily agreed.
+
+"Good!" said Calhoun. "Now, how many of you dare risk the trip alone?
+I've got one grain ship warming up. There are plenty of others around
+us. Every one of you can take a ship and half a million bushels to
+Dara, if you have the nerve!"
+
+The atmosphere changed. Suddenly they clamored for the task he offered
+them. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them and
+taught them until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd
+pinned their ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy
+ships and unimaginable quantities of food with which to break the
+famine....
+
+There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so far
+warming up. Three more had to be entered, in spacesuits, and each had
+to have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it,
+and at least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up to
+reasonable temperature for use on the journey.
+
+Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length of
+journey that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun
+had to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sun
+under all circumstances and aim for it with the requisite high
+precision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout. When
+all that was accomplished, Calhoun might reasonably hope that they'd
+arrive. But it wasn't a certainty.
+
+Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the fine
+tolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than their
+teacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because their
+messages might be picked up on Weald.
+
+Of course, for this high heroic action to be successful, it had to be
+performed with the stealth of sneak-thieves.
+
+What seemed a long time passed. The one ship turned slowly upon some
+unseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A
+second twisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar
+system drive to get clear of the rest. The fourth--
+
+One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara at
+many times the speed of light. Another. Two more.
+
+That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness.
+And Calhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in
+such a pathetically small number of days. If the four ships reached
+Dara, their pilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with
+that estate over their bitter objection. But they would glory in
+it--if they reached Dara.
+
+Maril looked at him with very strange eyes.
+
+"Now what?" she asked.
+
+"We hang around," said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Weald
+to find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort of
+signal when a ship goes into overdrive. Usually it doesn't mean a
+thing. Nobody pays any attention. But if somebody comes out here...."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It'll be regrettable," said Calhoun. He was suddenly very tired.
+"It'll spoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more
+food, like interstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'll
+expect us to try it again. They might get set to fight. Or they might
+simply land the rest of these ships."
+
+"If I'd realized what you were about," said Maril, "I'd have joined in
+the lessons. I could have piloted a ship."
+
+"You wouldn't have wanted to," said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn't
+want to be a heroine. No normal girl does."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Korvan," said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him. He's
+been trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins.
+All he's accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly. He
+wouldn't feel comfortable with a girl who'd helped make starving
+unnecessary. He'd admire you politely, but he'd never marry you. And
+you know it."
+
+She shook her head, but it was not easy to tell whether she denied the
+reaction of Korvan, whom Calhoun had never met, or denied that he was
+more important to her than anything else. The last was what Calhoun
+plainly implied.
+
+"You don't seem to be trying to be a hero!" she protested.
+
+"I'd enjoy it," admitted Calhoun, "but I have a job to do. It's got to
+be done. It's more important than being admired."
+
+"You could take another ship back," she told him. "It would be worth
+more to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realize
+that you'd planned everything."
+
+"Ah," said Calhoun, "but you've no idea how much this ship matters to
+Dara!"
+
+He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his
+ears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave
+lengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no
+mention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft.
+There was no mention of the ships at all. There was plenty of mention
+of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going
+on to see which political party could promise the most complete
+protection against blueskins.
+
+After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung
+the Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around
+which Dara rolled. He said, "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
+
+Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and the
+Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signal
+could come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be no
+sound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.
+
+Calhoun yawned again.
+
+"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily,
+"and I'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on
+Dara. It's one way not to feel hungry. And one dreams such delicious
+meals! But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara."
+
+Maril said tensely, "You're going back? After they took the ship from
+you?"
+
+"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,
+and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing as
+a blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got
+to do something to make sure there are no more famines."
+
+She looked at him oddly.
+
+"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."
+
+"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I didn't get
+much sleep on the way here, while running a seminar on astrogation. I
+think I'll take a nap."
+
+She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leave
+him alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let a
+Med Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,
+turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantly
+asleep.
+
+For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
+happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very
+far away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads of
+grain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each
+great ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.
+
+Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to
+their stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion had
+been explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to be
+counted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but
+the tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible created
+things.
+
+It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it
+was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the
+human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of
+the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone
+with no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.
+
+On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhat
+distastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him
+in a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with
+his furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.
+
+Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter
+of six or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of
+a long process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and again
+culturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculated
+time.
+
+"Better wait until tomorrow," he observed, and put the bit of clear
+liquid in a temperature-controlled place of safekeeping.
+
+"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"
+
+"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "How
+about some music?"
+
+She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtape
+into it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she
+had never heard before. It was another device to counteract isolation
+and monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing its
+effectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.
+
+Any indulgence frequently repeated would become a habit, in the sense
+that it would give no special pleasure when indulged in, but would
+make for stress if it were omitted. Calhoun deliberately went for
+weeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to be
+looked forward to and cherished.
+
+When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee with
+tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers,
+Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.
+
+"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like
+other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what
+other people have to get in crazy ways--making their work feed their
+vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can
+put your whole mind on your work."
+
+He thought it over.
+
+"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," he
+admitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites.
+But there are instincts...."
+
+She waited. He did not finish.
+
+"What do you do about the instincts that work and music and such
+things can't satisfy?"
+
+Calhoun grinned wryly, "I'm stern with them. I have to be."
+
+He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for
+the night. She went.
+
+It was after breakfast time of the next ship-day when he got out the
+sample of clear liquid he'd worked so long to produce.
+
+"We'll see how it works," he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case of
+a slip-up. It's perfectly safe so long as he's aboard and there are
+only the two of us."
+
+She watched as he injected half a cc. under his own skin. Then she
+shivered a little.
+
+"What will it do?"
+
+"That remains to be seen." He paused a moment. "You and I," he said
+with some dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catch
+something from me, it will be infectious indeed!"
+
+She gazed at him utterly without comprehension.
+
+He took his own temperature. He brought out the folios which were his
+orders, covering each of the planets he should give a standard Medical
+Service inspection. Weald was there. Dara wasn't. But a Med Service
+man has much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routine
+of normal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations,
+he necessarily has much more. Calhoun went over the folios.
+
+Two hours later he took his temperature again. He looked pleased. He
+made an entry in the ship's log. Two hours later yet he found himself
+drinking thirstily and looked more pleased still.
+
+He made another entry in the log and matter-of-factly drew a small
+quantity of blood from his own vein and called to Murgatroyd.
+Murgatroyd submitted amiably to the very trivial operation Calhoun
+carried out. Calhoun put away the equipment and saw Maril staring at
+him with a certain look of shock.
+
+"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!_"
+
+"Very well," agreed Calhoun. "We'll all have some."
+
+He made coffee. Murgatroyd sipped at the cup especially made for his
+little paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had no
+pain nerves. It itched. But he was perfectly content. Murgatroyd
+would always be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.
+
+Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and
+with a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long
+enough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to
+Murgatroyd's heartbeat, while Murgatroyd dozed.
+
+"Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, and
+ninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four."
+
+She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later, still not stirring
+to disturb Murgatroyd, he had her write down another time and sequence
+of figures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour later
+still, a third set. But then he put Murgatroyd down, well satisfied.
+
+He took his own temperature. He nodded.
+
+"Murgatroyd and I have one more chore to do," he told her. "Would you
+go in the other cabin for a moment?"
+
+Disturbed, she went into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a small sample
+of blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroyd
+submitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhoun
+had diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it up
+thoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and white
+corpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered that
+Calhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of
+antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would
+assuredly take care of two patients.
+
+But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of
+those scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures
+from store.
+
+Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back.
+
+"It was nothing," he explained, "but you might have felt
+uncomfortable. We simply had a bit of Med Service routine that had to
+be gone through. It's all right now."
+
+He offered no further explanation. She said, "I'll fix lunch." She
+hesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do you
+want to--"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service
+fault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations until
+everybody eats."
+
+He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he
+considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening
+meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily.
+He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated
+game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of
+probability increased one's chance of winning.
+
+By midnight she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun
+was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was
+satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive off
+Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the
+other cabin.
+
+Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made for
+him, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood pressure after the injection of
+the same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself and
+later, without contact with him or the culture, in Maril. He put a
+professional comment at the end:
+
+     _The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics
+     during long storage in the spore state. It received and reproduced
+     rapidly. I injected .5 cc. under my skin and in less than one hour
+     my temperature was 30.8° C. An hour later it was 30.9° C. This was
+     its peak. It immediately returned to normal. The only other
+     observable symptom was slightly increased thirst. Bloodpressure
+     and pulse remained normal. The other person in the Med Ship
+     displayed the same symptoms, in prompt and complete repetition,
+     without physical contact._
+
+He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole, his tail
+draped carefully over his nose.
+
+The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship-time. Calhoun
+made contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.
+
+It was almost two hours later, at 1500 hours ship-time, when the
+people of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was to be
+executed immediately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+From the viewpoint of Darians, who were also blueskins, the decision
+of Calhoun's guilt and the decision to execute him were reasonable
+enough. Maril protested fiercely, and her testimony agreed with
+Calhoun's in every respect, but from a blueskin viewpoint their own
+statements were damning.
+
+Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only
+semiskilled space pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
+Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there
+he had instructed them in modern guidance methods for ships of space.
+
+So far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more
+competent pilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for
+example, to raid the enormous cattle herds there. And he'd had them
+drive the Med Ship to Weald, against which there could be no
+objection.
+
+But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them
+drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd
+been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots
+off separately, so he and Maril claimed, in huge ships crammed with
+grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow.
+
+Nobody believed in shiploads of grain to be had for the taking. They
+did know that the only four partially experienced space pilots on Dara
+had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent out of the ship
+after they'd been drugged.
+
+Had they been trained, and had they been helped or even permitted to
+sow the seeds of plague on Weald, and had they come back prepared to
+pass on training to other men to handle other space ships now
+feverishly being built in hidden places on Dara, then Dara might have
+a chance of survival.
+
+But a space battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous
+at best. With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So
+Calhoun, by his own story, appeared to have doomed every living being
+on Dara to massacre from the bombs of Weald.
+
+It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing
+in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun
+had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships
+and could build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct
+them.
+
+Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced spacemen to
+man some ships fully and train the crews of others. If it had become
+desperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life on
+Dara would be delayed. Dara might have gained time at least to build
+ships which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way.
+
+But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Weald
+already had a fleet of huge ships which only needed to be emptied of
+grain and filled with guns and men, then Dara was doomed. But if he
+did not tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So
+Calhoun would be killed.
+
+His execution was to take place in the open space of the landing-grid,
+with vision cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin
+planet. Half-starved men with grisly blue blotches on their skins,
+marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet
+which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in
+their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall.
+Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as
+atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death would be satisfying.
+
+So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered
+to him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the
+landing-grid floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire
+upon him at the same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be
+destroyed. He would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon
+him.
+
+His death was remarkably close, nothing remaining but the order to
+fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything.
+One of the grain ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its
+pilot was triumphantly calling for landing coordinates. The grid
+office relayed his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to
+get it on the communication system of the whole planet.
+
+"Calling ground," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
+student pilots Calhoun had trained. "Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
+captured ship requests coordinates for landing! Purpose of landing is
+to deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!"
+
+At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
+vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to
+be used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on
+its second voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when
+it threatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in
+the sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the
+center of the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where
+he was to have been executed.
+
+The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then did
+Calhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the
+grid's metal-lace wall.
+
+The big ship touched ground, and its exit port revolved and opened,
+and the student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handfuls of
+grain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd,
+then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoice
+when Calhoun's living body exploded into flame.
+
+They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the Med
+Ship, nevertheless. He was surrounded by ecstatically admiring
+citizens of Dara. They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until
+he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in
+their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and
+affection, minutes since they'd thirsted for his blood.
+
+Two hours after the first ship, a second landed. Dara went wild again.
+Four hours later still, the third arrived. The fourth came down to
+ground on the following day.
+
+When Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the second
+time his tone and manner were very dry.
+
+"Now," he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators to train.
+I think it likely that we can raid the Wealdian grain fleet one more
+time, and in so doing get the beginning of a fleet for defense. I
+insist, however, that it must not be used in combat. We might as well
+be sensible about this situation! After all, four shiploads of grain
+won't break the famine! They'll help a lot, but they're only the
+beginning of what's needed for a planetary population!"
+
+"How much grain can we hope for?" demanded a man with a blue mark
+covering all his chin.
+
+Calhoun told him.
+
+"How long before Weald can have a fleet overhead, dropping fusion
+bombs?" demanded another, grimly.
+
+Calhoun named a time. But then he said, "I think we can keep them from
+dropping bombs if we can get the grain fleet and some capable
+astrogators."
+
+"How?"
+
+He told them. It was not possible to tell the whole story of what he
+considered sensible behavior. An emotional program can be presented
+and accepted immediately. A plan of action which is actually
+intelligent, considering all elements of a situation, has to be
+accepted piecemeal. Even so, the military men growled.
+
+"We've plenty of heavy elements," said one. "If we'd used our brains,
+we'd have more bombs than Weald can hope for! We could turn that whole
+planet into a smoking cinder!"
+
+"Which," said Calhoun acidly, "would give you some satisfaction but
+not an ounce of food! And food's more important than satisfaction.
+Now, I'm going to take off for Weald again. I'll want somebody to
+build an emergency device for my ship, and I'll want the four pilots
+I've trained and twenty more candidates. And I'd like to have some
+decent rations! The last trip brought back two million bushels of
+grain. You can certainly spare adequate food for twenty men for a few
+days!"
+
+It took some time to get the special device constructed, but the Med
+Ship lifted in two days more. The device for which it had waited was
+simply a preventive of the disaster overtaking the ship from the mine
+on Orede. It was essentially a tank of liquid oxygen, packed in the
+space from which stores had been taken away. When the ship's air
+supply was pumped past it, first moisture and then CO_{2} froze out.
+
+Then the air flowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the
+CO_{2} with more useful breathing material. Then the moisture was
+restored to the air as it warmed again. For so long as the oxygen
+lasted, fresh air for any number of men could be kept purified and
+breathable. The Med Ship's normal equipment could take care of no more
+than ten. But with this it could journey to Weald with almost any
+complement on board.
+
+Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protested
+shrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closing
+airlock.
+
+"_Chee!_" he said indignantly. "_Chee! Chee!_"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "We'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see her
+later."
+
+He nodded to one of the first four student pilots, who crisply made
+contact with the landing-grid office, and very efficiently supervised
+as the grid took the ship up. The other three of the four
+first-trained men explained every move to sub-classes assigned to
+each. Calhoun moved about, listening and making certain that the
+instruction was up to standard.
+
+He felt queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution
+in space. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside
+himself crowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each
+other's way. They trampled on each other. There was always somebody
+eating, and always somebody sleeping, and there was no need whatever
+for the background tape to keep the ship from being intolerably
+quiet. But the air system worked well enough, except once when the
+reheating unit quit and the air inside the ship went down below
+freezing before the trouble could be found and corrected.
+
+The journey to Weald, this time, took seven days because of the
+training program in effect. Calhoun bit his nails over the delay. But
+it was necessary for each of the students to make his own line-ups on
+Weald's sun, and compute distances, and for each of them to practise
+maneuverings that would presently be called for. Calhoun hoped
+desperately that preparations for active warfare did not move fast on
+Weald.
+
+He believed, however, that in the absence of direct news from Dara,
+Wealdian officials would take the normal course of politicos. They had
+proclaimed the ship from Orede an attack from Dara. Therefore, they
+would specialize on defensive measures before plumping for offense.
+They'd get patrol ships out to spot invasion ships long before they
+worked on a fleet to destroy the blueskins. It would meet the public
+demand for defense.
+
+Calhoun was right. The Med Ship made its final approach to Weald under
+Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his
+previous journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly
+accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading
+beyond two decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough
+from the Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its
+planets with the electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could
+aim for Weald itself, allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent
+motion of its image because of the limited speed of light. He tried
+the briefest of overdrive hops, and came out within the solar system
+and well inside any watching patrol.
+
+That was pure fortune. It continued. He'd broken through the screen of
+guard ships in undetectable overdrive. He was within half an hour's
+solar system drive of the grain fleet. There was no alarm, at first.
+Of course radars spotted the Med Ship as an object, but nobody paid
+attention. It was not headed for Weald. It was probably assumed to be
+a guard boat itself. Such mistakes do happen.
+
+Again from the storage space from which supplies had been removed,
+Calhoun produced vacuum suits. The four first students went out, each
+escorting a less-accustomed neophyte and all fastened firmly together
+with space ropes. They warmed the interiors of four ships and went on
+to others. Presently there were eight ships making ready for an
+interstellar journey, each with a scared but resolute new pilot
+familiarizing himself with its controls. There were sixteen ships.
+Twenty. Twenty-three.
+
+A guard ship came humming out from Weald. It would be armed, of
+course. It came droning, droning up the forty-odd thousand miles from
+the planet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell
+them what was toward. The guard ship would overhear. He could not
+trust untried young men to act rationally if they were unaware and the
+guard ship arrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of
+them.
+
+Then he was inspired. He called Murgatroyd, placed him before the
+communicator, and set it at voice-only transmission. This was familiar
+enough, to Murgatroyd. He'd often seen Calhoun use a communicator.
+
+"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd. "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+A startled voice came out of the speaker: "What's that?"
+
+"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd zestfully.
+
+The communicator was talking to him. Murgatroyd adored three things,
+in order. One was Calhoun. The second was coffee. The third was
+pretending to converse like a human being. The speaker said
+explosively, "You there, identify yourself!"
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee-chee!_" observed Murgatroyd. He wriggled with
+pleasure and added, reasonably enough, "_Chee!_"
+
+The communicator bawled, "Calling ground! Calling ground! Listen to
+this! Something that ain't human's talking at me on a communicator!
+Listen in an' tell me what to do!"
+
+Murgatroyd interposed with another shrill, "_Chee!_"
+
+Then Calhoun pulled the Med Ship slowly away from the clump of
+still-lifeless grain ships. It was highly improbable that the guard
+boat would carry an electron telescope. Most likely it would have only
+an echo-radar, and so could determine only that an object of some sort
+moved of its own accord in space. Calhoun let the Med Ship accelerate.
+That would be final evidence. The grain ships were between Weald and
+its sun. Even electron telescopes on the ground--and electron
+telescopes were ultimately optical telescopes with electronic
+amplification--could not get a good image of the ship through sunlit
+atmosphere.
+
+"_Chee?_" asked Murgatroyd solicitously. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"
+
+"Is it blueskins?" shakily demanded the voice from the guard boat.
+"Ground! Ground! Is it blueskins?"
+
+A heavy, authoritative voice came in with much greater volume. "That's
+no human voice," it said harshly. "Approach its ship and send back an
+image. Don't fire first unless it heads for ground."
+
+The guard ship swerved and headed for the Med Ship. It was still a
+very long way off.
+
+"_Chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd encouragingly.
+
+Calhoun changed the Med Ship's course. The guard ship changed course
+too. Calhoun let it draw nearer, but only a little. He led it away
+from the fleet of grain ships.
+
+He swung his electron telescope on them. He saw a spacesuited figure
+outside one, safely roped, however. It was easy to guess that someone
+had meant to return to the Med Ship for orders or to make a report,
+and found the Med Ship gone. He'd go back inside and turn on a
+communicator.
+
+"_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd.
+
+The heavy voice boomed. "You there! This is a human-occupied world! If
+you come in peace, cut your drive and let our guard ship approach!"
+
+Murgatroyd replied in an interested but doubtful tone. The booming
+voice bellowed. Another voice of higher authority took over.
+Murgatroyd was entranced that so many people wanted to talk to him. He
+made what for him was practically an oration. The last voice spoke
+persuasively and suavely.
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd.
+
+One of the grain ships flickered and ceased to be. It had gone into
+overdrive. Another. And another. Suddenly they began to flick out of
+sight by twos and threes.
+
+"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd with a note of finality.
+
+The last grain ship vanished.
+
+"Calling guard ship," said Calhoun dryly. "This is Med Ship _Aesclipus
+Twenty_. I called here a couple of weeks ago. You've been talking to
+my _tormal_, Murgatroyd."
+
+A pause. A blank pause. Then profanity of deep and savage
+intemperance.
+
+"I've been on Dara," said Calhoun.
+
+Dead silence fell.
+
+"There's a famine there," said Calhoun deliberately. "So the grain
+ships you've had in orbit have been taken away by men from
+Dara--blueskins if you like--to feed themselves and their families.
+They've been dying of hunger and they don't like it."
+
+There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suave
+voice said waspishly, "Well? The Med Service will hear of your
+interference!"
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself. I have a message for you.
+Dara is ready to pay for every ounce of grain and for the ships it was
+stored in. They'll pay in heavy metals--irridium, uranium, that sort
+of thing."
+
+The suave voice fairly curdled.
+
+"As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground
+here!"
+
+"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium
+melts at 1150° centigrade, and tungsten at 3370° and irridium at
+2350°. You could load such things and melt them down in space and then
+tow them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful
+materials!"
+
+The suave voice was infuriated: "I'll report this! You'll suffer for
+this!"
+
+Calhoun said pleasantly, "I'm sure that what I say is being recorded,
+so that I'll add that it's perfectly practical for Wealdians to land
+on Dara, take whatever property they think wise--to pay for damage
+done by blueskins, of course--and get back to Wealdian ships with
+absolutely no danger of carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the
+recording's clear...."
+
+He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be
+outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do
+whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not
+use the word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of
+bringing back infection. He gave exact details.
+
+Then he said, "My radar says you've four ships converging on me to
+blast me out of space. I sign off."
+
+The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that
+improbably stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and
+in which physical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the
+speed of light in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet.
+It was too high. For another, a ship could travel very many times
+186,000 miles per second in overdrive.
+
+The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and
+Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence, with only the
+small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice.
+
+Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had
+twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the
+ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and
+someone else. One need not be snobbish to wish to be alone sometimes!
+
+Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully.
+
+"I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may
+remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of
+grain reaching them. Maybe, just possibly, they'll listen to me and
+act sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not
+with ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with
+bombs!"
+
+Driving direct, without pausing for practising, the Med Ship could
+arrive at Dara in a little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward
+to relaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an
+adequate meal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then,
+presently, he sat down to a double meal of Darian famine-rations,
+which were far from appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on
+board.
+
+He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went on in the
+normal, non-overdrive universe. Suns flared, and comets hurtled on
+their way, and clouds formed and dropped down rain, and all sorts of
+celestial and meteorological phenomena took place. On Weald,
+obviously, there would be purest panic.
+
+The vanishing of the grain fleet wouldn't be charged against
+twenty-four men. A Darian fleet would be suspected, and with the
+suspicion would come terror, and with terror a governmental crisis.
+Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft that could take to
+space, and the agitated improvisation of a space fleet.
+
+But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine
+Calhoun's instructions for equipment by which armed men could be
+landed on a plague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again.
+Military and governmental officials would come to the eminently sane
+conclusion that while Calhoun could not well take active measures
+against blueskins, as a sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would
+be on the side of law and order and propriety and justice--in short,
+of Weald. So they ordered sample anticontagion suits made according to
+Calhoun's directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.
+
+On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed placidly back to it, grain was
+distributed lavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal
+ration almost doubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the
+relief was great. There was considerable gratitude felt for Calhoun,
+which as usual included a lively anticipation of further favors to
+come. Maril was interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to
+discuss him, and she did his reputation no harm. That was all that
+happened on Dara....
+
+No. There was something else. A very curious thing, too. There was a
+spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease.
+They lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran
+a temperature which peaked at 30.9° centigrade, and drank more water
+than usual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all
+about it. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are
+rarely recorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was
+the case here.
+
+Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain ships
+would arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time they
+would make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle herds, and bring
+back incredible quantities of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almost
+everybody would get to taste meat again, which would be most
+gratifying.
+
+Then, the industries of Dara would labor at government-required tasks.
+An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into
+bombs--a concession by Calhoun--and plastic factories would make an
+astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy
+metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there
+would be some guns and minor items.
+
+Perhaps somebody could have predicted any of these items in advance,
+but it was unlikely that anyone did. Nobody but Calhoun, however,
+would ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that things
+would work out. He could see a promising total result. In fact, in the
+Med Ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of his journey, he
+thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of all those
+happenings when they got mixed together.
+
+He got back to Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted
+her with enthusiasm.
+
+"Something strange has happened," said Maril, very much subdued. "I
+told you that sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and
+then neither they nor their children ever have markings again."
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember that you told me."
+
+"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said they
+only took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but then
+they could be passed on from mother to child, until sometimes they
+died out."
+
+Calhoun blinked.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Korvan," said Maril very carefully. "Has worked out an idea that
+that's what happens to the blueskin markings on Darians. He thinks
+that people almost dead of the plague could get the virus, and if they
+recovered from the plague pass the virus on and be blueskins."
+
+"Interesting," said Calhoun, noncommittally.
+
+"And when we went to Weald," said Maril very carefully indeed, "you
+were working with some culture material. You wrote quite a lot about
+it in the ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? And
+Murgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" She
+moistened her lips. "You said that if infection passed between us,
+something would be very infectious indeed?"
+
+"This is a long discussion," said Calhoun. "Does it arrive at a
+point?"
+
+"It does," said Maril. "Thousands of people are having their
+pigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And Korvan
+has found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they
+felt feverish and very thirsty, and then felt all right again. You
+tried out something that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too,
+in the ship. Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that
+is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are
+always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence
+of one that's making _blueskin_ no longer a word with any meaning."
+
+"Remarkable!" said Calhoun.
+
+"Did you do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic that
+wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?"
+
+Calhoun said in feigned astonishment, "How can you think such a thing,
+Maril?"
+
+"Because I was there," said Maril. She said, somehow desperately, "I
+know you did it! But the question is, are you going to tell? When
+people find they're not blueskins any longer, when there's no such
+thing as a blueskin any longer, will you tell them why?"
+
+"Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan--"
+
+"He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself. He's
+found the proof. He's very proud. I'd have to tell him how the ideas
+got into his head if you were going to tell. And he'd be ashamed and
+angry."
+
+Calhoun considered, staring at her.
+
+"How it happened doesn't matter," he said at last. "The idea of
+anybody doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't
+get about. So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover
+what's happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened. But not
+why."
+
+She read his face carefully.
+
+"You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it
+was that way."
+
+She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded
+and went away.
+
+An hour later the Wealdian space fleet was reported massed in space
+and driving for Dara.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+There were small scout ships which came on ahead of the main fleet.
+They'd originally been guard boats, intended for solar system duty
+only and quite incapable of overdrive. They'd come from Weald in the
+cargo holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. The
+scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet,
+of all they might see before they were shot down. They found the
+landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship,
+_Aesclipus Twenty_.
+
+They searched here and there. They flittered to and fro, scanning wide
+bands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways and
+industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. It
+looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former
+grain ships which Calhoun had said the blueskins had seized and rushed
+away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.
+
+Dara offered no opposition to the ships. Nothing rose to space to
+oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion
+of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of
+military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main
+fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no
+sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by
+which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a
+pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it
+might be dangerous.
+
+Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensive
+movement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground.
+With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, there
+was something like an embarrassed pause. The Wealdian ships were ready
+to bomb. They were less anxious to be vaporized by possible suicide
+dashes of defending ships which might blow themselves up near contact
+with their enemies.
+
+But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a
+mere threat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material
+for total devastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or
+thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the
+world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make
+a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products. And they could settle
+down and kill every living thing not destroyed by the explosions
+themselves. Even the creatures of the deepest oceans would die of
+deadly, purposely-contrived fallout particles.
+
+The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness. It found no
+capacity for defense on Dara. It moved forward.
+
+But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara. It said
+that a ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space.
+The Darian fleet now hurtled toward Weald. It was a fleet of
+thirty-seven giant ships. They carried such-and-such bombs in
+such-and-such quantities. Unless its orders were countermanded, it
+would deliver those bombs on Weald, set to explode. If Weald bombed
+Dara, the orders could not be withdrawn. So Weald could bomb Dara. It
+could destroy all life on the pariah planet. But Weald would die with
+it.
+
+The fleet ceased its advance. The situation was a stalemate with pure
+desperation on one side and pure frustration on the other. This was no
+way to end the war. Neither planet could trust the other, even for
+minutes. If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now was
+possible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack at
+some other moment. Ultimately one or the other must perish, and the
+survivor would be the one most skilled in treachery.
+
+But then the pariah planet made a new proposal. It would send a
+messenger ship to stop its own fleet's bombardment if Weald would
+accept payment of the grain ships and their cargos. It would pay in
+ingots of irridium and uranium and tungsten, and gold if Weald wished
+it, for all damages Weald might claim.
+
+It would even pay indemnity for the miners of Orede, who had died by
+accident but perhaps in some sense through its fault. It would pay.
+But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomic fire and the fleet of
+Weald would have no home planet to return to.
+
+This proposal seemed both craven and foolish. It would allow the fleet
+of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It
+seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for
+blueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender.
+
+The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierce
+resentment filled the pariah planet's people. There was almost
+revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopeless and however
+fatal. But not all of Dara realized that a vital change had come about
+in the state of things on Dara. The enemy fleet had not a hint of it.
+
+In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of
+Dara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasing
+arrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald came
+heavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched
+gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they
+had been assured was theirs. The ship's outer hull would be sterilized
+before it returned to Weald, of course. And there was adequate
+protection for the landing-party.
+
+Men came out of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparent
+sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested,
+and which were perfect protection against contagion. They were double
+garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible
+envelope.
+
+Men wearing such sag-suits could walk about on Dara. They could work
+on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must
+remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they
+would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled
+around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra
+assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would
+burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ever
+having come within two layers of plastic of infection.
+
+What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before it
+was returned to Weald. Metals could be melted, if necessary. Gems
+could be sterilized. It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realize
+that blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed. There was only
+one bit of irrelevant information the space fleet of Weald did not
+have.
+
+That information was that the people of Dara weren't blueskins any
+longer. There'd been a trivial epidemic....
+
+The sag-suited men of Weald went zestfully about their business. They
+took over the landing-grid's operation, driving the Darian operators
+away. For the first time in history the operators of a landing-grid
+wore make-up to look like they did have blue pigment in their skins.
+They didn't. The Wealdian landing-party tested the grid's operation.
+They brought down another giant ship. Then another. And another.
+
+Parties in the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were the
+huge stockpiles of precious metals, brought in readiness to be
+surrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these into
+the holds of the ships of Weald. Some went forthrightly after personal
+loot.
+
+They came upon very few Darians. Those they saw kept sullenly away
+from them. They entered shops and took what they fancied. They
+zestfully removed the treasure of banks.
+
+Triumphant and scornful reports went up to the hovering great ships.
+The blueskins, said the reports, were spiritless and cowardly. They
+permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had
+been observed that the population was streaming out of the city,
+fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins
+had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, but
+there was more to be taken.
+
+More ships came down, and more. Some of the first, heavily loaded,
+were lifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of
+their hulls began. There was jealousy among the ships in space for
+those upon the ground. The first-landed ships had had their choice of
+loot. There were squabblings about priorities, now that the navy of
+Weald plainly had a license to steal. There was confusion among the
+members of the landing-parties. Discipline disappeared. Men in plastic
+sag-suits roved about as individuals, seeking what they might loot.
+
+There were armed and alerted landing-parties around the grid itself,
+of course, but the capital city of Dara lay open. Men coming back with
+loot found their ships already lifted off to make room for others.
+They were pushed into re-embarking-parties of other ships. There were
+more and more men to be found on ships where they did not belong, and
+more and more not to be found where they did.
+
+By the time half the fleet had been aground, there was no longer any
+pretense of holding a ship down until all its crew returned. There
+were too many other ships' companies clamoring for their turn to loot.
+The rosters of many ships, indeed, bore no particular relationship to
+the men actually on board.
+
+There were less than fifteen ships whose to-be-fumigated holds were
+still emptied, when the watchful government of Dara broadcast a new
+message to the invaders. It requested that the looting stop. No matter
+what payment Weald claimed, it had taken payment five times over. Now
+was time to stop.
+
+It was amusing. The space admiral of Weald ordered his ships alerted
+for action. The message ship, ordering the Darian fleet away from
+Weald, had been sent off long since. No other ship could get away now!
+The Darians could take their choice: accept the consequences of
+surrender, or the fleet would rise to throw down bombs.
+
+Calhoun was asking politely to be taken to the Wealdian admiral when
+the trouble began. It wasn't on the ground, at all. Everything was
+under splendid control where a landing force occupied the grid and all
+the ground immediately about it. The space admiral had headquarters in
+the landing-grid office. Reports came in, orders were issued,
+admirably crisp salutes were exchanged among sag-suited men.
+Everything was in perfect shape there.
+
+But there was panic among the ships in space. Communicators gave off
+horrified, panic-stricken yells. There were screamings. Intelligible
+communications ceased. Ships plunged crazily this way and that. Some
+vanished in overdrive. At least one plunged at full power into a
+Darian ocean.
+
+The space admiral found himself in command of fifteen ships only out
+of all his former force. The rest of the fleet went through a period
+of hysterical madness. In some ships it lasted for minutes only. In
+others it went on for half an hour or more. Then they hung overhead,
+but did not reply to calls.
+
+Calhoun arrived at the spaceport with Murgatroyd riding on his
+shoulder. A bewildered officer in a sag-suit halted him.
+
+"I've come," said Calhoun, "to speak to the admiral. My name is
+Calhoun and I'm Med Service, and I think I met the admiral at a
+banquet a few weeks ago. He'll remember me."
+
+"You'll have to wait," protested the officer. "There's some trouble--"
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I know about it. I helped design it. I want to
+explain it to the admiral. He needs to know what's happened, if he's
+to take appropriate measures."
+
+There were jitterings. Many men in sag-suits had still no idea that
+anything had gone wrong. Some appeared, brightly carrying loot. Some
+hung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waiting
+their turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of
+their suits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic
+and happy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich
+they were going to be back on Weald.
+
+But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. There
+was strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdian
+admiral.
+
+"I came to explain something," said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situation
+has changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure."
+
+The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which covered
+him almost like a gift-wrapped parcel.
+
+"Be quick!" he rasped.
+
+"First," said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins. An epidemic of
+something or other has made the blue patches on the skins of Darians
+fade out. There have always been some who didn't have blue patches.
+Now nobody has them."
+
+"Nonsense!" rasped the admiral. "And what has that got to do with this
+situation?"
+
+"Why, everything," said Calhoun mildly. "It seems that Darians can
+pass for Wealdians whenever they please. That they _are_ passing for
+Wealdians. That they've been mixing with your men, wearing sag-suits
+exactly like the one you're wearing now. They've been going aboard
+your ships in the confusion of returning looters. There's not a ship
+now aloft, which has been aground today, which hasn't from one to
+fifteen Darians--no longer blueskins--on board."
+
+The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray.
+
+"You can't take your fleet back to Weald," said Calhoun gently, "if
+you believe its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara
+plague. You wouldn't be allowed to land, anyhow."
+
+The admiral said through stiff lips, "I'll blast--"
+
+"No," said Calhoun, again gently. "When you ordered all ships alerted
+for action, the Darians on each ship released panic gas. They only
+needed tiny, pocket-sized containers of the gas for the job. They had
+them. They only needed to use air tanks from their sag-suits to
+protect themselves against the gas. They kept them handy.
+
+"On nearly all your ships aloft your crews are crazy from panic gas.
+They'll stay that way until the air is changed. Darians have
+barricaded themselves in the control rooms of most if not all your
+ships. You haven't got a fleet. The few ships who will obey your
+orders--if they drop one bomb, our fleet off Weald will drop fifty.
+
+"I don't think you'd better order offensive action. Instead, I think
+you'd better have your fleet medical officers come and learn some of
+the facts of life. There's no need for war between Dara and Weald, but
+if you insist...."
+
+The admiral made a choking noise. He could have ordered Calhoun
+killed, but there was a certain appalling fact. The men aground from
+the fleet were breathing Wealdian air from tanks. It would last so
+long only. If they were taken on board the still obedient ships
+overhead, Darians would unquestionably be mixed with them. There was
+no way to take off the parties now aground without exposing them to
+contact with Darians, on the ground or in the ships. There was no way
+to sort out the Darians.
+
+"I--I will give the orders," said the admiral thickly. "I do not know
+what you devils plan, but--I do not know how to stop you."
+
+"All that's necessary," said Calhoun warmly, "is an open mind. There's
+a misunderstanding to be cleared up, and some principles of planetary
+health practises to be explained, and a certain amount of prejudice
+that has to be thrown away. But nobody need die of changing their
+minds. The Interstellar Medical Service has proved that over and
+over!"
+
+Murgatroyd, perched on his shoulder, felt that it was time to take
+part in the conversation. He said, "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+"Yes," agreed Calhoun. "We do want to get the job done. We're behind
+schedule now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not, of course, possible for Calhoun to leave immediately. He
+had to preside at various meetings of the medical officers of the
+fleet and the health officials of Dara. He had to make explanations,
+and correct misapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological
+experiments as would prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no
+longer a plague on Dara, whatever had been the case three generations
+before.
+
+He had to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian
+doctor--one of his names was Korvan--rather condescendingly
+demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product
+quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a
+very trivial epidemic of such and such.
+
+Calhoun regarded that young man with a detached interest. Maril
+thought him wonderful, even if she had to give him the material for
+his work. He agreed with her that he was wonderful. Calhoun shrugged
+and went on with his own work.
+
+The return of loot, mutual, full, and complete agreement that Darians
+were no longer carriers of plague, if they had ever been--unless Weald
+convinced other worlds of this, Weald itself would join Dara in
+isolation from neighboring worlds. A messenger ship had to recall the
+twenty-seven ships once floating in orbit about Weald. Most of them
+would be used for some time, to bring beef from Orede. Some would haul
+more grain from Weald. It would be paid for. There would be a need for
+commercial missions to be exchanged between Weald and Dara. There
+would have to be....
+
+It was a full week before he could go to the little Med Ship and
+prepare for departure. Even then there were matters to be attended to.
+All the food-supplies that had been removed could not be replaced.
+There were biological samples to be replaced and some to be destroyed.
+
+Maril came to the Med Ship again when he was almost ready to leave.
+She did not seem comfortable.
+
+"I wanted you to meet Korvan," she said regretfully.
+
+"I met him," said Calhoun. "I think he will be a most prominent
+citizen, in time. He has all the talents for it."
+
+Maril smiled very faintly.
+
+"But you don't admire him."
+
+"I wouldn't say that," protested Calhoun. "After all, he is desirable
+to you, which is something I couldn't manage."
+
+"You didn't try," said Maril. "Just as I didn't try to be fascinating
+to you. Why?"
+
+Calhoun spread out his hands. But he looked at Maril with respect. Not
+every woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelled
+to make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do with
+desirability or charm or anything else.
+
+"You're going to marry him," he said. "I hope you'll be very happy."
+
+"He's the man I want," said Maril frankly. "And I doubt he'll ever
+look at another woman. He looks forward to splendid discoveries. I
+wish he didn't."
+
+Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said
+thoughtfully, "There's something you could do. It needs to be done.
+The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a
+number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan
+would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter.
+But they should be known...."
+
+Maril said, "I can guess what you mean. I dropped hints about the way
+the blueskin markings went away, yes. You've got books for me?"
+
+Calhoun nodded. He found them.
+
+"If we had only fallen in love with each other, Maril, we'd be a team!
+Too bad! These are a wedding present you'll do well to hide."
+
+She put her hands in his.
+
+"I like you almost as much as I like Murgatroyd! Yes! Korvan will
+never know, and he'll be a great man." Then she added defensively,
+"But I don't think he'll only discover things from hints I drop him.
+He'll make wonderful discoveries."
+
+"Of which," said Calhoun, "the most remarkable is you. Good luck,
+Maril!"
+
+She went away smiling. But she wiped her eyes when she was out of the
+ship.
+
+Presently the Med Ship lifted. Calhoun aimed it for the next planet on
+the list of those he was to visit. After this one more he'd return to
+sector headquarters with a biting report to make on the way things had
+been handled before him.
+
+"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
+
+Then the stars went out and there was silence, and privacy, and a
+faint, faint, almost unbearable series of background sounds which kept
+the Med Ship from being totally unendurable.
+
+Long, long days later the ship broke out of overdrive and Calhoun
+guided it to a round and sunlit world. In due time he thumbed the
+communicator button.
+
+"Calling ground," he said crisply. "Calling ground! Med Ship
+_Aesclipus Twenty_ reporting arrival and asking coordinates for
+landing. Purpose of landing is planetary health inspection. Our mass
+is fifty standard tons."
+
+There was a pause while the beamed message went many, many thousands
+of miles. Then the speaker said, "_Aesclipus Twenty_, repeat your
+identification!"
+
+Calhoun repeated it patiently. Murgatroyd watched with bright eyes.
+Perhaps he hoped to be allowed to have another long conversation with
+somebody by communicator.
+
+"You are warned," said the communicator sternly, "that any deceit or
+deception about your identity or purpose in landing will be severely
+punished. We take few chances, here! If you wish to land
+notwithstanding this warning--"
+
+"I'm coming in," said Calhoun. "Give me the coordinates."
+
+He wrote them down. His expression was slightly pained. The Med Ship
+drove on, in solar system drive. Murgatroyd said, "_Chee-chee? Chee?_"
+
+Calhoun sighed.
+
+"That's right, Murgatroyd! Here we go again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FEAR RIDES THE ROCKETS
+
+
+The Interstellar Medical Service was just about the only remaining
+galactic organization that every one of the hundreds of inhabited
+planets respected. So when their service broke down in Star Sector
+Twelve, it created a very dangerous situation.
+
+When Calhoun took his Med ship out of overdrive near that sector's
+planet Weald, he was vaguely aware of the risks. But the crisis came
+home to him with a crash the moment he radioed in for landing
+coordinates.
+
+"Contamination! Full mobilization! Red alert! Death to blueskins!"
+Such were the nature of his greetings.
+
+And it began to look like a case of the cosmic jitters that only the
+most drastic of orbital surgery could cure.
+
+Murray Leinster, whose real name is Will F. Jenkins, has been
+entertaining the public with his exciting fiction for several decades.
+Called the dean of modern science-fiction, he was writing these
+amazing super-science adventures back in the early twenties before
+there ever was such a thing as an all-fantasy magazine. His short
+stories, novelettes, and serial novels have appeared in most of the
+major American magazines, both slick and pulp, and many have been
+reprinted all over the world. He has made a distinguished name for
+himself (or rather two names) in the fields of adventure, historical,
+western, sea, and suspense stories.
+
+Ace Books has still available the following Murray Leinster novels:
+CITY ON THE MOON (D-277), THE PIRATES OF ZAN and THE MUTANT WEAPON
+(D-403), and THE FORGOTTEN PLANET (D-528).
+
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+
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+
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+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of This World is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: This World Is Taboo
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS WORLD IS TABOO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="tr">Transcriber's note: <br />
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright
+on this publication was renewed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/image_01.jpg" alt="Frontispiece" width="400" height="692" /></div>
+<h1>THIS WORLD<br />
+
+IS TABOO</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>by</h3>
+<h2>MURRAY LEINSTER</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>ACE BOOKS, INC.</h3>
+<h3>23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width:65%" />
+
+<h2>THIS WORLD IS TABOO</h2>
+<hr style="width:65%" />
+<p class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></p>
+
+<h2>1</h2>
+<p>The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange
+and the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the
+Milky Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an
+unaccustomed angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying
+magnitudes.</p>
+
+<p>But Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to
+port, which was good. A breakout at no more than sixty light-hours
+from one's destination wasn't bad, in a strange sector of the galaxy
+and after three light-years of journeying blind.</p>
+
+<p>"Arise and shine, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "Comb your whiskers. Get
+set to astonish the natives!"</p>
+
+<p>A sleepy, small, shrill voice said: "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd the <i>tormal</i> came crawling out of the small cubbyhole which
+was his own. He blinked at Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"We're due to land shortly," Calhoun observed. "You will impress the
+local inhabitants. I will get unpopular. According to the records,
+there's been no Med Ship inspection here for twelve standard years.
+And that was practically no inspection, to judge by the report."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd said: "<i>Chee-chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers and
+then his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and looked
+interestedly at Calhoun. <i>Tormals</i> are companionable small animals.
+They are charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deep
+satisfaction in imitating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> actions of humans, as parrots and
+mynahs and parakeets imitate human speech. But <i>tormals</i> have certain
+valuable, genetically transmitted talents which make them much more
+valuable than mere companions or pets.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun got a light-reading for the banded sun. It could hardly be an
+accurate measure of distance, but it was a guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd watched. He saw Calhoun make certain gestures which
+presaged discomfort. He popped back into his cubbyhole. Calhoun threw
+the overdrive switch and the Med Ship flicked back into that
+questionable state of being in which velocities of hundreds of times
+that of light are possible. The sensation of going into overdrive was
+unpleasant. A moment later, the sensation of coming out was no less
+so. Calhoun had experienced it often enough, and still didn't like it.</p>
+
+<p>The sun Weald burned huge and terrible in space. It was close, now.
+Its disk covered half a degree of arc.</p>
+
+<p>"Very neat," observed Calhoun. "Weald Three is our port, Murgatroyd.
+The plane of the ecliptic would be ... Hm...."</p>
+
+<p>He swung the outside electron telescope, picked up a nearby bright
+object, enlarged its image to show details, and checked it against the
+local star-pilot. He calculated a moment. The distance was too short
+for even the briefest of overdrive hops, but it would take time to get
+there on solar-system drive.</p>
+
+<p>He thumbed down the communicator button and spoke into a microphone.</p>
+
+<p>"Med Ship <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i> reporting arrival and asking coordinates
+for landing," he said matter-of-factly. "Purpose of landing is
+planetary health inspection. Our mass is fifty tons, standard. We
+should arrive at a landing position in something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> under four hours.
+Repeat. Med Ship <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>...."</p>
+
+<p>He finished the regular second transmission and made coffee for
+himself while he waited for an answer. Murgatroyd came out for a cup
+of coffee for himself. Murgatroyd adored coffee. In minutes he held a
+tiny cup in a furry small paw and sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.</p>
+
+<p>A voice came out of the communicator:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>, repeat your identification."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun went to the control board.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>," he said patiently, "is a Med Ship, sent by the
+Interstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection on
+Weald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first
+Med Ship visit in twelve standard years, I believe&mdash;which is
+inexcusable. But your health authorities will know all about it. Check
+with them."</p>
+
+<p>The voice said truculently:</p>
+
+<p>"What was your last port?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun named it. This was not his home sector, but Sector Twelve had
+gotten into a very bad situation. Some of its planets had gone
+unvisited for as long as twenty years, and twelve between inspections
+was almost commonplace. Other sectors had been called on to help it
+catch up.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the
+emergency he'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be
+inspected one after another, instead of reporting back to sector
+headquarters after each visit. He'd had minor troubles before with
+landing-grid operators in Sector Twelve.</p>
+
+<p>So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one
+from which he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the
+communicator said sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"What port before that?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun named the one before the last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't drive any closer," said the voice harshly, "or you'll be
+destroyed!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said coldly, "Listen, my fine feathered friend! I'm from the
+Interstellar Medical Service. You get in touch with planetary health
+services immediately! Remind them of the Interstellar Medical
+Inspection Agreement, signed on Tralee two hundred and forty standard
+years ago. Remind them that if they do not cooperate in medical
+inspection that I can put your planet under quarantine and your space
+commerce will be cut off like that!</p>
+
+<p>"No ship will be cleared for Weald from any other planet in the galaxy
+until there has been a health inspection! Things have pretty well gone
+to pot so far as the Med Service in this sector is concerned, but it's
+being straightened up. I'm helping straighten it! I give you twenty
+minutes to clear this! Then I am coming in, and if I'm not landed a
+quarantine goes on! Tell your health authorities that!"</p>
+
+<p>Silence. Calhoun clicked off and poured himself another cup of coffee.
+Murgatroyd held out his cup for a refill. Calhoun gave it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to put on an official hat, Murgatroyd," he said, annoyed, "but
+there are some people who demand it. The rule is, never get official
+if you can help it, but when you must, out-official the official who's
+officialing you."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd said "<i>Chee</i>!" and sipped at his cup.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun checked the course of the Med Ship. It bore on through space.
+There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings
+and rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful
+musical notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are
+carried by electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave lengths,
+are not likely to be the fabled music of the spheres.</p>
+
+<p>In fifteen minutes a different voice came from the speaker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Med Ship <i>Aesclipus</i>! Med Ship <i>Aesclipus</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun answered and the voice said anxiously:</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry about the challenge, but we have the blueskin problem always
+with us. We have to be extremely careful! Will you come in, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on my way," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"The planetary health authorities," said the voice, more anxiously
+still, "are very anxious to be cooperative. We need Med Service help!
+We lose a lot of sleep over the blueskin! Could you tell us the name
+of the last Med Ship to land here, and its inspector, and when that
+inspection was made? We want to look up the record of the event to be
+able to assist you in every possible way."</p>
+
+<p>"He's lying," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, "but he's more scared than
+hostile."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the order folio on Weald Three. He gave the information
+about the last Med Ship visit.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" he asked, "is a blueskin?"</p>
+
+<p>He'd read the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward
+through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical
+inspection had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier&mdash;instead of
+three&mdash;a Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official
+conferences with health officials. There was a report on the birth
+rate, the death rate, the anomaly rate, and a breakdown of all
+reported communicable diseases. But that was all. There were no
+special comments and no overall picture.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Calhoun found the word in a Sector dictionary, where words
+of only local usage were to be found:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Blueskin: Colloquial term for a person recovered from a plague
+which left large patches of blue pigment irregularly distributed
+over the body. Especially, inhabitants of Dara. The condition is
+said to be caused by a chronic, nonfatal form of Dara plague and
+has been said to be noninfectious, though this is not certain. The
+etiology of Dara plague has not been worked out. The blueskin
+condition is hereditary but not a genetic modification, as markings
+appear in non-Mendelian distributions</i>."</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+<p>Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sector
+directory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solar
+systems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously through
+indices and cross-references while the ship continued to travel
+onward.</p>
+
+<p>He found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was
+listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with
+a landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a
+flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently
+added to the entry in some change of editions: "<i>Since plague, special
+license from Med Service is required for landing.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>That was all. Absolutely all.</p>
+
+<p>The communicator said suavely:</p>
+
+<p>"Med Ship <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>! Come in on vision, please!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun went to the control board and threw on vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what now?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.</p>
+
+<p>"We have&mdash;ah&mdash;verified your statements," said the third voice from
+Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite alone?" insisted the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Obviously!" said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"No other living creature?" insisted the voice again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> "Of&mdash;oh!" said
+Calhoun, annoyed. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
+bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good!" it said. "Very, very good! Blueskins do not have
+<i>tormals</i>! You are Med Service! By all means come in! Your coordinates
+will be...."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
+growled to Murgatroyd, "So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And
+you're my passport, because only Med Ships have members of your tribe
+aboard! What the hell's the matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they
+think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of
+plague germs!"</p>
+
+<p>He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
+exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
+overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
+aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
+questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have
+reached this planet or that, and the supplying of information about
+such as have not arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to repeat
+the process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man because two
+could not stand the close contact without quarreling with each other.
+But Med Ships do carry <i>tormals</i>, like Murgatroyd, and a <i>tormal</i> and
+a man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a highly
+unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been
+operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct
+the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in this sector.
+But it is always dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>heartening to have to labor at making up for
+somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs
+to be done.</p>
+
+<p>The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in
+point. Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin
+pigmentation from other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly
+maintained a one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is
+normally an emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over,
+wiped out the need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't
+been done.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun fumed to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a disk.
+The disk had icecaps and a reasonable proportion of land and water
+surface. The ship decelerated, voices notifying observation from the
+surface, and the little ship came to a stop some five planetary
+diameters out from solidity. The landing field's force-field locked on
+to it, and its descent began.</p>
+
+<p>The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
+appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the
+singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still
+lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly
+a mile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift
+them out to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for
+everyone.</p>
+
+<p>It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to
+greet Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit.
+There would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by
+whatever title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd
+would be petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to
+impress Calhoun with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> splendid conduct of public health matters on
+Weald. He would be told much scandal.</p>
+
+<p>He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately labored to advance
+the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how to keep them well
+or, failing that, how to make them well when they got sick. And in two
+days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to the landing-grid,
+and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days in overdrive
+and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again.</p>
+
+<p>It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every
+human being he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins
+and the idea of blueskins obsessed everyone. Calhoun listened without
+asking questions until he had the picture of what blueskins meant to
+the people who talked of them. Then he knew there would be no use
+asking questions at random.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody mentioned ever having seen a blueskin. Nobody mentioned a
+specific event in which a blueskin had at any named time taken part.
+But everybody was afraid of blueskins. It was a patterned, an
+inculcated, a stage-directed fixed idea. And it found expression in
+shocked references to the vileness, the depravity, the monstrousness
+of the blueskin inhabitants of Dara, from whom Weald must at all costs
+be protected.</p>
+
+<p>It did not make sense. So Calhoun listened politely until he found an
+undistinguished medical man who wanted some special information about
+gene selection as practised halfway across the galaxy. He invited that
+man to the Med Ship, where he supplied the information not hitherto
+available. He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe
+a man feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly
+to know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Calhoun, "tell me something? Why does everybody on this
+planet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobody
+claims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of
+hating them?"</p>
+
+<p>The Wealdian doctor grimaced.</p>
+
+<p>"They've blue patches on their skins. They're different from us. So
+they can be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make an
+election issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us from
+them. They had a plague on Dara, once. They're accused of still having
+it ready for export."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm," said Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagion
+here, eh? Doesn't anybody"&mdash;his tone was sardonic&mdash;"doesn't anybody
+urge that they be massacred as an act of piety?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes-s-s-s," admitted the doctor reluctantly. "It's mentioned in
+political speeches."</p>
+
+<p>"But how's it rationalized?" demanded Calhoun. "What's the argument to
+make pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I'm
+assured is the case?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the public schools," said the doctor, "the children are taught
+that blueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived&mdash;three
+generations ago! That they hate everybody who isn't a blueskin. That
+they are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most of
+us will die and the rest will become blueskins. That's beyond
+rationalizing. It can't be true, but it's not safe to doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad business," said Calhoun coldly. "That sort of thing usually costs
+lives in the end. It could lead to massacre!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it has, in a way," said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't
+like to think about it." He paused. "Twenty years ago there was a
+famine on Dara. There were crop failures. The situation must have been
+very bad: They built a spaceship.</p>
+
+<p>"They've no use for such things normally, because no near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>by planet
+will deal with them or let them land. But they built a spaceship and
+came here. They went in orbit around Weald. They asked to trade for
+shiploads of food. They offered any price in heavy metals&mdash;gold,
+platinum, irridium, and so on. They talked from orbit by vision
+communicators. They could be seen to be blueskins. You can guess what
+happened!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"We armed ships in a hurry," admitted the doctor. "We chased their
+spaceship back to Dara. We hung in space off the planet. We told them
+we'd blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take to
+space again. We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched on
+visionscreens as it was done."</p>
+
+<p>"But you gave them food?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the doctor ashamedly. "They were blueskins."</p>
+
+<p>"How bad was the famine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? Any number may have starved! And we kept a squadron of
+armed ships in their skies for years&mdash;to keep them from spreading the
+plague, we said. And some of us believed it!"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's tone was purest irony.</p>
+
+<p>"Lately," he said, "there's been a move for economy in our government.
+Simultaneously, we began to have a series of overabundant crops. The
+government had to buy the excess grain to keep the price up. Retired
+patrol ships, built to watch over Dara, were available for storage
+space. We filled them up with grain and sent them out into orbit.
+They're there now, hundreds of thousands or millions of tons of
+grain!"</p>
+
+<p>"And Dara?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shrugged. He stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"Our hatred of Dara," he said, again ironically, "has produced one
+thing. Roughly halfway between here and Dara<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> there's a two-planet
+solar system, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to
+build an outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed
+to run wild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"They did, but nobody wants to move near to blueskins! So Orede stayed
+uninhabited until a hunting party, shooting wild cattle, found an
+outcropping of heavy-metal ore. So now there's a mine there. And
+that's all. A few hundred men work the mine at fabulous wages. You may
+be asked to check on their health. But not Dara's!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Calhoun, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor moved toward the Med Ship's exit port.</p>
+
+<p>"I answered your questions," he said grimly. "But if I talked to
+anyone else as I've done to you, I'd be lucky only to be driven into
+exile!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't give you away," said Calhoun. He did not smile.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the doctor had gone, Calhoun said deliberately, "Murgatroyd, you
+should be grateful that you're a <i>tormal</i> and not a man. There's
+nothing about being a <i>tormal</i> to make you ashamed!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of the
+Med Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to
+the planet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about the
+splendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion
+of the planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement. It was a domed
+city in the polar regions, where nobody ever had to go outdoors.</p>
+
+<p>He was less than professionally enthusiastic about the moving streets,
+and much less than approving of the dream broadcasts which supplied
+hypnotic, sleep-inducing rhythms to anybody who chose to listen to
+them. The price was that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> while asleep one would hear high praise of
+commercial products, and might believe them when awake.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not Calhoun's function to criticize when it could be
+avoided. Med Service had been badly managed in Sector Twelve. So at
+the banquet Calhoun made a brief and diplomatic address in which he
+temperately praised what could be praised, and did not mention
+anything else.</p>
+
+<p>The chief executive followed him. As head of the government he paid
+some tribute to the Med Service. But then he reminded his hearers
+proudly of the high culture, splendid health, and remarkable
+prosperity of the planet since his political party took office. This,
+he said, despite the need to be perpetually on guard against the
+greatest and most immediate danger to which any world in all the
+galaxy was exposed.</p>
+
+<p>He referred to the blueskins, of course. He did not need to tell the
+people of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was
+necessary against that race of deprived and malevolent deviants from
+the norm of humanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the
+torch of all that humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the
+lives of its people against blueskin contagion, but their noble
+heritage of ideals against blueskin pollution.</p>
+
+<p>When he sat down, Calhoun said very politely, "It looks as if some day
+it should be practical politics to urge the massacre of all blueskins.
+Have you thought of that?"</p>
+
+<p>The chief executive said comfortably, "The idea's been proposed. It's
+good politics to urge it, but it would be foolish to carry it out.
+People vote against blueskins. Wipe them out, and where'd you be?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun ground his teeth&mdash;quietly.</p>
+
+<p>There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with
+a written note for the chief executive. He read it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> and passed it to
+Calhoun. It was from the Ministry of Health. The spaceport reported
+that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian
+solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signaled its
+arrival from the mining planet Orede.</p>
+
+<p>But, having sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space.
+It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals. It
+drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and
+since it came from Orede, the planet nearest to Dara of the blueskins,
+the health ministry informed the planet's chief executive.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be blueskins," said that astute person firmly. "They're next
+door to Orede. That's who's done this. It wouldn't surprise me if
+they'd seeded Orede with their plague, and this ship came from there
+to give us warning!"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no evidence for anything of the sort," protested Calhoun. "A
+ship simply came out of overdrive and didn't signal further. That's
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see," said the chief executive ominously. "We'll go to the
+spaceport. There we'll get the news as it comes in, and can frame
+orders on the latest information."</p>
+
+<p>He took Calhoun by the arm. Calhoun said sharply, "Murgatroyd!"</p>
+
+<p>During the banquet, Murgatroyd had been visiting with the wives of the
+higher-up officials. They had enough of their husbands normally,
+without listening to their official speeches. Murgatroyd was brought,
+his small paunch distended with cakes and coffee and such delicacies
+as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose from overfeeding and
+overpetting, but he was glad to see Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun held the little creature in his arms as the official groundcar
+raced through traffic with screaming sirens claiming the right of way.
+It reached the spaceport, where enor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>mous metal girders formed a
+monster frame of metal lace against a star-filled sky. The chief
+executive strode magnificently into the spaceport offices. There was
+no news; the situation remained unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>A ship from Orede had come out of overdrive and lay dead in emptiness.
+It did not answer calls. It did not move in space. It floated eerily
+in no orbit, going nowhere, doing nothing. And panic was the
+consequence.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter
+accounted for the terror that he could feel building up. The
+unexplained bit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald.
+There was nobody awake of all the world's population who did not
+believe that there was a new danger in the sky. Nobody doubted that it
+came from blueskins. The treatment of the news was precisely
+calculated to keep alive the hatred of Weald for the inhabitants of
+the world Dara.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the
+spaceport office. A small spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling
+grain ships from time to time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had
+thrust it swiftly out most of the way. Now it droned and drove on
+sturdily toward the enigmatic ship.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials
+and news reporters at the spaceport. But he listened to the talk about
+him. As the investigating small ship drew nearer to the deathly-still
+cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of its breakout and
+following silence grew more and more wild.</p>
+
+<p>But, singularly, there was no single suggestion that the mystery might
+not be the work of blueskins. Blueskins were scape-goats for all the
+fears and all the uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> ship and
+circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo ship
+dark. No lights anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surges
+from even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger craft
+maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported that
+microphones detected no motion whatever inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Let a volunteer go aboard," commanded the chief executive. "Let him
+report what he finds."</p>
+
+<p>A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name,
+from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompous
+heroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routine
+behavior.</p>
+
+<p>Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketed
+himself across the emptiness between the two again separated ships. He
+had opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the
+outer airlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and
+incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. The
+ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and
+Weald with cargos of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five
+men. There was no cargo in her holds now, though.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, there were men. They packed the ship. They filled the
+corridors. They had crawled into every space where a man could find
+room to push himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity.
+And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off
+with so preposterous a load of living creatures.</p>
+
+<p>But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been
+designed for a crew of five. It would purify the air for possibly
+twenty or more. But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in
+plain view in the cargo ship from Orede.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> There were many, many times
+more than her air apparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have
+taken care of. They couldn't even have been fed during the journey
+from Orede to Weald.</p>
+
+<p>But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship came
+out of overdrive.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship's
+log which referred to its takeoff. There was no memorandum of the
+taking on of such an impossible number of passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"The blueskins did it," said the chief executive of Weald. He was
+pale. All about Calhoun men looked sick and shocked and terrified. "It
+was the blueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned
+to Calhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship&mdash;he'll have to stay
+there, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing
+contagion."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun raged at him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>2</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald
+spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular
+because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,
+where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to react
+explosively when the word <i>blueskin</i> was uttered in their hearing, and
+its adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness entered
+their minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formed
+and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was
+safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship
+he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been
+doomed but for Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship he
+might have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of the
+plague still existed, and <i>if</i> the men in the ship had caught it (but
+they certainly hadn't died of it), and <i>if</i> there had been blueskins
+on Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and <i>if</i>
+blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the moment
+pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Weald
+if he were allowed to return.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to its
+airlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. The
+combination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,
+after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and
+air from the ship let into the lock.</p>
+
+<p>If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,
+and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outside
+by a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd fling
+after it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'd
+persuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.</p>
+
+<p>There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had been
+unpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy
+those people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as
+a pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not only
+the ship from Orede but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> other incidents which they interpreted as
+crimes against Weald.</p>
+
+<p>They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn
+out fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for an
+anti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusion
+bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, no
+fish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of the
+blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.</p>
+
+<p>One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that
+no other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar Medical
+Service. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it by
+broadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which a
+planet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.</p>
+
+<p>He did.</p>
+
+<p>So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'd
+curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
+come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft until
+Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
+cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was
+not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.</p>
+
+<p>He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,
+"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"</p>
+
+<p>He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
+while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
+dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Then
+there was silence.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and
+there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.
+The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and
+meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all
+of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
+Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
+unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical
+affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a
+civilization can be destroyed more surely and more terribly than by
+any imaginable war or plague germs. A plague kills off those who are
+susceptible to it, leaving immunes to build up a world again. But
+immunes are the first to be killed when a mass neurosis sweeps a
+population.</p>
+
+<p>Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another.
+And when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo spaceship
+which could not furnish them with air to breathe, and took off and
+went into overdrive before the air could fail.... Orede called for no
+less of worry.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."</p>
+
+<p><i>Coffee</i> was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized. Ordinarily
+he stirred immediately on hearing it, and watched the coffeemaker with
+bright, interested eyes. He'd even tried to imitate Calhoun's motions
+with it, once, and had scorched his paws in the attempt. But this time
+he did not move.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tail
+coiled reflectively about a chair leg. He watched the door of the Med
+Ship's sleeping cabin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "I mentioned coffee!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee!</i>" shrilled Murgatroyd.</p>
+
+<p>But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lower
+in the other cabin, and the look of things was different than the
+control compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a
+man was able to be alone for weeks on end&mdash;alone save for his
+<i>tormal</i>&mdash;without becoming ship-happy.</p>
+
+<p>There were other carefully thought out items in the ship with the same
+purpose. But none of them should cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly and
+fascinatedly at the sleeping cabin door. Not when coffee was in the
+making!</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion that
+occurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to be
+impartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely with
+Weald in its enmity to blueskins.</p>
+
+<p>And the people of Weald had refused to help Dara in a time of famine,
+and had blockaded that pariah world for years afterward. And they had
+other reasons for hating the people they'd treated badly. It was
+entirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to consider that Calhoun
+must be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Weald abhorred.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on the
+Med Ship to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of any
+report favorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such a
+stowaway would be in the sleeping cabin now, waiting for Calhoun to
+walk in unsuspiciously, only to be shot dead.</p>
+
+<p>So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where it
+would be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large one
+for himself, and then a second large one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He tapped on the sleeping cabin door, standing aside lest a
+blaster-bolt come through it.</p>
+
+<p>"Coffee's ready," he said sardonically. "Come out and join us."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause. Calhoun rapped again.</p>
+
+<p>"You've a seat at the captain's table," he said more sardonically
+still. "It's not polite to keep me waiting!"</p>
+
+<p>He listened, alert for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperate
+attempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared to
+shoot quite ruthlessly, because he was on duty and the Med Service did
+not approve of the extermination of populations, however justified
+another population might consider it.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls whose
+sound made Calhoun start. The door of the cabin slid slowly aside. A
+girl appeared in the opening, desperately white and desperately
+composed.</p>
+
+<p>"H-how did you know I was there?" she asked shakily. She moistened her
+lips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enter
+the room!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said grimly, "I've sources of information. Murgatroyd told me
+this time. May I present him? Murgatroyd, our passenger. Shake hands."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd moved forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny,
+furry paw. She did not move. She stared at Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"Better shake hands," said Calhoun, as grimly as before. "It might
+relax the tension a little. And do you want to tell me your story? You
+have one ready, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>The girl swallowed. Murgatroyd shook hands gravely. He said,
+"<i>Chee-chee!</i>" in the shrillest of trebles and went back to his former
+position.</p>
+
+<p>"The story?" said Calhoun insistently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There&mdash;there isn't any," said the girl unsteadily. "Just that I&mdash;I
+need to get to Orede, and you're going there. There's no other way to
+go, now."</p>
+
+<p>"To the contrary," said Calhoun. "There'll undoubtedly be a fleet
+heading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'm
+afraid that as a story yours isn't good enough. Try another."</p>
+
+<p>She shivered a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm running away...."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Calhoun. "In that case I'll take you back."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she said fiercely. "I'll&mdash;I'll die first! I'll wreck this ship
+first!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But it
+shook visibly as she tried to aim it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll shoot out the controls!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate of
+the situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now he
+had to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disable
+the ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't use
+energy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girl
+threatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was not
+actually an assassin at all.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'd
+get deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air
+and food to give out."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter the
+conversation:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee-chee-chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and
+have a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,
+since that's where you say you want to go."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have a sweetheart there...."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packed
+itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But not
+all. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what
+men weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your
+sweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or
+saccho, and do you take cream?"</p>
+
+<p>She trembled a little, but she took the cup.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun&mdash;and he did not know whether he
+spoke out of anger or something else&mdash;"we are do-gooders. We go around
+trying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we even
+try to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practise
+it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you make
+such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
+Especially since we're going there anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
+more believable presently. When did you eat last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Or
+would you permit me to ready a snack?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'll do it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how
+to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from
+storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at
+dialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food for
+oneself, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> one's own chosen manner&mdash;again an item to help make
+solitude not unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory,
+looking up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no
+reason to inform himself about it before. Now he read with every
+appearance of absorption.</p>
+
+<p>The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable
+interest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the micro-film reels
+which contained more information. He was specifically after the Med
+Service history of all the planets in this sector. He went through the
+filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.</p>
+
+<p>But Sector Twelve had not been run well. There was no adequate account
+of a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an
+inhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit,
+and was over before another Med Ship came by.</p>
+
+<p>There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after the
+fact. There should have been a collection of infectious material and a
+reasonably complete identification and study of the agent. It hadn't
+been made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it
+slipped by. Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector,
+resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and its
+consequences.</p>
+
+<p>He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man has
+resources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself during
+overdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of those
+resources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of the
+stowaway. But Murgatroyd watched her with charmed attention.</p>
+
+<p>Hours after her discovery, she said uneasily, "Please?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun looked up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know exactly how things stand."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a stowaway," said Calhoun. "Legally, I have the right to put
+you out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. When
+you're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well out
+here. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat.
+When we land on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business you
+have there. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't believe what I've told you!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," agreed Calhoun, but didn't add to the statement.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I will tell you," she offered. "The police were after me. I had
+to get away from Weald! I had to! I'd stolen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "If you were a thief, you'd say anything in the world
+except that you were a thief. You're not ready to tell the truth yet.
+You don't have to, so why tell me anything? I suggest that you get
+some sleep. Incidentally, there's no lock on the cabin door because
+there's only supposed to be one person on this ship at a time. But you
+can brace a chair to fasten it somehow or other. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but then
+she went into the other cabin and closed herself in. There was the
+sound of a chair being wedged against the door.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and then
+climbed up into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. He
+settled himself and was silent for moments. Then he said, "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you're right," said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald,
+or with the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one place
+she'd dread worse than Orede, which would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> be Dara. But I doubt she'd
+be afraid to land even on Dara."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carried
+on a conversation, like humans.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee-chee!</i>" he said with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"Definitely," agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personal
+advantage. Whatever she thinks she'd doing, it's more important to her
+than her own life. Murgatroyd...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee?</i>" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone.</p>
+
+<p>"There are wild cattle on Orede," said Calhoun. "Herds and herds of
+them. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots of
+them. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have been
+slaughtered on Orede lately?"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd yawned. He settled himself still more comfortably in
+Calhoun's lap.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee</i>," he said drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highly
+condensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate of
+increase, with other data, among herds of <i>bovis domesticus</i> in a wild
+state, on planets where there are no natural enemies.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of
+Terran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran
+life-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems&mdash;very
+much to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard
+vegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise
+alien worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.</p>
+
+<p>They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of
+men to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo ship which couldn't
+possibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was
+in overdrive.</p>
+
+<p>Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, he
+had calculated that as few as a dozen head of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> cattle, turned loose on
+a suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens
+or even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably
+elapsed.</p>
+
+<p>The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound
+from without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at
+all that it was not buried in the heart of a planet instead of
+flashing through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in
+the control room. Murgatroyd regarded her with great interest. Calhoun
+nodded politely and went back to what he'd been doing before she
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Murgatroyd and I have," he told her. "Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a very
+good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but
+who was busy with activities remote from stowaways.</p>
+
+<p>About noon, ship-time, she asked, "When will we get to Orede?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedy
+in the ship."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities on
+Weald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins."</p>
+
+<p>"Wh-what are blueskins?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.</p>
+
+<p>"When lying," he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretend
+isn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you think they are?" she asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There used to be a human disease called smallpox," said Calhoun.
+"When people recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skin
+had little scar pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, it
+was expected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, and
+a large percentage would die of it.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was so much a matter of course that if they printed a picture
+of a criminal they never mentioned it if he were pock-marked. It was
+no distinction. But if he didn't have the markings, they'd mention
+that!" He paused. "Those pock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwise
+a blueskin is like a man who had them. He can't be anything else!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think they're human?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's never yet been a case of reverse evolution," said Calhoun.
+"Maybe Pithecanthropus had a monkey uncle, but no Pithecanthropus ever
+went monkey."</p>
+
+<p>She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during that
+day. He continued to busy himself with those activities which make Med
+Ship life consistent with retained sanity.</p>
+
+<p>Next day she asked without preliminary, "Don't you believe the
+blueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Weald
+and spread plague there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her. "With only dead men on
+board, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid
+could bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken
+living men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They
+might ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on
+Weald if they were found to be plague victims. So that would be no
+good, either! No, the ship wasn't intended to land plague on Weald."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Are you friendly to blueskins?" she asked uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Within reason," said Calhoun, "I am a well-wisher to all the human
+race. You're slipping, though. When using the word <i>blueskin</i> you
+should say it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined person
+liked to pronounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by the
+way. If you ever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much time
+left."</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced
+him and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again.
+Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He
+carefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald
+would willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a
+shipload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in,
+like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. Nobody from
+Weald would dream of landing on Orede! Not now!</p>
+
+<p>A little before the Med Ship was due to break out from overdrive, the
+girl said very carefully, "You've been very kind. I'd like to thank
+you. I&mdash;I didn't really believe I would live to get to Orede."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could tell you everything you want to know," she added
+regretfully. "I think you're ... really decent. But some thing...."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said caustically, "You've told me a great deal. You weren't
+born on Weald. You weren't raised there. The people of Dara&mdash;notice
+that I don't say blueskins, though they are&mdash;the people of Dara have
+made at least one space ship since Weald threatened them with
+extermination. There is probably a new food shortage on Dara now,
+leading to pure desperation. Most likely it's bad enough to make them
+risk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freeze beef to help. They've
+worked out&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She gasped and sprang to her feet. She snatched out the tiny blaster
+in her pocket. She pointed it waveringly at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to kill you!" she cried desperately. "I&mdash;I have to!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun reached out. She tugged despairingly at the blaster's trigger.
+Nothing happened. Before she could realize that she hadn't turned off
+the safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. He stepped
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Good girl!" he said approvingly. "I'll give this back to you when we
+land. And thanks. Thanks very much!"</p>
+
+<p>She wrung her hands. Then she stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks? When I tried to kill you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know that
+they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one.
+Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in
+touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be
+pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable thing
+to get done!"</p>
+
+<p>He went to the ships' control board and sat down before it.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty minutes to breakhour," he observed.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd peered out of his little cubbyhole. His eyes were anxious.
+<i>Tormals</i> are amiable little creatures. During the days in overdrive,
+Calhoun had paid less than the usual amount of attention to
+Murgatroyd, while the girl was fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>They'd made friends, awkwardly on the girl's part, very pleasantly on
+Murgatroyd's. But only moments ago there had been bitter emotion in
+the air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyhole to escape it. He was
+distressed. Now that there was silence again, he peered out unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee?</i>" he queried plaintively. "<i>Chee-chee-chee?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said matter-of-factly, "It's all right, Murgatroyd. If we
+aren't blasted as we try to land, we should be able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> make friends
+with everybody and get something accomplished."</p>
+
+<p>The statement was hopelessly inaccurate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>3</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was no answer from the ground when breakout came and Calhoun
+drove the Med Ship to a favourable position for a call. He patiently
+repeated, over and over again, that the Med Ship <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>
+notified its arrival and requested coordinates for landing. He added
+that its mass was fifty standard tons and that the purpose of its
+visit was a planetary health inspection.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no reply. There should have been a crisp description of
+the direction from the planet's center at which, a certain time so
+many hours or minutes later, the force-fields of the grid would find
+it convenient to lock onto and lower the Med Ship. But the
+communicator remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a landing-grid," said Calhoun, frowning, "and if they're
+using it to load fresh meat for Dara, from the herds I'm told about,
+it should be manned. But they don't seem to intend to answer. Maybe
+they think that if they pretend I'm not here I'll go away."</p>
+
+<p>He reflected, and his frown deepened.</p>
+
+<p>"If I didn't know what I know, I might. So if I land on emergency
+rockets the blueskins down below may decide that I come from Weald.
+And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before I could
+land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship from
+Weald would conceiva<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>bly land without impassioned assurance that it
+was safe. It would drop bombs." He turned to the girl. "How many
+Darians down below?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know," said Calhoun, "or won't tell, yet. But they ought to
+be told about the arrival of that ship at Weald, and what Weald thinks
+about it! My guess is that you came to tell them. It isn't likely that
+Dara gets news directly from Weald. Where were you put ashore from
+Dara, when you set out to be a spy?"</p>
+
+<p>Her lips parted to speak, but she compressed them tightly. She shook
+her head again.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been plenty far away," said Calhoun restlessly. "Your
+people would have built a ship, and made fine forged papers for it,
+and they'd travel so far from this part of space that when they landed
+nobody would think of Dara. They'd use make-up to cover the blue
+spots, but maybe it was so far away that blueskins had never been
+heard of!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face looked pinched, but she did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Then they'd land half a dozen of you, with a supply of make-up for
+the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various
+roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be
+done there to&mdash;" He stopped. "When did you find out positively that
+there wasn't any plague any more?"</p>
+
+<p>She began to grow pale.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a mind reader," said Calhoun. "But it adds up. You're from
+Dara. You've been on Weald. It's practically certain that there are
+other ... agents, if you like that word better, on Weald. And there
+hasn't been a plague on Weald so you people aren't carriers of it. But
+you knew it in advance, I think. How'd you learn? Did a ship in some
+sort of trouble land there, on Dara?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Y&mdash;yes," said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the people
+didn't catch&mdash;they didn't die. They lived&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not fair to trap me!" she cried passionately. "It's not fair!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stop," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the control board. The Med Ship was only planetary
+diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining
+stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous
+shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy
+color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and
+forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and
+squinted at it.</p>
+
+<p>"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
+killing wild cattle for sport."</p>
+
+<p>Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
+a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
+by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
+sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
+if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
+zone.</p>
+
+<p>Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
+would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
+near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
+would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.</p>
+
+<p>Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
+Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
+could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
+But its shadow would be distinctive.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> prairie in a
+temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
+mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
+cast a long, lacy shadow: the landing-grid.</p>
+
+<p>"But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down
+unwelcomed."</p>
+
+<p>He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency rockets boomed. The ship
+plunged planetward.</p>
+
+<p>A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of
+its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforce
+the sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd," commanded Calhoun. "We may have to
+dodge some ack."</p>
+
+<p>But nothing came up from below. The Med Ship again inverted itself,
+and its rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin,
+blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued
+to descend. It was not directly above the grid.</p>
+
+<p>It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains
+in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the
+mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley
+in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an
+erratic course, lest there be opposition.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no sign. Then the rockets bellowed, and the ship slowed
+its forward motion, hovered momentarily, and settled to solidity
+outside the framework of the grid. The grid was small, as Calhoun
+reasoned. But it reached interminably toward the sky.</p>
+
+<p>The rockets cut off. Slender as the flames had been, they'd melted and
+bored thin drill-holes deep into the soil. Molten rock boiled and
+bubbled down below. But there seemed no other sound. There was no
+other motion. There was absolute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> stillness all around. But when
+Calhoun switched on the outside microphones a faint, sweet melange of
+high-pitched chirpings came from tiny creatures hidden under the
+vegetation of the mountainsides.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun put a blaster in his pocket and stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see what it looks like outside," he said with a certain
+grimness. "I don't quite believe what the vision screens show."</p>
+
+<p>Minutes later he stepped down to the ground from the Med Ship's exit
+port. The ship had landed perhaps a hundred feet from what once had
+been a wooden building. In it, ore from the mines was concentrated and
+the useless tailings carried away by a conveyer belt to make a
+monstrous pile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building.</p>
+
+<p>Next to it there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The
+massive machinery could still be seen, but the structure was in
+fragments. Next to that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of
+the mine. They also were shattered practically to matchsticks.</p>
+
+<p>The look of the ground about the building sites was simply and purely
+impossible. It was a mass of hoofprints. Cattle by thousands and tens
+of thousands had trampled everything. Cattle had burst in the wooden
+sides of the buildings. Cattle had piled themselves up against the
+beams upholding roofs until the buildings collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there
+was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died
+in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders
+which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by
+the smell of carrion.</p>
+
+<p>The settlement had been destroyed, positively by stampeded cattle in
+tens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and
+upon it. Senselessly, they'd trampled each other to horrible
+shapelessness. The mine shaft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> was not choked, because enormously
+strong timbers had fallen across and blocked it. But everything else
+was pure destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said evenly, "Clever! Very clever! You can't blame men when
+beasts stampede. We should accept the evidence that some monstrous
+herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and
+bolted for the plains. This settlement got in the way and it was too
+bad for the settlement! Everything's explained, except the ship that
+went to Weald.</p>
+
+<p>"A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was a man
+stampede. Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattle
+trampled down this little town. The ship stampeded off into space as
+insanely as the cattle. But a stampede of men and cattle, in the same
+place? That's a little too much!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How," asked Calhoun directly, "do you intend to get in touch with
+your friends here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know," she said, distressed. "But if the ship stays here,
+they're bound to come and see why. Won't they? Or will they?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they're sane, they won't," said Calhoun. "The one undesirable
+thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If
+your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they
+should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and
+pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered. That
+would be their best first move, certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>"What should I do?" she asked helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm far from sure. At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.
+I'll work something out. I've got the devil of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> job before me,
+though. I can't spend but so much time here."</p>
+
+<p>"You can leave me here...."</p>
+
+<p>He grunted and turned away. It was naturally unthinkable that he
+should leave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet,
+with the knowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the
+future knowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of
+possible reasons to hide themselves away.</p>
+
+<p>He believed that there were Darians here, and the girl in the Med
+ship, so he also believed, was also a Darian. But any who might be
+hiding had so much to lose if they were discovered that they might be
+hundreds or even thousands of miles from anywhere a space ship would
+normally land&mdash;if they hadn't fled after the incident of the
+spaceship's departure with its load of doomed passengers.</p>
+
+<p>Considered detachedly, the odds were that there was again a food
+shortage on Dara; that blueskins, in desperation, had raided or were
+raiding or would raid the cattle herds of Orede for food to carry back
+to their home planet; that somehow the miners on Orede had found that
+they had blueskin neighbors, and died of the consequences of their
+terror. It was a risky guess to make on such evidence as Calhoun
+considered he had, but no other guess was possible.</p>
+
+<p>If his guess were right, he was under some obligation to do exactly
+what he believed the girl considered her mission&mdash;to warn all
+blueskins that Weald would presently try to find them on Orede, when
+all hell must break loose upon Dara for punishment. But if there were
+men here, he couldn't leave a written warning for them in default of
+friendly contact.</p>
+
+<p>They might not find it, and a search party of Wealdians might. All he
+could possibly do was try to make contact and give warning by such
+means as would leave no evidence be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>hind that he'd done so. Weald
+would consider a warning sure proof of blueskin guilt.</p>
+
+<p>It was not satisfactory to be limited to broadcasts which might or
+might not be picked up, and were unlikely to be acknowledged. But he
+settled down with the communicator to make the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>He called first on a GC wave length and form. It was unlikely that
+blueskins would use general communication bands to keep in touch with
+each other, but it had to be tried. He broadcast, tuned as broadly as
+possible, and went up and down the GC spectrum, repeating his warning
+painstakingly and listening without hope for a reply.</p>
+
+<p>He did find one spot on the dial where there was re-radiation of his
+message, as if from a tuned receiver. But he could not get a fix on
+it: nobody might be listening. He exhausted the normal communication
+pattern. Then he broadcast on old-fashioned amplitude modulation which
+a modern communicator would not pick up at all, and which therefore
+might be used by men in hiding.</p>
+
+<p>He worked for a long time. Then he shrugged and gave it up. He'd
+repeated to absolute tedium the facts that any Darians&mdash;blueskins&mdash;on
+Orede ought to know. There'd been no answer. And it was all too likely
+that if he'd been received, that those who heard him took his message
+for a trick to discover if there were any hearers.</p>
+
+<p>He clicked off at last and stood up, shaking his head. Suddenly the
+Med Ship seemed empty. Then he saw Murgatroyd staring vexedly at the
+exit port. The inner door of that small airlock was closed. The
+telltale light said the outer door was not locked. Someone had gone
+out quietly. The girl. Of course.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said angrily, "How long ago, Murgatroyd?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee!</i>" said Murgatroyd indignantly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It wasn't an answer, but it showed that Murgatroyd was vexed that he'd
+been left behind. He and the girl were close friends, now. If she'd
+left Murgatroyd in the ship when he wanted to go with her, then she
+wasn't coming back.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun swore. He made certain she was not in the ship. He flipped the
+outside-speaker switch and said curtly into the microphone, "Coffee!
+Murgatroyd and I are having coffee. Will you come back, please?"</p>
+
+<p>He repeated the call, and repeated it again. Multiplied as his voice
+was by the speakers, she should hear him within a mile. She did not
+appear. He went to a small and inconspicuous closet and armed himself.
+A Med Ship man was not ever expected to fight, but there were
+blast-rifles available for extreme emergency.</p>
+
+<p>When he'd slung a power-pack over his shoulder and reached the
+airlock, there was still no sign of his late stowaway. He stood in the
+airlock door for long minutes, staring angrily about. Almost certainly
+she wouldn't be looking in the mountains for men of Dara come here for
+cattle. He used a pair of binoculars, first at low-magnification to
+search as wide an area down-valley as possible, and then at highest
+power to search the most likely routes.</p>
+
+<p>He found a small, bobbing speck beyond a faraway hill crest. It was
+her head. It went down below the hilltop.</p>
+
+<p>He snapped a command to Murgatroyd, and when the <i>tormal</i> was on the
+ground outside, he locked the port with that combination that nobody
+but a Med Ship man was at all likely to discover or use.</p>
+
+<p>"She's an idiot!" he told Murgatroyd sourly. "Come along! We've got to
+be idiots too!"</p>
+
+<p>He set out in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>There was blue sky overhead, as was inevitable on any
+oxygen-atmosphere planet of a Sol-type yellow sun. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> were
+mountains, as is universal in planets whose surface rises and falls
+and folds and bends from the effects of weather or vulcanism. There
+were plants, as has come about wherever microorganisms have broken
+down rock to a state where it can nourish vegetation. And naturally
+there were animals.</p>
+
+<p>There were even trees of severely practical design, and underbrush and
+ground-cover equivalent to grass. There was, in short, a perfectly
+predictable ecological system on Orede. The organic molecules involved
+in life here would be made up of the same elements in the same
+combinations as elsewhere where the same conditions of temperature and
+moisture and sunshine obtained.</p>
+
+<p>It was a distinctly Earthlike world, as it could not help but be, and
+it was reasonable for cattle to thrive and increase here. Only men's
+minds kept it from being a place where humans would thrive, too.</p>
+
+<p>But only Calhoun would have considered the splintered settlement a
+proof of that last.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had a long start. Twice Calhoun came to places where she
+could have chosen either of two ways onward. Each time he had to
+determine which she'd followed. That cost time. Then the mountains
+abruptly ended and a vast undulating plain stretched away to the
+horizon. There were at least two large masses and many smaller clumps
+of what could only be animals gathered together. Cattle.</p>
+
+<p>But here the girl was plainly in view. Calhoun increased his stride.
+He began to gain on her. She did not look behind.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd said "<i>Chee!</i>" in a complaining tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have left you behind," agreed Calhoun dourly, "but there was
+and is a chance I won't get back. You'll have to keep on hiking."</p>
+
+<p>He plodded on. His memory of the terrain around the mining settlement
+told him that there was no definite destina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>tion in the girl's mind.
+But she was in no such despair as to want deliberately to be lost.
+She'd guessed, Calhoun believed, that if there were Darians on the
+planet, they'd keep the landing-grid under observation.</p>
+
+<p>If they saw her leave that area and could see that she was alone, they
+should intercept her to find out the meaning of the Med Ship's
+landing. Then she could identify herself as one of them and give them
+the terribly necessary warning of Weald's suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Calhoun sourly, "if she's right, they'll have seen me
+marching after her now, which spoils her scheme. And I'd like to help
+it, but the way she's going is too dangerous!"</p>
+
+<p>He went down into one of the hollows of the uneven plain. He saw a
+clump of a dozen or so cattle a little distance away. The bull looked
+up and snorted. The cows regarded him truculently. Their air was not
+one of bovine tranquility.</p>
+
+<p>He was up the farther hillside and out of sight before the bull worked
+himself up to a charge. Then Calhoun suddenly remembered one of the
+items in the data about cattle he'd looked into just the other day. He
+felt himself grow pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Murgatroyd!" he said sharply. "We've got to catch up! Fast! Stay with
+me if you can, but&mdash;" he was jog-trotting as he spoke&mdash;"even if you
+get lost I have to hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>He ran fifty paces and walked fifty paces. He ran fifty and walked
+fifty. He saw her, atop a rolling of the ground. She came to a full
+stop. He ran. He saw her turn to retrace her steps. He flung off the
+safety of the blast-rifle and let off a roaring blast at the ground
+for her to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she was fleeing desperately, toward him. He plunged on. She
+vanished down into a hollow. Horns appeared over the hillcrest she'd
+just left. Cattle appeared. Four, a dozen fifteen, twenty! They moved
+ominously in her wake.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her again, running frantically over another upward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> swell of
+the prairie. He let off another blast to guide her. He ran on at top
+speed with Murgatroyd trailing anxiously behind. From time to time
+Murgatroyd called "<i>Chee-chee-chee!</i>" in frightened pleading not to be
+abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>More cattle appeared against the horizon. Fifty or a hundred. They
+came after the first clump. The first group of a bull and his harem
+were moving faster, now. The girl fled from them, but it is the
+instinct of beef-cattle on the open range&mdash;Calhoun had learned it only
+two days before&mdash;to charge any human they find on foot. A mounted man
+to their dim minds is a creature to be tolerated or fled from, but a
+human on foot is to be crushed and stamped and gored.</p>
+
+<p>Those in the lead were definitely charging now, with heads bent low.
+The bull charged furiously with shut eyes, as bulls do, but the cows,
+many times more deadly, charged with their eyes wide open and wickedly
+alert, and with a lumbering speed much greater than the girl could
+manage.</p>
+
+<p>She came up over the last rise, chalky-white and gasping, her hair
+flying, in the last extremity of terror. The nearest of the pursuing
+cattle were within ten yards when Calhoun fired from twenty yards
+beyond. One creature bellowed as the blast-bolt struck.</p>
+
+<p>It went down and others crashed into it and swept over it, and more
+came on. The girl saw Calhoun now, and ran toward him, panting. He
+knelt very deliberately and began to check the charge by shooting the
+leading animals.</p>
+
+<p>He did not succeed. There were more cattle following the first, and
+more and more behind them. It appeared that all the cattle on the
+plain joined in the blind and senseless charge. The thudding of hoofs
+became a mutter and then a rumble and then a growl.</p>
+
+<p>Plunging, clumsy figures rushed past on either side. But horns and
+heads heaved up over the mound of animals Cal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>houn had shot. He shot
+them too. More and more cattle came pounding past the rampart of his
+victims, but always, it seemed, some elected to climb the heap of
+their dead and dying fellows, and Calhoun shot and shot....</p>
+
+<p>But he split the herd. The foremost animals had been charging a
+sighted human enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of
+cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they
+feel. There was a dense, pounding, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising
+thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which hid everything but
+galloping beasts going past on either side.</p>
+
+<p>It lasted for minutes. Then the thunder of hoofs diminished. It ended
+abruptly, and Calhoun and the girl were left alone with the gruesome
+pile of animals which had divided the charging herd into two parts.
+They could see the rears of innumerable running animals, stupidly
+continuing the charge, hardly different, now, from a stampede, whose
+original objective none now remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun thoughtfully touched the barrel of his blast-rifle and winced
+at its scorching heat.</p>
+
+<p>"I just realized," he said coldly, "that I don't know your name. What
+is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maril," said the girl. She swallowed. "Th&mdash;thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"Maril," said Calhoun, "you are an idiot! It was half-witted at best
+to go off by yourself! You could have been lost! You could have cost
+me days of hunting for you, days badly needed for more important
+matters!"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and took breath. "You may have spoiled what little chance
+I've got to do something about the plans Weald's already making! You
+have just acted with the most concentrated folly, and the most
+magnificent imbecility that you or anybody else could manage!"</p>
+
+<p>He said more bitterly still, "And I had to leave Murgatroyd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> behind to
+get to you in time! He was right in the path of that charge!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned away from her and said dourly, "All right! Come on back to
+the ship. We'll go to Dara. We'd have to, anyhow. But Murgatroyd&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard a very small sneeze. Out of a rolling wall of
+still-roiling dust, Murgatroyd appeared forlornly. He was
+dust-covered, and draggled, and his tail dropped, and he sneezed
+again. He moved as if he could barely put one paw before another, but
+at sight of Calhoun he sneezed yet again and said "<i>Chee!</i>" in a
+disconsolate voice. Then he sat down and waited for Calhoun to come
+and pick him up.</p>
+
+<p>When Calhoun did so, Murgatroyd clung to him pathetically and said
+"<i>Chee-chee!</i>" and again "<i>Chee-chee!</i>" with the intonation of one
+telling of incredible horrors and disasters endured. And as a matter
+of fact the escape of a small animal like Murgatroyd was remarkable.
+He'd escaped the trampling hoofs of at least hundreds of charging
+animals. Luck must have played a great part in it, but an hysterical
+agility in dodging must have been required, too.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun headed back for the valley where the settlement had been, and
+the Med Ship was. Murgatroyd clung to his neck. The girl Maril
+followed discouragedly. She was at that age when girls&mdash;and men of
+corresponding type&mdash;can grow most passionately devoted to ideals or
+causes in default of a promising personal romance. When concerned with
+such causes they become splendidly confident that whatever they decide
+to do is sensible if only it is dramatic. But Maril was shaken, now.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way. A mile back toward
+the mountains, they began to see stragglers from the now-vanished
+herd. A little farther, those stragglers began to notice them. It
+would have been a matter of no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> moment if they'd been domesticated
+dairy cattle, but these were range cattle gone wild. Twice, Calhoun
+had to use his blast-rifle to discourage incipient charges by
+irritated bulls or even more irritated cows. Those with calves darkly
+suspected Calhoun of designs upon their offspring.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to enter the valley again. But it was two miles more
+to the landing-grid with the Med Ship beside it and the reek of
+carrion in the air.</p>
+
+<p>They were perhaps two hundred feet from the ship when a blast-rifle
+crashed and its bolt whined past Calhoun so close that he felt the
+monstrous heat. There had been no challenge. There was no warning.
+There was simply a shot which came horribly close to ending Calhoun's
+career in a completely arbitrary fashion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>4</h2>
+
+
+<p>Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a
+mass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood
+afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around
+the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have
+killed him ten times over, but it was more desirable to open
+communication. So he missed intentionally.</p>
+
+<p>Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, but
+they did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty
+blast-rifles. One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding
+place. That man's rifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained.</p>
+
+<p>One, so Calhoun presently discovered&mdash;was working his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> way behind
+underbrush to a shelf from which he could shoot down at Calhoun.
+Calhoun had dropped into a hollow and pulled Maril to cover at the
+first shot. The second man happily planned to get to a point where he
+could shoot him like a fish in a barrel.</p>
+
+<p>The third man had fired half a dozen times and then disappeared.
+Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to the rear, hoping
+there was no protection from that direction for Calhoun. It would take
+some time for him to manage it.</p>
+
+<p>So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying to
+get above him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to
+Calhoun's breastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at
+which the other man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless.</p>
+
+<p>Then Calhoun sent a dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It
+heated up. Steam rose in a whitish mass and blew directly away from
+Calhoun. He saw that antagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he
+was positive that there was a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand
+side of the back of his neck.</p>
+
+<p>He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thick
+undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading
+flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle tactics
+with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But
+something from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground
+directly upwind from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.</p>
+
+<p>It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl
+Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the
+flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril
+altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not
+scorched or burning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and
+plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them.
+They were then halfway to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.</p>
+
+<p>But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles
+twitched and tensed. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of
+agitation. He swore, but a Med Ship man would not react to such
+symptoms as a non-medically-trained man would have done. Calhoun was
+familiar enough with tear gas, used by police on some planets.</p>
+
+<p>But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged Maril
+onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it&mdash;panic
+gas. Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.
+Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physical
+sensations: wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and a
+frantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physical
+sensations are induced by other means will, ordinarily, find his mind
+yielding to terror.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude
+enabled him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base
+of the Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not
+be counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some
+moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only
+feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let
+loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the rifle of all
+its charges.</p>
+
+<p>Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook and
+trembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outer
+airlock door just as another blast-bolt hit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They&mdash;they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they only
+knew...."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and he
+raged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed a button on the control board. He pointed to a microphone.
+He got at an oxygen bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously,
+should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to
+increase the oxygenation of the bloodstream and muscles, and to make
+superhuman exertion possible if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Breathing ninety-five percent oxygen produced the effect the
+terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normal
+and his body relaxed. He held out his hand and it did not tremble.
+He'd been affronted to see it shake uncontrollably when he pushed the
+microphone button for Maril.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to her. She hadn't spoken into the mike.</p>
+
+<p>"They may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! They
+could be somebody else, maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine
+for a shipload of its ore."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be
+sure. But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more
+on the way here from wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we
+know some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and
+we'll go on."</p>
+
+<p>He took the microphone. An instant later his voice boomed in the
+stillness outside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill whirring
+of invisible small creatures.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the Med Ship <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>," said Calhoun's voice,
+amplified to a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the
+cargo ship from here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald
+they don't know how it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or
+later they'll search here.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've ever been
+here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talk of
+fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your traces, they'll
+be still more scared! So cover up your tracks and get away from here!"</p>
+
+<p>The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. But
+it was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, and
+it could be heard for miles.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time.
+Then he shrugged and seated himself at the control board.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they've
+outsmarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"</p>
+
+<p>The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end all
+noises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By the
+time it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clear
+space and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether.</p>
+
+<p>He busied himself with those astrogational chores which began with
+orienting oneself to galactic directions after leaving a planet which
+rotates at its own individual speed. Then one computes the overdrive
+course to another planet, from the respecting coordinates of the world
+one is leaving and the one one aims for.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in this case at any rate, there was the very finicky task of
+picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose planets one was his
+destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine precision.</p>
+
+<p>"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"</p>
+
+<p>Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation
+of falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity,
+and the blackness outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in
+overdrive again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily, "I don't know what
+you plan now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the
+blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know.
+But this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine people
+shouldn't do things out of desperation! Being desperate jogs the brain
+off-center. One doesn't think straight!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know now that I was ... very foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I
+run into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and
+cleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service
+obligation; it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at the
+basic problem, those idiots on Orede&mdash;It'd happened before I reached
+Weald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead men
+that nobody intended to kill."</p>
+
+<p>Maril shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun, annoyed, "shouldn't have gone
+to Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at least
+have stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald
+digging a mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They
+could be spotted! I believe they were.</p>
+
+<p>"And again, if it had been a long way from the mine installation, they
+could probably have wiped out the people who sighted them before they
+could get back with the news! But it looks like miners saw men
+hunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins, and then got
+back to the mine with the news!"</p>
+
+<p>She waited for him to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "So
+something had to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped
+out or the story that blueskins were on Orede<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> had to be discredited.
+The blueskins tried for both. They used panic gas on a herd of cattle
+and it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like the
+four-footed lunatics they are!</p>
+
+<p>"And the blueskins used panic gas on the settlement itself as the
+cattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.
+After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd been
+out of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of the
+settlement to think about.</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen or heard before-hand. They
+might try to verify the blueskin story later, but they wouldn't
+believe anything with certainty. It should have worked!"</p>
+
+<p>Again she waited.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the
+ship. Also unfortunately, panic gas got into the ship with them. So
+they stayed panicked while the astrogator&mdash;in panic!&mdash;took off. They
+headed for Weald and threw on the overdrive&mdash;which would be set for
+Weald anyhow&mdash;because that would be the fastest way to run away from
+whatever he imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship
+were still crazy with panic from the gas they kept breathing until
+they died!"</p>
+
+<p>Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked, "You don't think the
+Darians intended to kill?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always
+urging the police to use panic gas in case of public tumult. But it's
+too dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take a
+hundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit to
+their craziness! The whole thing was handled wrong!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't blame them?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"For being stupid, yes," said Calhoun fretfully. "But if I'd been in
+their place, perhaps&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun jerked his head around. "No! Not where you're guessing, or
+hoping. Not on Dara. Just because I act as if Darians were human
+doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a Med Service man, and I'm acting
+as I think I should." His tone became exasperated.</p>
+
+<p>"Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual, and
+possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it finds proof
+that blueskins are in space again and caused the death of Wealdians,
+it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombs
+on Dara to wipe it out!"</p>
+
+<p>Maril said fiercely, "They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker
+than starvation, at least!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun looked at her, more exasperated than before.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he said
+bitterly, "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he said
+drearily, "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of health
+problems! And that's right in my lap with all the rest!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood up. Then he sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired!" he said flatly. "I'd like to get some sleep. Would you
+mind taking a book or something and going into the other cabin?
+Murgatroyd and I would like a little relaxation from reality. With
+luck, if I go to sleep, I may only have a nightmare. It'll be a
+terrific improvement on what I'm in now!"</p>
+
+<p>Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was not
+possible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and brooded. There
+is brooding and brooding. It can be a form of wallowing in self-pity,
+engaged in for emotional satis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>faction. But it can be, also, a way of
+bringing out unfavorable factors in a situation. A man in optimistic
+mood can ignore them. But no awkward situation is likely to be
+remedied while any of its elements are neglected.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun dourly considered the situation of the people of the planet
+Dara, which it was his job as a Med Service man to remedy or at least
+improve. Those people were marked by patches of blue pigment as an
+inherited consequence of a plague of three generations past. Because
+of the marking, which it was easy to believe a sign of continuing
+infection, they were hated and dreaded by their neighbors. Dara was a
+planet of pariahs&mdash;excluded from the human race by those who feared
+them.</p>
+
+<p>And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were of
+no mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede,
+monstrous herds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for
+Darians to build a ship or ships and try to bring food back to its
+starving people. But that desperately necessary enterprise had now
+roused Weald to a frenzy of apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Weald was, if possible, more hysterically afraid of blueskins than
+ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of the starving
+planet's population. Weald itself prospered. Ironically, it had such
+an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them in unneeded spaceships in
+orbits about itself.</p>
+
+<p>Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight
+hulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try to
+steal&mdash;if it could be called stealing&mdash;some of the innumerable wild
+cattle of Orede.</p>
+
+<p>The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not
+to hear. Or maybe that didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed
+by all of humanity off their world. They'd been threatened and
+oppressed by guardships<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any
+spacecraft they might send aloft....</p>
+
+<p>So Calhoun brooded, while Murgatroyd presently yawned and climbed to
+his cubbyhole and curled up to sleep with his furry tail carefully
+adjusted over his nose.</p>
+
+<p>A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on
+a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises
+carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun
+raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come from
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked on the door of the sleeping cabin. The noises stopped
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out," he commanded through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;I'm all right," said Maril's voice. But it was not quite steady.
+She paused. "Did I make a noise? I was having a bad dream."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth just
+occasionally! Come out, please!"</p>
+
+<p>There were stirrings. After a little it opened and Maril appeared. She
+looked as if she'd been crying. She said, quickly, "I probably look
+queer, but it's because I was asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"To the contrary," said Calhoun, fuming. "You've been lying awake
+crying. I don't know why. I've been out here wishing I could, because
+I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can help me with
+my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I need facts.
+Will you give them to me?"</p>
+
+<p>She swallowed. "I'll try."</p>
+
+<p>"Coffee?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd popped his head out of his miniature sleeping cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee?</i>" he asked interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to sleep!" snapped Calhoun.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He began to pace back and forth.</p>
+
+<p>"I need to know something about the pigment patches," he said jerkily.
+"Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now&mdash;first things
+first, you know. But this is a first thing! So long as Darians don't
+look like the people of other worlds, they'll be believed to be
+different. If they look repulsive, they'll be believed to be evil.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about those patches. They're different sizes and different
+shapes and they appear in different places. You've none on your face
+or hands, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not everybody," she said defensively. "Nearly, yes. But not all. Some
+people don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches on
+their skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow
+up they're just like the people of Weald or any other world. And their
+children never have them."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun stared.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't possibly be proved to be a Darian, then?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. Calhoun remembered, and started the coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"When you left Dara," he said, "you were carried a long, long way, to
+some planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where
+the name meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else
+and forgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not a
+blueskin?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters,
+and Korvan&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the
+name she'd mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," he
+said absorbedly. "Something like that happened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> on Tralee, once!
+There's a virus, a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans
+are immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical
+condition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do.
+But once they're established they're passed on from mother to child.
+And when they die out it's during childhood, too!"</p>
+
+<p>He poured coffee for the two of them. Murgatroyd swung down to the
+floor and said, impatiently, "<i>Chee! Chee! Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun absently filled Murgatroyd's tiny cup and handed it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"But this is marvellous!" he said exuberantly. "The blue patches
+appeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered&mdash;when
+they recovered?"</p>
+
+<p>Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professional
+considerations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely
+a source of information.</p>
+
+<p>"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating
+questions you want to ask?"</p>
+
+<p>He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully, "I'm stupid, Maril, but you're
+touchy. There's nothing personal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is to me!" she said fiercely. "I was born among blueskins, and
+they're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on
+Weald if I'd been known as ... what I am! And there's Korvan, who
+arranged for me to be sent away as a spy and advised me to do just
+what you said: abandon my home world and everybody I care about!
+Including him! It's personal to me!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun wrinkled his forehead helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he repeated. "Drink your coffee!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want it," she said bitterly. "I'd like to die!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you stay around where I am," Calhoun told her, "you may get your
+wish. All right, there'll be no more questions."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She turned and moved toward the door to the cabin. Calhoun looked
+after her.</p>
+
+<p>"Maril."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why were you crying?"</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't understand," she said evenly.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He was a
+professional man. In his profession he was not incompetent. But there
+is no profession in which a really competent man tries to understand
+women. Calhoun, annoyed, had to let fate or chance or disaster take
+care of Maril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with.</p>
+
+<p>But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in the
+reference tapes. He came up with an explicit collection of information
+on exactly the subject he needed. He left the control room to go down
+into the storage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultra
+frigid storage box, whose contents were kept at the temperature of
+liquid air.</p>
+
+<p>He donned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a
+tiny block of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was
+embedded. It frosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage
+box was closed again the block was covered with a thick and opaque
+coating of frozen moisture.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the control room and pulled down the panel which made
+available a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological
+laboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raise
+it very, very gradually to a specific temperature and hold it there.
+It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity
+of the same culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with
+great exactitude.</p>
+
+<p>"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I
+can rest."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med
+Ship. The girl may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in a
+chair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable of
+sleeping places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curled
+over his nose.</p>
+
+<p>There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissable murmurings now and
+again. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for such
+infinitesimal stirrings of sound, carefully recorded for this exact
+purpose, the feel of the ship would have been that of a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the taped
+sounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but nevertheless
+establishing an atmosphere of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read the
+instruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the
+block&mdash;no longer frosted&mdash;in the culture microscope and saw its
+enclosed, infinitesimal particles of life in the process of
+multiplying on the food that had been frozen with them when they were
+reduced to the spore condition. He beamed. He replaced the block in
+the incubation oven and faced the day cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted, with
+Murgatroyd eating from his own platter on the floor, a tiny cup of
+coffee alongside.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking," said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you a
+hearing for whatever ideas you may have to help Dara."</p>
+
+<p>"Kind of you," murmured Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>In theory, a Med Service man had all the authority needed for this or
+any other emergency. The power to declare a planet in quarantine, so
+cutting it off from all interstellar commerce, should be enough to
+force cooperation from any world's government. But in practice Calhoun
+had exactly as much power as he could exercise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Weald could not think straight where blueskins were concerned, and
+certainly the authorities on Dara could not be expected to be
+levelheaded. They had a history of isolation and outlawry, and long
+experience of being regarded as less than human. In cold fact, Calhoun
+had no power at all.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask whose influence you'll exert?" asked Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who thinks a great deal of
+me. I don't know his present official position, but he was certain to
+become prominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your
+attitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help
+you, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."</p>
+
+<p>She started. "How did you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Intuition," said Calhoun dryly. "All right. I'll count on him."</p>
+
+<p>But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day
+and all the next. The girl was very quiet. Murgatroyd tried to enter
+into pretended conversation with her, but she was not able to match
+his pretense.</p>
+
+<p>On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached. While the
+ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look
+forward with confidence to the future. But when contact and, in a
+fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer,
+prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but
+there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out. If
+I can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow my
+advice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideas
+it probably will get; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> isn't doing what I suspect it is&mdash;why,
+maybe something can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock. There was no sensation
+attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. It
+was now time for the end. He might find most anything having happened.
+His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could have
+sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of
+desperation....</p>
+
+<p>As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly a
+light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhoun
+went into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of
+the blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it.</p>
+
+<p>He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for
+coordinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There was
+confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not
+ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the
+ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each
+other, until the ship actually touched ground.</p>
+
+<p>Then he opened the exit port&mdash;and faced armed men in the darkness,
+with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained
+on the Med Ship itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Your
+ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+<h2>5</h2>
+
+
+<p>It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were
+emaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the
+ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung
+loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their
+cheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotches
+of pigment of which Calhoun had heard.</p>
+
+<p>The man nearest the Med Ship's port had a monstrous, irregular
+dull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon his
+forehead. The man next to him had a blue throat. The next man again
+was less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed a
+splashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.</p>
+
+<p>The leader of the truculent group&mdash;it might have been a firing
+squad&mdash;made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, except
+for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter than
+white.</p>
+
+<p>"Out!" said that man savagely. "We're taking over your stock of food.
+You'll get your share of it, like everybody else, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence or
+two. It should have amounted to identification but there was
+skepticism in the armed party.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard leader sardonically.
+"You'll have a chance to prove that. Come out of there!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun spoke abruptly, "This is a Med Ship," he said. "There are
+medicines and bacterial culture inside it. They shouldn't be meddled
+with. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before, "I said the
+government was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you're
+not taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you're
+leaving!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We've
+just come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as he
+named Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping
+fusion-bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the
+authority to take a few sensible precautions!"</p>
+
+<p>He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "<i>Chee! Chee!</i>" from
+behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling
+apprehensively to his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>tormal</i>" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know
+something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and
+he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship <i>tormal</i> and he
+stays with me!"</p>
+
+<p>The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to
+ask you questions. Here!"</p>
+
+<p>A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid
+enclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used
+on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.</p>
+
+<p>"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you
+want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"</p>
+
+<p>The groundcar was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from
+the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior
+and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of
+the grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It picked
+up speed.</p>
+
+<p>There were buildings on either side of the road, but few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> showed
+lights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set a
+pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not
+seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair.</p>
+
+<p>The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds,
+and the groundcar needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a
+paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other
+depressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up to
+perfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleaned
+lately, litter here and there.</p>
+
+<p>Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling of
+wretchedness and gloom and, ultimately, of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Maril spoke nervously to the driver.</p>
+
+<p>"The famine isn't any better?"</p>
+
+<p>He moved his head in negation, but did not speak. There was a splotch
+of blue pigment at the back of his neck. It extended upward into his
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I left two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then.
+Rationing hadn't started."</p>
+
+<p>The driver said evenly, "There's rationing now!"</p>
+
+<p>The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights about
+its perimeter seemed few and pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything seems worse. Even the lights."</p>
+
+<p>"Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow
+crops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent and
+then make my way to Weald. I mailed reports of what I found out back
+to Trent. Somebody got them back to here whenever it was possible."</p>
+
+<p>The driver said, "Everybody knows the man on Trent dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>appeared. Maybe
+he got caught, maybe somebody saw him without make-up. Or maybe he
+just quit being one of us. What's the difference? No use!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun found himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. He
+was hopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accept
+hostility from those about them as a device of fate for their
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Maril said quickly to Calhoun, "You understand? Dara's a heavy-metals
+planet. There aren't many light elements in our soil. Potassium is
+scarce. So our ground isn't very fertile. Before the Plague we traded
+metals and manufactured products for imports of food and potash. But
+since the Plague we've had no off-planet commerce. We've been
+quarantined."</p>
+
+<p>"I gathered as much," said Calhoun. "It was up to Med Service to see
+that that didn't happen. It's up to Med Service now to see that it
+stops."</p>
+
+<p>"Too late now for anything," said the driver. "Whatever Med Service
+may be! They're talking about cutting down our population so there'll
+be food enough for some to live. There are two questions about it. One
+is who's to be kept alive, and the other is why."</p>
+
+<p>The groundcar aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on
+the far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grew
+nearer. Maril said hesitantly, "There was someone, Korvan&mdash;" Calhoun
+didn't catch the rest of the name. Maril said hesitantly, "He was
+working on food plants. I thought he might accomplish something...."</p>
+
+<p>The driver said caustically, "Sure! Everybody's heard about him! He
+came up with a wonderful thing! He and his outfit worked out a way to
+process weeds so they can be eaten. And they can. You can fill your
+belly and not feel hungry, but it's like eating hay. You starve just
+the same. He's still working. Head of a government division."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The groundcar passed through a gate. It stopped before a lighted door.
+The armed men hanging to its outside dropped off. They watched Calhoun
+closely as he stepped out with Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Minutes later they faced a hastily summoned group of officials of the
+Darian government. For a ship to land on Dara was so remarkable an
+event that it called practically for a cabinet meeting. And Calhoun
+noted that they were no better fed than the guards at the spaceport.</p>
+
+<p>They regarded Calhoun and Maril with oddly burning, eyes. It was, of
+course, because the two of them showed no signs of hunger. They
+obviously had not been on short rations. Darians had this, now, to
+increase a hatred which was inevitable anyhow, directed at all peoples
+off their own planet.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Calhoun," said Calhoun briskly. "I've the usual Med
+Service credentials. Now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not wait to be questioned. He told them of the appalling state
+of things in the Twelfth Sector of the Med Service, so that men had
+been borrowed from other sectors to remedy the intolerable, and he was
+one of them. He told of his arrival at Weald and what had happened
+there, from the excessively cautious insistence that he prove he was
+not a Darian, to the arrival of the death-ship from Orede.</p>
+
+<p>He was giving them the news affecting them, as they had not heard it
+before. He went on to tell of his stop at Orede and his purpose, and
+his encounter with the men he found there. When he finished there was
+silence. He broke it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said, "Maril's an agent of yours. She can add to what I've
+told you. I'm Med Service. I have a job to do here to carry out what
+wasn't done before. I should make a planetary health inspection and
+make recommendations for the improvement of the state of things. I'll
+be glad if you'll arrange for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> me to talk to your health officials.
+Things look bad, and something should be done."</p>
+
+<p>Someone laughed without mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you recommend for long-continued undernourishment?" he
+asked derisively. "That's our health problem!"</p>
+
+<p>"I recommend food," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'll you fill the prescription?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've the answer to that, too," said Calhoun curtly. "I'll want to
+talk to any space pilots you've got. Get your astrogators together and
+I think they'll approve my idea."</p>
+
+<p>The silence was totally skeptical.</p>
+
+<p>"Orede&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not Orede," said Calhoun. "Weald will be hunting that planet over for
+Darians. If they find any, they'll drop bombs here."</p>
+
+<p>"Our only space pilots," said a tall man, presently, "are on Orede
+now. If you've told the truth, they'll probably head back because of
+your warning. They should bring meat."</p>
+
+<p>His mouth worked peculiarly, and Calhoun knew that it was at the
+thought of food.</p>
+
+<p>"Which," said another man sharply, "goes to the hospitals! I haven't
+tasted meat in two years!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody has," growled another man still. "But here's this man Calhoun.
+I'm not convinced he can work magic, but we can find out if he lies.
+Put a guard on his ship. Otherwise let our health men give him his
+head. They'll find out if he's from this Medical Service he tells of!
+and this Maril...."</p>
+
+<p>"I can be identified," said Maril. "I was sent to gather information
+and send it in secret writing to one of us on Trent. I have a family
+here. They'll know me! And I&mdash;there was someone who was working on
+foods, and I believe he made it possible to use ... all sorts of
+vegetation for food. He will identify me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Someone laughed harshly.</p>
+
+<p>Maril swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see him," she repeated. "And my family."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the blue-splotched men turned away. A broad-shouldered man
+said bluntly, "Don't look for them to be glad to see you. And you'd
+better not show yourself in public. You've been well fed. You'll be
+hated for that."</p>
+
+<p>Maril began to cry. Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, "<i>Chee! Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun held him close. There was confusion. And Calhoun found the
+Minister of Health at hand. He looked most harried of all the
+officials gathered to question Calhoun. He proposed that he get a look
+at the hospital situation right away.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't practical. With all the population on half rations or less,
+when night came people needed to sleep. Most people, indeed, slept as
+many hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage. It
+was much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly nagged
+at by continued hunger.</p>
+
+<p>And there was the matter of simple decency. Continuous gnawing hunger
+had an embittering effect upon everyone. Quarrelsomeness was a common
+experience. And people who would normally be the leaders of opinion
+felt shame because they were obsessed by thoughts of food. It was best
+when people slept.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak. What he found moved
+him to savage anger. There were too many sick children. In every case
+undernourishment contributed to their sickness. And there was not
+enough food to make them well. Doctors and nurses denied themselves
+food to spare it for their patients. And most of that self-denial was
+doubtless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> voluntary, but it would not be discreet for anybody on Dara
+to look conspicuously better fed than his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the Med
+Ship while the guard in the ship looked on. He demonstrated the
+processes of synthesis and auto-catalysis that enabled such small
+samples to be multiplied indefinitely. He was annoyed by a clamorous
+appetite. There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical
+techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody
+was half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved of
+Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function.</p>
+
+<p>He was, of course, a Med Service <i>tormal</i>, and <i>tormals</i> were
+creatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the
+Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals. But the
+remarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract any
+disease. Not any.</p>
+
+<p>They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins,
+and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to which
+a <i>tormal</i> could not more or less immediately develop antibody
+resistance. So that in interstellar medicine <i>tormals</i> were priceless.</p>
+
+<p>Let Murgatroyd be infected with however localized, however specialized
+an inimical organism, and presently some highly valuable defensive
+substance could be isolated from his blood and he'd remain in his
+usual exuberant good health.</p>
+
+<p>When the antibody was analyzed by those techniques of microanalysis
+the Service had developed, that was that. The antibody could be
+synthesized and one could attack any epidemic with confidence.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy for Dara was, of course, that no Med Ship had come to Dara
+three generations ago, when the Dara plague raged. Worse, after the
+plague Weald was able to exert pres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>sure which only a criminally
+incompetent Med Service director would have permitted. But criminal
+incompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned to
+Sector Twelve to help remedy. He was not at ease, though. No ship
+arrived from Orede to bear out his account of an attempt to get that
+lonely world evacuated before Weald discovered it had blueskins on it.
+Maril had vanished, to visit or return to her family, or perhaps to
+consult with the mysterious Korvan who'd arranged for her to leave
+Dara to be a spy, and had advised her simply to make a new life
+somewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and out-caste
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun had learned of two achievements the same Korvan had made for
+his world. Neither was remarkably constructive. He'd offered to prove
+the value of the second by dying of it. Which might make him a very
+admirable character, or he could have a passion for martyrdom, which
+is much more common than most people think. In two days Calhoun was
+irritable enough from unaccustomed hunger to suspect the worst of him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Calhoun worked doggedly; in the hospitals while the patients
+were awake and in the Med Ship, under guard, afterward. He had hunger
+cramps now, but he tested a plastic cube with a thriving biological
+culture in it.</p>
+
+<p>He worked at increasing his store of it. He'd snipped samples of
+pigmented skin from dead patients in the hospitals, and examined the
+pigmented areas, and very, very painstakingly verified a theory. It
+took an electron microscope to do it, but he found a virus in the blue
+patches which matched the type discovered on Tralee.</p>
+
+<p>The Tralee viruses had effects which were passed on from mother to
+child, and heredity had been charged with the observed results of
+quasi-living viral particles. And then Calhoun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> very, very carefully
+introduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in a
+plastic cube. He watched what happened.</p>
+
+<p>He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he yawned and
+yawned and barely managed to stagger off to bed. The watching guard in
+the Med Ship watched him in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloody
+carcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning
+Maril came back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expression
+was of someone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right," she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've been
+visiting my family. I've seen Korvan. I'm quite all right."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't eaten any better than I have," Calhoun observed.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't!" admitted Maril. "My sisters, my little sisters so
+thin.... There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficiently
+arranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I gave
+most of my food to my sisters and they&mdash;they squabbled over it!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said, in a no
+less desolate tone, "Korvan said I was foolish to come back."</p>
+
+<p>"He could be right," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"But I had to!" protested Maril. "And now I&mdash;I've been eating all I
+wanted to, in Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they're
+half-starved and I'm not. And when you see what hunger does to
+them.... It's terrible to be half-starved and not able to think of
+anything but food!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get hold
+of an astrogator or two&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told him
+shakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one load's not enough to
+make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us on
+Orede, we daren't go back for more meat."</p>
+
+<p>She said abruptly, "There are some prisoners. They were miners. They
+were crowded out of the ship. The Darians who'd stampeded the cattle
+took them prisoners. They had to!"</p>
+
+<p>"True," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't have been wise to leave Wealdians
+around on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tell
+about a rumor of blueskins. Even if their throats will be cut now. Is
+that the program?"</p>
+
+<p>Maril shivered.</p>
+
+<p>"No. They'll be put on short rations like everybody else. And people
+will watch them. The Wealdians expect to die of plague any minute
+because they've been with Darians. So people look at them and laugh.
+But it's not very funny."</p>
+
+<p>"It's natural," said Calhoun, "but perhaps lacking in charity. Look
+there! How about those astrogators? I need them for a job I have in
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>Maril wrung her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"C&mdash;come here," she said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>There was an armed guard in the control room of the ship. He'd watched
+Calhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed his
+mysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He was
+bored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control board, though, he
+was uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the way
+into the other cabin and slid the door shut.</p>
+
+<p>"The astrogators are coming," she said swiftly. "They'll bring some
+boxes with them. They'll ask you to instruct them so they can handle
+our ship better. They lost themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> coming back from Orede. No,
+they didn't lose themselves, but they lost time, enough time almost to
+make an extra trip for meat. They need to be experts. I'm to come
+along, so they can be sure that what you teach them is what you've
+been doing right along."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said, "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would do
+something monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stop
+it by being more monstrous sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there are
+enough. So they want to use your ship&mdash;it's faster in overdrive and so
+on. And they'll go to Weald in this ship and&mdash;they say they'll give
+Weald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said dryly, "This pays me off for being too sympathetic with
+blueskins! But if I'd been hungry for a couple of years, and was
+despised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I might
+react the same way. No," he said curtly as she opened her lips to
+speak again, "don't tell me the trick. Considering everything, there's
+only one trick it could be. But I doubt profoundly that it would work.
+All right."</p>
+
+<p>He slid the door back and returned to the control room. Maril followed
+him. He said detachedly, "I've been working on a problem outside of
+the food one. It isn't the time to talk about it right now, but I
+think I've solved it."</p>
+
+<p>Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmac
+outside the ship. Both doors of the airlock were open. Four men came
+in. They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as most
+Darians, but there was a reason for that. Their leader introduced
+himself and the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had
+built to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said their
+self-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot their
+destina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>tion. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They needed
+instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. They
+were, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement was
+a patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a blue
+birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. A
+third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a
+dull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board and
+learn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we've
+got."</p>
+
+<p>"I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we
+go along.... Those boxes?"</p>
+
+<p>Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the four
+very carefully brought them inside.</p>
+
+<p>"They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywhere
+without rations, except Orede."</p>
+
+<p>"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," said
+Calhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhoun
+shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there's
+the button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted."</p>
+
+<p>The young man seated himself at the control board. Very
+professionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift by
+landing-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He
+went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold it!"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> man at the
+control board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the
+doors.</p>
+
+<p>The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found
+occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a
+training voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskin
+pilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoun
+grew stern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald.</p>
+
+<p>The young men glanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. He
+made the acting pilot look up the intrinsic brightness of its sun and
+measure its apparent brightness from just off Dara. He made him
+estimate the change in brightness to be expected after so many hours
+in overdrive, if one broke out to measure.</p>
+
+<p>The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour of
+duty with more respect for Calhoun then he'd had at the beginning. The
+second was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilled
+him in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparent
+brightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated with
+angular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearer
+heavens.</p>
+
+<p>It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out on Dara,
+and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and other fine
+points of space-piloting. They'd done enough, in a few trips to Orede,
+to realize that they needed to know more. Calhoun showed them.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun did not try to make things easy for them. He was hungry and
+easily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and to
+phrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in
+command of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use
+Weald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship
+came out of over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>drive pointing in an unknown direction and with a
+precessory motion.</p>
+
+<p>He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestial
+globe containing hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course in
+overdrive toward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute the
+distance to Weald from such data as he could get from observation,
+without reference to any records.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the first man was chafing to take a second turn. Calhoun
+gave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, a
+highly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space.
+His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least
+one breakout from overdrive in each watch.</p>
+
+<p>He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of being
+hungry&mdash;though there had been no reason for them to stint on food on
+Orede&mdash;in growing pride in what they came to know.</p>
+
+<p>When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highly
+qualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better
+spacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward
+Calhoun was respectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young,
+the combination is impressive.</p>
+
+<p>Maril had served as passenger only. In theory she was to compare
+Calhoun's lessons with his practise when alone. But he did nothing on
+this journey which, teaching considered, was different from the two
+interstellar journeys Maril had made with him.</p>
+
+<p>She occupied the sleeping cabin during two of the six watches of each
+ship-day. She operated the food-readier, which was almost completely
+emptied of its original store of food, it having been confiscated by
+the government of Dara.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> That amount of food would make no difference
+to the planet, but it was wise for everyone on Dara to be equally
+ill-fed.</p>
+
+<p>On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude of
+minus five-tenths. The electron telescope could detect its larger
+planets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo.
+Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing
+out the difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med
+Ship were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduate
+you as pilots. Maril, four cups of coffee, please."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd said "<i>Chee?</i>" The Med Ship was badly crowded with six
+humans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroyd
+alone. The little <i>tormal</i> had spent most of his time in his
+cubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about on
+what had been a spacious ship before.</p>
+
+<p>"No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "You didn't do your
+lessons. This is for the graduating class only."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd came out of his miniature den. He found his little cup and
+offered it insistently, saying, "<i>Chee! Chee! Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" said Calhoun firmly. He regarded his class of four young men
+with their blueskin markings. "Drink it down!" he commanded. "That's
+the last order I'll give you. You're graduate pilots, now!"</p>
+
+<p>They drank the coffee with a flourish. There was not one who did not
+admire Calhoun for having made them admire themselves. They were,
+actually, almost as much better pilots as they believed.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said Calhoun, "I suppose you'll tell me the truth about
+those boxes you brought on board. You said they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> were rations, but
+they haven't been opened in six days. I have an idea what they mean,
+but you tell me."</p>
+
+<p>The four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"They could be," said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped on
+Weald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has
+decided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother
+with you. Is that right?"</p>
+
+<p>The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
+into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
+provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
+not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
+the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
+blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
+four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
+in emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were ordered
+to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald a
+little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
+day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
+imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
+claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
+do anything of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
+closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
+heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
+went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
+attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> and
+he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and
+reproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"</p>
+
+<p>He collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
+comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
+throat. Murgatroyd looked agitated. He said anxiously, "<i>Chee? Chee?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Calhoun. "They'll wake up presently."</p>
+
+<p>Maril said in a tense and desperate whisper, "You're betraying us!
+You're going to take us to Weald!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Calhoun. "We'll only orbit around it. First, though, I want
+to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the
+way. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while a
+fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable
+Cepheids of known period."</p>
+
+<p>He put the four boxes carefully in the disposal unit. He operated it.
+The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of
+metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control desk.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate in
+the spread of plagues, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be
+another matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald
+busy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some
+food for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is thousands of
+tons, or tens of thousands." Then he said, "Overdrive coming,
+Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"</p>
+
+<p>The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied
+the change. Murgatroyd burped.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+<h2>6</h2>
+
+
+<p>A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright
+half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had icecaps at its
+poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had
+that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas
+which was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free,
+and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to
+man.</p>
+
+<p>There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a
+sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,
+still bound hand and foot upon the control room floor. Murgatroyd
+regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry
+forehead wrinkled helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as
+his search had no result. "They can't! It would be too sensible for
+them to have done it!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd said "<i>Chee!</i>" in a subdued voice.</p>
+
+<p>"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar
+orbit would be ridiculous! They&mdash;" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of
+course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"</p>
+
+<p>He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian
+landing-grid, which was mapped in the Sector Directory, against the
+look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible
+outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar system
+drive.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the
+first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in
+space, and not have it interfere with traffic,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> in what sort of orbit
+and at what distance will you put it?"</p>
+
+<p>Maril did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Obviously," said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from the
+landing-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it on
+the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the
+way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night
+without having to calculate anything.</p>
+
+<p>"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in
+exactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above the
+equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on
+the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the
+landing-grid and directly over the equator."</p>
+
+<p>He scribbled for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few
+hundred, and&mdash;here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!"</p>
+
+<p>He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushed
+the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The
+sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.
+Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once
+more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,
+handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said
+depressedly, "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, and
+there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody
+bumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do
+want to bump, but gently."</p>
+
+<p>Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something dark
+appeared, and then straight lines and exact curv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>ings. Even Maril,
+despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly
+larger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Ship
+maneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. A
+fourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.</p>
+
+<p>They were spaceships, huge by comparison with <i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>. They
+floated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not in
+formation. They were not at even distances from each other. They did
+not point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like
+derelicts.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there
+came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance
+out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med
+Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast surface of welded metal.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun relaxed. He opened a wall panel and brought out a vacuum suit.
+He began briskly to get it on.</p>
+
+<p>"Things moving smoothly," he commented. "We weren't challenged. So
+it's extremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor
+ought to begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now
+whether I'm a hero or in sure-enough trouble!"</p>
+
+<p>Maril said drearily, "I don't know what you've done, except&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun blinked at her, in the act of hauling the vacuum suit up his
+chest and over his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogation
+lessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them
+dump germ-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see the
+point? These are space ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They're
+not manned and they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing but
+sky-riding storage bins!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his arms
+into the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air tanks over
+his shoulder and hooked them to the suit.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back," he said. "I hope with good news. I've reason to be
+hopeful, though, because these Wealdians are very practical men. They
+have things all prepared and tidy. I suspect I'll find these ships
+with stores of air and fuel, maybe even food, so that if Weald should
+manage to make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'd
+only have to bring out crews."</p>
+
+<p>He lifted the space helmet down from its rack and put it on. He tested
+it, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data from
+the lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above his
+eye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking through
+the helmet's opened faceplate.</p>
+
+<p>"If our friends should wake up before I get back," he added, "please
+restrain them. I'd hate to be marooned."</p>
+
+<p>He went waddling into the airlock with the coil of space rope over one
+vacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him. A little
+later Maril heard the outer lock open. Then silence.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd whimpered a little. Maril shivered. Calhoun had gone out of
+the ship to nothingness. He'd said that what he was looking for, and
+what he'd found, was forty-two thousand miles from Weald. One could
+imagine falling forty-two thousand miles, where one couldn't imagine
+falling a light-year.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was walking on the steel plates of a gigantic spaceship which
+floated among dozens of its fellows, all seeming derelicts and
+seemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on the nearest because of
+magnetic-soled shoes. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> trusted his life to them and to a flimsy
+space rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship's airlock.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed. A clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to the
+second which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Very
+small and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing
+utter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Maril found herself listening tensely for something else. One of the
+four bound blueskins snored, and stirred, and slept again. Murgatroyd
+gazed about unhappily, and swung down to the control room floor, and
+then paused for lack of any place to go or anything to do. He sat down
+and began half-heartedly to lick his whiskers. Maril stirred.</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd looked at her hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee?</i>" he asked shrilly.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. It became a habit to act as if Murgatroyd were a
+human being. "No," she said unsteadily. "Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>More time passed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintest
+of clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in the
+airlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises.</p>
+
+<p>The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fog
+came out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of the
+lock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly
+heavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two spacesuits and a
+curious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside his
+faceplate, and said briskly, "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it,
+will you, Maril?"</p>
+
+<p>He began to work his way out of his own vacuum-suit.</p>
+
+<p>"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled <i>and</i> provisioned. A practical
+tribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> off as soon as
+they're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat
+enough to keep a ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively
+near zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."</p>
+
+<p>He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where
+their beams played. But the metal spacesuits glistened and steamed,
+and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and
+utterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, which
+re-evaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and was
+immediately replaced.</p>
+
+<p>"Item," said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suit
+sleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping
+friends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble,
+provided only that nobody comes out here to bother us before they
+leave."</p>
+
+<p>He shed the last of the spacesuit, stepping out of its legs.</p>
+
+<p>"And," he finished wryly, "I brought back an emergency supply of ship
+provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough to
+feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving."</p>
+
+<p>Maril said, "But there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!"</p>
+
+<p>He gaped at her.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think we're here for?"</p>
+
+<p>He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness.
+It was not a difficult task. The dosage mixed in the coffee given them
+as a graduation ceremony&mdash;the ceremony which had consisted solely of
+drinking coffee and passing out&mdash;allowed for waking-up processes.
+Calhoun took the precaution of disarming them first, but presently
+four hot-eyed young men glared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm calling," said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> in his
+hand, "I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There've
+been unmanageable crop surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government
+grimly rations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been
+buying surplus grain to keep the price up.</p>
+
+<p>"To save storage costs, it's loaded the grain into out-of-date
+spaceships it once used to stand sentry over Dara to keep it out of
+space when there was another famine there. Those ships have been put
+out in orbit, where we're hooked on to one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've brought
+spacesuits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, and
+I've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling for
+volunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it's
+needed. Do I get any volunteers?"</p>
+
+<p>He got four. Not immediately, because they were ashamed that he'd made
+it impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and now
+offered something much better to make up for it. They raged. But half
+a million bushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise die
+might live.</p>
+
+<p>Ultimately, truculently, first one and then another angrily agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Calhoun. "Now, how many of you dare risk the trip alone?
+I've got one grain ship warming up. There are plenty of others around
+us. Every one of you can take a ship and half a million bushels to
+Dara, if you have the nerve!"</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere changed. Suddenly they clamored for the task he offered
+them. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them and
+taught them until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd
+pinned their ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy
+ships and un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>imaginable quantities of food with which to break the
+famine....</p>
+
+<p>There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so far
+warming up. Three more had to be entered, in spacesuits, and each had
+to have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it,
+and at least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up to
+reasonable temperature for use on the journey.</p>
+
+<p>Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length of
+journey that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun
+had to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sun
+under all circumstances and aim for it with the requisite high
+precision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout. When
+all that was accomplished, Calhoun might reasonably hope that they'd
+arrive. But it wasn't a certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the fine
+tolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than their
+teacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because their
+messages might be picked up on Weald.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, for this high heroic action to be successful, it had to be
+performed with the stealth of sneak-thieves.</p>
+
+<p>What seemed a long time passed. The one ship turned slowly upon some
+unseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A
+second twisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar
+system drive to get clear of the rest. The fourth&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara at
+many times the speed of light. Another. Two more.</p>
+
+<p>That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness.
+And Calhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in
+such a pathetically small number of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> days. If the four ships reached
+Dara, their pilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with
+that estate over their bitter objection. But they would glory in
+it&mdash;if they reached Dara.</p>
+
+<p>Maril looked at him with very strange eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We hang around," said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Weald
+to find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort of
+signal when a ship goes into overdrive. Usually it doesn't mean a
+thing. Nobody pays any attention. But if somebody comes out here...."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be regrettable," said Calhoun. He was suddenly very tired.
+"It'll spoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more
+food, like interstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'll
+expect us to try it again. They might get set to fight. Or they might
+simply land the rest of these ships."</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd realized what you were about," said Maril, "I'd have joined in
+the lessons. I could have piloted a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't have wanted to," said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn't
+want to be a heroine. No normal girl does."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Korvan," said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him. He's
+been trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins.
+All he's accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly. He
+wouldn't feel comfortable with a girl who'd helped make starving
+unnecessary. He'd admire you politely, but he'd never marry you. And
+you know it."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, but it was not easy to tell whether she denied the
+reaction of Korvan, whom Calhoun had never met, or denied that he was
+more important to her than anything else. The last was what Calhoun
+plainly implied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem to be trying to be a hero!" she protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd enjoy it," admitted Calhoun, "but I have a job to do. It's got to
+be done. It's more important than being admired."</p>
+
+<p>"You could take another ship back," she told him. "It would be worth
+more to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realize
+that you'd planned everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Calhoun, "but you've no idea how much this ship matters to
+Dara!"</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his
+ears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave
+lengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no
+mention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft.
+There was no mention of the ships at all. There was plenty of mention
+of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going
+on to see which political party could promise the most complete
+protection against blueskins.</p>
+
+<p>After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung
+the Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around
+which Dara rolled. He said, "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and the
+Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signal
+could come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be no
+sound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun yawned again.</p>
+
+<p>"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily,
+"and I'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on
+Dara. It's one way not to feel hungry. And one dreams such delicious
+meals! But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maril said tensely, "You're going back? After they took the ship from
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,
+and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing as
+a blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got
+to do something to make sure there are no more famines."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him oddly.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I didn't get
+much sleep on the way here, while running a seminar on astrogation. I
+think I'll take a nap."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leave
+him alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let a
+Med Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,
+turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantly
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
+happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very
+far away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads of
+grain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each
+great ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.</p>
+
+<p>Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to
+their stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion had
+been explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to be
+counted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but
+the tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible created
+things.</p>
+
+<p>It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it
+was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> on which the
+human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of
+the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone
+with no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.</p>
+
+<p>On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhat
+distastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him
+in a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with
+his furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter
+of six or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of
+a long process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and again
+culturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculated
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Better wait until tomorrow," he observed, and put the bit of clear
+liquid in a temperature-controlled place of safekeeping.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "How
+about some music?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtape
+into it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she
+had never heard before. It was another device to counteract isolation
+and monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing its
+effectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.</p>
+
+<p>Any indulgence frequently repeated would become a habit, in the sense
+that it would give no special pleasure when indulged in, but would
+make for stress if it were omitted. Calhoun deliberately went for
+weeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to be
+looked forward to and cherished.</p>
+
+<p>When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> with
+tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers,
+Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like
+other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what
+other people have to get in crazy ways&mdash;making their work feed their
+vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can
+put your whole mind on your work."</p>
+
+<p>He thought it over.</p>
+
+<p>"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," he
+admitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites.
+But there are instincts...."</p>
+
+<p>She waited. He did not finish.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do about the instincts that work and music and such
+things can't satisfy?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun grinned wryly, "I'm stern with them. I have to be."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for
+the night. She went.</p>
+
+<p>It was after breakfast time of the next ship-day when he got out the
+sample of clear liquid he'd worked so long to produce.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see how it works," he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case of
+a slip-up. It's perfectly safe so long as he's aboard and there are
+only the two of us."</p>
+
+<p>She watched as he injected half a cc. under his own skin. Then she
+shivered a little.</p>
+
+<p>"What will it do?"</p>
+
+<p>"That remains to be seen." He paused a moment. "You and I," he said
+with some dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catch
+something from me, it will be infectious indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him utterly without comprehension.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He took his own temperature. He brought out the folios which were his
+orders, covering each of the planets he should give a standard Medical
+Service inspection. Weald was there. Dara wasn't. But a Med Service
+man has much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routine
+of normal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations,
+he necessarily has much more. Calhoun went over the folios.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later he took his temperature again. He looked pleased. He
+made an entry in the ship's log. Two hours later yet he found himself
+drinking thirstily and looked more pleased still.</p>
+
+<p>He made another entry in the log and matter-of-factly drew a small
+quantity of blood from his own vein and called to Murgatroyd.
+Murgatroyd submitted amiably to the very trivial operation Calhoun
+carried out. Calhoun put away the equipment and saw Maril staring at
+him with a certain look of shock.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he's your friend!" said Maril.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd heard the familiar word. He said, "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," agreed Calhoun. "We'll all have some."</p>
+
+<p>He made coffee. Murgatroyd sipped at the cup especially made for his
+little paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had no
+pain nerves. It itched. But he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> perfectly content. Murgatroyd
+would always be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and
+with a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long
+enough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to
+Murgatroyd's heartbeat, while Murgatroyd dozed.</p>
+
+<p>"Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, and
+ninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four."</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later, still not stirring
+to disturb Murgatroyd, he had her write down another time and sequence
+of figures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour later
+still, a third set. But then he put Murgatroyd down, well satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>He took his own temperature. He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Murgatroyd and I have one more chore to do," he told her. "Would you
+go in the other cabin for a moment?"</p>
+
+<p>Disturbed, she went into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a small sample
+of blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroyd
+submitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhoun
+had diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it up
+thoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and white
+corpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered that
+Calhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of
+antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would
+assuredly take care of two patients.</p>
+
+<p>But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of
+those scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures
+from store.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back.</p>
+
+<p>"It was nothing," he explained, "but you might have felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+uncomfortable. We simply had a bit of Med Service routine that had to
+be gone through. It's all right now."</p>
+
+<p>He offered no further explanation. She said, "I'll fix lunch." She
+hesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do you
+want to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service
+fault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations until
+everybody eats."</p>
+
+<p>He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he
+considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening
+meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily.
+He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated
+game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of
+probability increased one's chance of winning.</p>
+
+<p>By midnight she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun
+was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was
+satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive off
+Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the
+other cabin.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made for
+him, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood pressure after the injection of
+the same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself and
+later, without contact with him or the culture, in Maril. He put a
+professional comment at the end:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics
+during long storage in the spore state. It received and reproduced
+rapidly. I injected .5 cc. under my skin and in less than one hour
+my temperature was 30.8&deg; C. An hour later it was 30.9&deg; C. This was
+its peak. It immediately returned to normal. The only other
+observable symptom was slightly increased thirst. Bloodpressure
+and pulse remained normal. The other person in the Med Ship
+displayed the same symptoms, in prompt and complete repetition,
+without physical contact.</i></p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+<p>He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole, his tail
+draped carefully over his nose.</p>
+
+<p>The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship-time. Calhoun
+made contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost two hours later, at 1500 hours ship-time, when the
+people of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was to be
+executed immediately.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>7</h2>
+
+
+<p>From the viewpoint of Darians, who were also blueskins, the decision
+of Calhoun's guilt and the decision to execute him were reasonable
+enough. Maril protested fiercely, and her testimony agreed with
+Calhoun's in every respect, but from a blueskin viewpoint their own
+statements were damning.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only
+semiskilled space pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
+Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there
+he had instructed them in modern guidance methods for ships of space.</p>
+
+<p>So far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more
+competent pilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for
+example, to raid the enormous cattle herds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> there. And he'd had them
+drive the Med Ship to Weald, against which there could be no
+objection.</p>
+
+<p>But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them
+drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd
+been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots
+off separately, so he and Maril claimed, in huge ships crammed with
+grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody believed in shiploads of grain to be had for the taking. They
+did know that the only four partially experienced space pilots on Dara
+had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent out of the ship
+after they'd been drugged.</p>
+
+<p>Had they been trained, and had they been helped or even permitted to
+sow the seeds of plague on Weald, and had they come back prepared to
+pass on training to other men to handle other space ships now
+feverishly being built in hidden places on Dara, then Dara might have
+a chance of survival.</p>
+
+<p>But a space battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous
+at best. With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So
+Calhoun, by his own story, appeared to have doomed every living being
+on Dara to massacre from the bombs of Weald.</p>
+
+<p>It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing
+in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun
+had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships
+and could build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced spacemen to
+man some ships fully and train the crews of others. If it had become
+desperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life on
+Dara would be delayed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> Dara might have gained time at least to build
+ships which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way.</p>
+
+<p>But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Weald
+already had a fleet of huge ships which only needed to be emptied of
+grain and filled with guns and men, then Dara was doomed. But if he
+did not tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So
+Calhoun would be killed.</p>
+
+<p>His execution was to take place in the open space of the landing-grid,
+with vision cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin
+planet. Half-starved men with grisly blue blotches on their skins,
+marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet
+which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in
+their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall.
+Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as
+atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death would be satisfying.</p>
+
+<p>So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered
+to him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the
+landing-grid floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire
+upon him at the same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be
+destroyed. He would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His death was remarkably close, nothing remaining but the order to
+fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything.
+One of the grain ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its
+pilot was triumphantly calling for landing coordinates. The grid
+office relayed his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to
+get it on the communication system of the whole planet.</p>
+
+<p>"Calling ground," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
+student pilots Calhoun had trained. "Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
+captured ship requests coordinates for land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>ing! Purpose of landing is
+to deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!"</p>
+
+<p>At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
+vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to
+be used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on
+its second voyage to Dara&mdash;the first had been a generation ago, when
+it threatened death and destruction&mdash;appeared as a dark pinpoint in
+the sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the
+center of the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where
+he was to have been executed.</p>
+
+<p>The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then did
+Calhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the
+grid's metal-lace wall.</p>
+
+<p>The big ship touched ground, and its exit port revolved and opened,
+and the student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handfuls of
+grain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd,
+then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoice
+when Calhoun's living body exploded into flame.</p>
+
+<p>They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the Med
+Ship, nevertheless. He was surrounded by ecstatically admiring
+citizens of Dara. They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until
+he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in
+their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and
+affection, minutes since they'd thirsted for his blood.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours after the first ship, a second landed. Dara went wild again.
+Four hours later still, the third arrived. The fourth came down to
+ground on the following day.</p>
+
+<p>When Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the second
+time his tone and manner were very dry.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> to train.
+I think it likely that we can raid the Wealdian grain fleet one more
+time, and in so doing get the beginning of a fleet for defense. I
+insist, however, that it must not be used in combat. We might as well
+be sensible about this situation! After all, four shiploads of grain
+won't break the famine! They'll help a lot, but they're only the
+beginning of what's needed for a planetary population!"</p>
+
+<p>"How much grain can we hope for?" demanded a man with a blue mark
+covering all his chin.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun told him.</p>
+
+<p>"How long before Weald can have a fleet overhead, dropping fusion
+bombs?" demanded another, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun named a time. But then he said, "I think we can keep them from
+dropping bombs if we can get the grain fleet and some capable
+astrogators."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>He told them. It was not possible to tell the whole story of what he
+considered sensible behavior. An emotional program can be presented
+and accepted immediately. A plan of action which is actually
+intelligent, considering all elements of a situation, has to be
+accepted piecemeal. Even so, the military men growled.</p>
+
+<p>"We've plenty of heavy elements," said one. "If we'd used our brains,
+we'd have more bombs than Weald can hope for! We could turn that whole
+planet into a smoking cinder!"</p>
+
+<p>"Which," said Calhoun acidly, "would give you some satisfaction but
+not an ounce of food! And food's more important than satisfaction.
+Now, I'm going to take off for Weald again. I'll want somebody to
+build an emergency device for my ship, and I'll want the four pilots
+I've trained and twenty more candidates. And I'd like to have some
+decent rations! The last trip brought back two million bushels of
+grain. You can certainly spare adequate food for twenty men for a few
+days!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It took some time to get the special device constructed, but the Med
+Ship lifted in two days more. The device for which it had waited was
+simply a preventive of the disaster overtaking the ship from the mine
+on Orede. It was essentially a tank of liquid oxygen, packed in the
+space from which stores had been taken away. When the ship's air
+supply was pumped past it, first moisture and then CO<sub>2</sub> froze out.</p>
+
+<p>Then the air flowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the
+CO<sub>2</sub> with more useful breathing material. Then the moisture was
+restored to the air as it warmed again. For so long as the oxygen
+lasted, fresh air for any number of men could be kept purified and
+breathable. The Med Ship's normal equipment could take care of no more
+than ten. But with this it could journey to Weald with almost any
+complement on board.</p>
+
+<p>Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protested
+shrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closing
+airlock.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee!</i>" he said indignantly. "<i>Chee! Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Calhoun. "We'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see her
+later."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to one of the first four student pilots, who crisply made
+contact with the landing-grid office, and very efficiently supervised
+as the grid took the ship up. The other three of the four
+first-trained men explained every move to sub-classes assigned to
+each. Calhoun moved about, listening and making certain that the
+instruction was up to standard.</p>
+
+<p>He felt queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution
+in space. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside
+himself crowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each
+other's way. They trampled on each other. There was always somebody
+eating, and always somebody sleeping, and there was no need whatever
+for the back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>ground tape to keep the ship from being intolerably
+quiet. But the air system worked well enough, except once when the
+reheating unit quit and the air inside the ship went down below
+freezing before the trouble could be found and corrected.</p>
+
+<p>The journey to Weald, this time, took seven days because of the
+training program in effect. Calhoun bit his nails over the delay. But
+it was necessary for each of the students to make his own line-ups on
+Weald's sun, and compute distances, and for each of them to practise
+maneuverings that would presently be called for. Calhoun hoped
+desperately that preparations for active warfare did not move fast on
+Weald.</p>
+
+<p>He believed, however, that in the absence of direct news from Dara,
+Wealdian officials would take the normal course of politicos. They had
+proclaimed the ship from Orede an attack from Dara. Therefore, they
+would specialize on defensive measures before plumping for offense.
+They'd get patrol ships out to spot invasion ships long before they
+worked on a fleet to destroy the blueskins. It would meet the public
+demand for defense.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was right. The Med Ship made its final approach to Weald under
+Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his
+previous journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly
+accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading
+beyond two decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough
+from the Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its
+planets with the electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could
+aim for Weald itself, allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent
+motion of its image because of the limited speed of light. He tried
+the briefest of overdrive hops, and came out within the solar system
+and well inside any watching patrol.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That was pure fortune. It continued. He'd broken through the screen of
+guard ships in undetectable overdrive. He was within half an hour's
+solar system drive of the grain fleet. There was no alarm, at first.
+Of course radars spotted the Med Ship as an object, but nobody paid
+attention. It was not headed for Weald. It was probably assumed to be
+a guard boat itself. Such mistakes do happen.</p>
+
+<p>Again from the storage space from which supplies had been removed,
+Calhoun produced vacuum suits. The four first students went out, each
+escorting a less-accustomed neophyte and all fastened firmly together
+with space ropes. They warmed the interiors of four ships and went on
+to others. Presently there were eight ships making ready for an
+interstellar journey, each with a scared but resolute new pilot
+familiarizing himself with its controls. There were sixteen ships.
+Twenty. Twenty-three.</p>
+
+<p>A guard ship came humming out from Weald. It would be armed, of
+course. It came droning, droning up the forty-odd thousand miles from
+the planet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell
+them what was toward. The guard ship would overhear. He could not
+trust untried young men to act rationally if they were unaware and the
+guard ship arrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was inspired. He called Murgatroyd, placed him before the
+communicator, and set it at voice-only transmission. This was familiar
+enough, to Murgatroyd. He'd often seen Calhoun use a communicator.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee!</i>" shrilled Murgatroyd. "<i>Chee-chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>A startled voice came out of the speaker: "What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee</i>," said Murgatroyd zestfully.</p>
+
+<p>The communicator was talking to him. Murgatroyd adored three things,
+in order. One was Calhoun. The second was coffee. The third was
+pretending to converse like a human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> being. The speaker said
+explosively, "You there, identify yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee-chee-chee-chee!</i>" observed Murgatroyd. He wriggled with
+pleasure and added, reasonably enough, "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The communicator bawled, "Calling ground! Calling ground! Listen to
+this! Something that ain't human's talking at me on a communicator!
+Listen in an' tell me what to do!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd interposed with another shrill, "<i>Chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Then Calhoun pulled the Med Ship slowly away from the clump of
+still-lifeless grain ships. It was highly improbable that the guard
+boat would carry an electron telescope. Most likely it would have only
+an echo-radar, and so could determine only that an object of some sort
+moved of its own accord in space. Calhoun let the Med Ship accelerate.
+That would be final evidence. The grain ships were between Weald and
+its sun. Even electron telescopes on the ground&mdash;and electron
+telescopes were ultimately optical telescopes with electronic
+amplification&mdash;could not get a good image of the ship through sunlit
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee?</i>" asked Murgatroyd solicitously. "<i>Chee-chee-chee?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it blueskins?" shakily demanded the voice from the guard boat.
+"Ground! Ground! Is it blueskins?"</p>
+
+<p>A heavy, authoritative voice came in with much greater volume. "That's
+no human voice," it said harshly. "Approach its ship and send back an
+image. Don't fire first unless it heads for ground."</p>
+
+<p>The guard ship swerved and headed for the Med Ship. It was still a
+very long way off.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee-chee</i>," said Murgatroyd encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun changed the Med Ship's course. The guard ship changed course
+too. Calhoun let it draw nearer, but only a little. He led it away
+from the fleet of grain ships.</p>
+
+<p>He swung his electron telescope on them. He saw a space<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>suited figure
+outside one, safely roped, however. It was easy to guess that someone
+had meant to return to the Med Ship for orders or to make a report,
+and found the Med Ship gone. He'd go back inside and turn on a
+communicator.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee!</i>" said Murgatroyd.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy voice boomed. "You there! This is a human-occupied world! If
+you come in peace, cut your drive and let our guard ship approach!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd replied in an interested but doubtful tone. The booming
+voice bellowed. Another voice of higher authority took over.
+Murgatroyd was entranced that so many people wanted to talk to him. He
+made what for him was practically an oration. The last voice spoke
+persuasively and suavely.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee-chee-chee-chee</i>," said Murgatroyd.</p>
+
+<p>One of the grain ships flickered and ceased to be. It had gone into
+overdrive. Another. And another. Suddenly they began to flick out of
+sight by twos and threes.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chee</i>," said Murgatroyd with a note of finality.</p>
+
+<p>The last grain ship vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Calling guard ship," said Calhoun dryly. "This is Med Ship <i>Aesclipus
+Twenty</i>. I called here a couple of weeks ago. You've been talking to
+my <i>tormal</i>, Murgatroyd."</p>
+
+<p>A pause. A blank pause. Then profanity of deep and savage
+intemperance.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been on Dara," said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>Dead silence fell.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a famine there," said Calhoun deliberately. "So the grain
+ships you've had in orbit have been taken away by men from
+Dara&mdash;blueskins if you like&mdash;to feed themselves and their families.
+They've been dying of hunger and they don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> formerly suave
+voice said waspishly, "Well? The Med Service will hear of your
+interference!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself. I have a message for you.
+Dara is ready to pay for every ounce of grain and for the ships it was
+stored in. They'll pay in heavy metals&mdash;irridium, uranium, that sort
+of thing."</p>
+
+<p>The suave voice fairly curdled.</p>
+
+<p>"As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium
+melts at 1150&deg; centigrade, and tungsten at 3370&deg; and irridium at
+2350&deg;. You could load such things and melt them down in space and then
+tow them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful
+materials!"</p>
+
+<p>The suave voice was infuriated: "I'll report this! You'll suffer for
+this!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said pleasantly, "I'm sure that what I say is being recorded,
+so that I'll add that it's perfectly practical for Wealdians to land
+on Dara, take whatever property they think wise&mdash;to pay for damage
+done by blueskins, of course&mdash;and get back to Wealdian ships with
+absolutely no danger of carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the
+recording's clear...."</p>
+
+<p>He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be
+outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do
+whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting&mdash;but Calhoun did not
+use the word&mdash;and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of
+bringing back infection. He gave exact details.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said, "My radar says you've four ships converging on me to
+blast me out of space. I sign off."</p>
+
+<p>The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that
+improbably stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and
+in which physical constants were wildly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> strange. For one thing, the
+speed of light in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet.
+It was too high. For another, a ship could travel very many times
+186,000 miles per second in overdrive.</p>
+
+<p>The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and
+Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence, with only the
+small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had
+twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the
+ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and
+someone else. One need not be snobbish to wish to be alone sometimes!</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may
+remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of
+grain reaching them. Maybe, just possibly, they'll listen to me and
+act sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not
+with ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with
+bombs!"</p>
+
+<p>Driving direct, without pausing for practising, the Med Ship could
+arrive at Dara in a little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward
+to relaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an
+adequate meal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then,
+presently, he sat down to a double meal of Darian famine-rations,
+which were far from appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on
+board.</p>
+
+<p>He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went on in the
+normal, non-overdrive universe. Suns flared, and comets hurtled on
+their way, and clouds formed and dropped down rain, and all sorts of
+celestial and meteorological phenomena took place. On Weald,
+obviously, there would be purest panic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The vanishing of the grain fleet wouldn't be charged against
+twenty-four men. A Darian fleet would be suspected, and with the
+suspicion would come terror, and with terror a governmental crisis.
+Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft that could take to
+space, and the agitated improvisation of a space fleet.</p>
+
+<p>But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine
+Calhoun's instructions for equipment by which armed men could be
+landed on a plague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again.
+Military and governmental officials would come to the eminently sane
+conclusion that while Calhoun could not well take active measures
+against blueskins, as a sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would
+be on the side of law and order and propriety and justice&mdash;in short,
+of Weald. So they ordered sample anticontagion suits made according to
+Calhoun's directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.</p>
+
+<p>On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed placidly back to it, grain was
+distributed lavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal
+ration almost doubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the
+relief was great. There was considerable gratitude felt for Calhoun,
+which as usual included a lively anticipation of further favors to
+come. Maril was interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to
+discuss him, and she did his reputation no harm. That was all that
+happened on Dara....</p>
+
+<p>No. There was something else. A very curious thing, too. There was a
+spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease.
+They lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran
+a temperature which peaked at 30.9&deg; centigrade, and drank more water
+than usual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all
+about it. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+rarely recorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was
+the case here.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain ships
+would arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time they
+would make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle herds, and bring
+back incredible quantities of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almost
+everybody would get to taste meat again, which would be most
+gratifying.</p>
+
+<p>Then, the industries of Dara would labor at government-required tasks.
+An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into
+bombs&mdash;a concession by Calhoun&mdash;and plastic factories would make an
+astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy
+metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there
+would be some guns and minor items.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps somebody could have predicted any of these items in advance,
+but it was unlikely that anyone did. Nobody but Calhoun, however,
+would ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that things
+would work out. He could see a promising total result. In fact, in the
+Med Ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of his journey, he
+thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of all those
+happenings when they got mixed together.</p>
+
+<p>He got back to Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted
+her with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Something strange has happened," said Maril, very much subdued. "I
+told you that sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and
+then neither they nor their children ever have markings again."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember that you told me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said they
+only took hold of people in terribly bad physi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>cal condition, but then
+they could be passed on from mother to child, until sometimes they
+died out."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun blinked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Korvan," said Maril very carefully. "Has worked out an idea that
+that's what happens to the blueskin markings on Darians. He thinks
+that people almost dead of the plague could get the virus, and if they
+recovered from the plague pass the virus on and be blueskins."</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting," said Calhoun, noncommittally.</p>
+
+<p>"And when we went to Weald," said Maril very carefully indeed, "you
+were working with some culture material. You wrote quite a lot about
+it in the ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? And
+Murgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" She
+moistened her lips. "You said that if infection passed between us,
+something would be very infectious indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is a long discussion," said Calhoun. "Does it arrive at a
+point?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does," said Maril. "Thousands of people are having their
+pigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And Korvan
+has found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they
+felt feverish and very thirsty, and then felt all right again. You
+tried out something that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too,
+in the ship. Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that
+is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are
+always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence
+of one that's making <i>blueskin</i> no longer a word with any meaning."</p>
+
+<p>"Remarkable!" said Calhoun.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic that
+wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Calhoun said in feigned astonishment, "How can you think such a thing,
+Maril?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I was there," said Maril. She said, somehow desperately, "I
+know you did it! But the question is, are you going to tell? When
+people find they're not blueskins any longer, when there's no such
+thing as a blueskin any longer, will you tell them why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself. He's
+found the proof. He's very proud. I'd have to tell him how the ideas
+got into his head if you were going to tell. And he'd be ashamed and
+angry."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun considered, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>"How it happened doesn't matter," he said at last. "The idea of
+anybody doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't
+get about. So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover
+what's happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened. But not
+why."</p>
+
+<p>She read his face carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it
+was that way."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded
+and went away.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later the Wealdian space fleet was reported massed in space
+and driving for Dara.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>8</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were small scout ships which came on ahead of the main fleet.
+They'd originally been guard boats, intended for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> solar system duty
+only and quite incapable of overdrive. They'd come from Weald in the
+cargo holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. The
+scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet,
+of all they might see before they were shot down. They found the
+landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship,
+<i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They searched here and there. They flittered to and fro, scanning wide
+bands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways and
+industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. It
+looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former
+grain ships which Calhoun had said the blueskins had seized and rushed
+away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.</p>
+
+<p>Dara offered no opposition to the ships. Nothing rose to space to
+oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion
+of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of
+military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main
+fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no
+sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by
+which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a
+pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it
+might be dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensive
+movement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground.
+With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, there
+was something like an embarrassed pause. The Wealdian ships were ready
+to bomb. They were less anxious to be vaporized by possible suicide
+dashes of defending ships which might blow themselves up near contact
+with their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> to make a
+mere threat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material
+for total devastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or
+thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the
+world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make
+a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products. And they could settle
+down and kill every living thing not destroyed by the explosions
+themselves. Even the creatures of the deepest oceans would die of
+deadly, purposely-contrived fallout particles.</p>
+
+<p>The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness. It found no
+capacity for defense on Dara. It moved forward.</p>
+
+<p>But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara. It said
+that a ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space.
+The Darian fleet now hurtled toward Weald. It was a fleet of
+thirty-seven giant ships. They carried such-and-such bombs in
+such-and-such quantities. Unless its orders were countermanded, it
+would deliver those bombs on Weald, set to explode. If Weald bombed
+Dara, the orders could not be withdrawn. So Weald could bomb Dara. It
+could destroy all life on the pariah planet. But Weald would die with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The fleet ceased its advance. The situation was a stalemate with pure
+desperation on one side and pure frustration on the other. This was no
+way to end the war. Neither planet could trust the other, even for
+minutes. If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now was
+possible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack at
+some other moment. Ultimately one or the other must perish, and the
+survivor would be the one most skilled in treachery.</p>
+
+<p>But then the pariah planet made a new proposal. It would send a
+messenger ship to stop its own fleet's bombardment if Weald would
+accept payment of the grain ships and their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>cargos. It would pay in
+ingots of irridium and uranium and tungsten, and gold if Weald wished
+it, for all damages Weald might claim.</p>
+
+<p>It would even pay indemnity for the miners of Orede, who had died by
+accident but perhaps in some sense through its fault. It would pay.
+But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomic fire and the fleet of
+Weald would have no home planet to return to.</p>
+
+<p>This proposal seemed both craven and foolish. It would allow the fleet
+of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It
+seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for
+blueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender.</p>
+
+<p>The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierce
+resentment filled the pariah planet's people. There was almost
+revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopeless and however
+fatal. But not all of Dara realized that a vital change had come about
+in the state of things on Dara. The enemy fleet had not a hint of it.</p>
+
+<p>In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of
+Dara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasing
+arrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald came
+heavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched
+gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they
+had been assured was theirs. The ship's outer hull would be sterilized
+before it returned to Weald, of course. And there was adequate
+protection for the landing-party.</p>
+
+<p>Men came out of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparent
+sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested,
+and which were perfect protection against contagion. They were double
+garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible
+envelope.</p>
+
+<p>Men wearing such sag-suits could walk about on Dara. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> could work
+on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must
+remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they
+would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled
+around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra
+assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would
+burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ever
+having come within two layers of plastic of infection.</p>
+
+<p>What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before it
+was returned to Weald. Metals could be melted, if necessary. Gems
+could be sterilized. It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realize
+that blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed. There was only
+one bit of irrelevant information the space fleet of Weald did not
+have.</p>
+
+<p>That information was that the people of Dara weren't blueskins any
+longer. There'd been a trivial epidemic....</p>
+
+<p>The sag-suited men of Weald went zestfully about their business. They
+took over the landing-grid's operation, driving the Darian operators
+away. For the first time in history the operators of a landing-grid
+wore make-up to look like they did have blue pigment in their skins.
+They didn't. The Wealdian landing-party tested the grid's operation.
+They brought down another giant ship. Then another. And another.</p>
+
+<p>Parties in the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were the
+huge stockpiles of precious metals, brought in readiness to be
+surrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these into
+the holds of the ships of Weald. Some went forthrightly after personal
+loot.</p>
+
+<p>They came upon very few Darians. Those they saw kept sullenly away
+from them. They entered shops and took what they fancied. They
+zestfully removed the treasure of banks.</p>
+
+<p>Triumphant and scornful reports went up to the hovering great ships.
+The blueskins, said the reports, were spiritless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> and cowardly. They
+permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had
+been observed that the population was streaming out of the city,
+fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins
+had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, but
+there was more to be taken.</p>
+
+<p>More ships came down, and more. Some of the first, heavily loaded,
+were lifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of
+their hulls began. There was jealousy among the ships in space for
+those upon the ground. The first-landed ships had had their choice of
+loot. There were squabblings about priorities, now that the navy of
+Weald plainly had a license to steal. There was confusion among the
+members of the landing-parties. Discipline disappeared. Men in plastic
+sag-suits roved about as individuals, seeking what they might loot.</p>
+
+<p>There were armed and alerted landing-parties around the grid itself,
+of course, but the capital city of Dara lay open. Men coming back with
+loot found their ships already lifted off to make room for others.
+They were pushed into re-embarking-parties of other ships. There were
+more and more men to be found on ships where they did not belong, and
+more and more not to be found where they did.</p>
+
+<p>By the time half the fleet had been aground, there was no longer any
+pretense of holding a ship down until all its crew returned. There
+were too many other ships' companies clamoring for their turn to loot.
+The rosters of many ships, indeed, bore no particular relationship to
+the men actually on board.</p>
+
+<p>There were less than fifteen ships whose to-be-fumigated holds were
+still emptied, when the watchful government of Dara broadcast a new
+message to the invaders. It requested that the looting stop. No matter
+what payment Weald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> claimed, it had taken payment five times over. Now
+was time to stop.</p>
+
+<p>It was amusing. The space admiral of Weald ordered his ships alerted
+for action. The message ship, ordering the Darian fleet away from
+Weald, had been sent off long since. No other ship could get away now!
+The Darians could take their choice: accept the consequences of
+surrender, or the fleet would rise to throw down bombs.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun was asking politely to be taken to the Wealdian admiral when
+the trouble began. It wasn't on the ground, at all. Everything was
+under splendid control where a landing force occupied the grid and all
+the ground immediately about it. The space admiral had headquarters in
+the landing-grid office. Reports came in, orders were issued,
+admirably crisp salutes were exchanged among sag-suited men.
+Everything was in perfect shape there.</p>
+
+<p>But there was panic among the ships in space. Communicators gave off
+horrified, panic-stricken yells. There were screamings. Intelligible
+communications ceased. Ships plunged crazily this way and that. Some
+vanished in overdrive. At least one plunged at full power into a
+Darian ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The space admiral found himself in command of fifteen ships only out
+of all his former force. The rest of the fleet went through a period
+of hysterical madness. In some ships it lasted for minutes only. In
+others it went on for half an hour or more. Then they hung overhead,
+but did not reply to calls.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun arrived at the spaceport with Murgatroyd riding on his
+shoulder. A bewildered officer in a sag-suit halted him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come," said Calhoun, "to speak to the admiral. My name is
+Calhoun and I'm Med Service, and I think I met the admiral at a
+banquet a few weeks ago. He'll remember me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to wait," protested the officer. "There's some trouble&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Calhoun. "I know about it. I helped design it. I want to
+explain it to the admiral. He needs to know what's happened, if he's
+to take appropriate measures."</p>
+
+<p>There were jitterings. Many men in sag-suits had still no idea that
+anything had gone wrong. Some appeared, brightly carrying loot. Some
+hung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waiting
+their turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of
+their suits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic
+and happy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich
+they were going to be back on Weald.</p>
+
+<p>But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. There
+was strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdian
+admiral.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to explain something," said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situation
+has changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which covered
+him almost like a gift-wrapped parcel.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quick!" he rasped.</p>
+
+<p>"First," said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins. An epidemic of
+something or other has made the blue patches on the skins of Darians
+fade out. There have always been some who didn't have blue patches.
+Now nobody has them."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" rasped the admiral. "And what has that got to do with this
+situation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, everything," said Calhoun mildly. "It seems that Darians can
+pass for Wealdians whenever they please. That they <i>are</i> passing for
+Wealdians. That they've been mixing with your men, wearing sag-suits
+exactly like the one you're wearing now. They've been going aboard
+your ships in the confusion of returning looters. There's not a ship
+now aloft,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> which has been aground today, which hasn't from one to
+fifteen Darians&mdash;no longer blueskins&mdash;on board."</p>
+
+<p>The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't take your fleet back to Weald," said Calhoun gently, "if
+you believe its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara
+plague. You wouldn't be allowed to land, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>The admiral said through stiff lips, "I'll blast&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Calhoun, again gently. "When you ordered all ships alerted
+for action, the Darians on each ship released panic gas. They only
+needed tiny, pocket-sized containers of the gas for the job. They had
+them. They only needed to use air tanks from their sag-suits to
+protect themselves against the gas. They kept them handy.</p>
+
+<p>"On nearly all your ships aloft your crews are crazy from panic gas.
+They'll stay that way until the air is changed. Darians have
+barricaded themselves in the control rooms of most if not all your
+ships. You haven't got a fleet. The few ships who will obey your
+orders&mdash;if they drop one bomb, our fleet off Weald will drop fifty.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you'd better order offensive action. Instead, I think
+you'd better have your fleet medical officers come and learn some of
+the facts of life. There's no need for war between Dara and Weald, but
+if you insist...."</p>
+
+<p>The admiral made a choking noise. He could have ordered Calhoun
+killed, but there was a certain appalling fact. The men aground from
+the fleet were breathing Wealdian air from tanks. It would last so
+long only. If they were taken on board the still obedient ships
+overhead, Darians would unquestionably be mixed with them. There was
+no way to take off the parties now aground without exposing them to
+contact with Darians, on the ground or in the ships. There was no way
+to sort out the Darians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I will give the orders," said the admiral thickly. "I do not know
+what you devils plan, but&mdash;I do not know how to stop you."</p>
+
+<p>"All that's necessary," said Calhoun warmly, "is an open mind. There's
+a misunderstanding to be cleared up, and some principles of planetary
+health practises to be explained, and a certain amount of prejudice
+that has to be thrown away. But nobody need die of changing their
+minds. The Interstellar Medical Service has proved that over and
+over!"</p>
+
+<p>Murgatroyd, perched on his shoulder, felt that it was time to take
+part in the conversation. He said, "<i>Chee-chee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Calhoun. "We do want to get the job done. We're behind
+schedule now."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was not, of course, possible for Calhoun to leave immediately. He
+had to preside at various meetings of the medical officers of the
+fleet and the health officials of Dara. He had to make explanations,
+and correct misapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological
+experiments as would prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no
+longer a plague on Dara, whatever had been the case three generations
+before.</p>
+
+<p>He had to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian
+doctor&mdash;one of his names was Korvan&mdash;rather condescendingly
+demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product
+quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a
+very trivial epidemic of such and such.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun regarded that young man with a detached interest. Maril
+thought him wonderful, even if she had to give him the material for
+his work. He agreed with her that he was wonderful. Calhoun shrugged
+and went on with his own work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The return of loot, mutual, full, and complete agreement that Darians
+were no longer carriers of plague, if they had ever been&mdash;unless Weald
+convinced other worlds of this, Weald itself would join Dara in
+isolation from neighboring worlds. A messenger ship had to recall the
+twenty-seven ships once floating in orbit about Weald. Most of them
+would be used for some time, to bring beef from Orede. Some would haul
+more grain from Weald. It would be paid for. There would be a need for
+commercial missions to be exchanged between Weald and Dara. There
+would have to be....</p>
+
+<p>It was a full week before he could go to the little Med Ship and
+prepare for departure. Even then there were matters to be attended to.
+All the food-supplies that had been removed could not be replaced.
+There were biological samples to be replaced and some to be destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Maril came to the Med Ship again when he was almost ready to leave.
+She did not seem comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted you to meet Korvan," she said regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I met him," said Calhoun. "I think he will be a most prominent
+citizen, in time. He has all the talents for it."</p>
+
+<p>Maril smiled very faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't admire him."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't say that," protested Calhoun. "After all, he is desirable
+to you, which is something I couldn't manage."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't try," said Maril. "Just as I didn't try to be fascinating
+to you. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun spread out his hands. But he looked at Maril with respect. Not
+every woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelled
+to make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do with
+desirability or charm or anything else.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to marry him," he said. "I hope you'll be very happy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's the man I want," said Maril frankly. "And I doubt he'll ever
+look at another woman. He looks forward to splendid discoveries. I
+wish he didn't."</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said
+thoughtfully, "There's something you could do. It needs to be done.
+The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a
+number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan
+would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter.
+But they should be known...."</p>
+
+<p>Maril said, "I can guess what you mean. I dropped hints about the way
+the blueskin markings went away, yes. You've got books for me?"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun nodded. He found them.</p>
+
+<p>"If we had only fallen in love with each other, Maril, we'd be a team!
+Too bad! These are a wedding present you'll do well to hide."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands in his.</p>
+
+<p>"I like you almost as much as I like Murgatroyd! Yes! Korvan will
+never know, and he'll be a great man." Then she added defensively,
+"But I don't think he'll only discover things from hints I drop him.
+He'll make wonderful discoveries."</p>
+
+<p>"Of which," said Calhoun, "the most remarkable is you. Good luck,
+Maril!"</p>
+
+<p>She went away smiling. But she wiped her eyes when she was out of the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the Med Ship lifted. Calhoun aimed it for the next planet on
+the list of those he was to visit. After this one more he'd return to
+sector headquarters with a biting report to make on the way things had
+been handled before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the stars went out and there was silence, and privacy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> and a
+faint, faint, almost unbearable series of background sounds which kept
+the Med Ship from being totally unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Long, long days later the ship broke out of overdrive and Calhoun
+guided it to a round and sunlit world. In due time he thumbed the
+communicator button.</p>
+
+<p>"Calling ground," he said crisply. "Calling ground! Med Ship
+<i>Aesclipus Twenty</i> reporting arrival and asking coordinates for
+landing. Purpose of landing is planetary health inspection. Our mass
+is fifty standard tons."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause while the beamed message went many, many thousands
+of miles. Then the speaker said, "<i>Aesclipus Twenty</i>, repeat your
+identification!"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun repeated it patiently. Murgatroyd watched with bright eyes.
+Perhaps he hoped to be allowed to have another long conversation with
+somebody by communicator.</p>
+
+<p>"You are warned," said the communicator sternly, "that any deceit or
+deception about your identity or purpose in landing will be severely
+punished. We take few chances, here! If you wish to land
+notwithstanding this warning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming in," said Calhoun. "Give me the coordinates."</p>
+
+<p>He wrote them down. His expression was slightly pained. The Med Ship
+drove on, in solar system drive. Murgatroyd said, "<i>Chee-chee? Chee?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Murgatroyd! Here we go again!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<h3>FEAR RIDES THE ROCKETS</h3>
+<p class="blockquot">The Interstellar Medical Service was just about the only remaining
+galactic organization that every one of the hundreds of inhabited
+planets respected. So when their service broke down in Star Sector
+Twelve, it created a very dangerous situation.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">When Calhoun took his Med ship out of overdrive near that sector's
+planet Weald, he was vaguely aware of the risks. But the crisis came
+home to him with a crash the moment he radioed in for landing
+coordinates.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Contamination! Full mobilization! Red alert! Death to blueskins!"
+Such were the nature of his greetings.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">And it began to look like a case of the cosmic jitters that only the
+most drastic of orbital surgery could cure.</p>
+
+<p>Murray Leinster, whose real name is Will F. Jenkins, has been
+entertaining the public with his exciting fiction for several decades.
+Called the dean of modern science-fiction, he was writing these
+amazing super-science adventures back in the early twenties before
+there ever was such a thing as an all-fantasy magazine. His short
+stories, novelettes, and serial novels have appeared in most of the
+major American magazines, both slick and pulp, and many have been
+reprinted all over the world. He has made a distinguished name for
+himself (or rather two names) in the fields of adventure, historical,
+western, sea, and suspense stories.</p>
+
+<p>Ace Books has still available the following Murray Leinster novels:
+CITY ON THE MOON (D-277), THE PIRATES OF ZAN and THE MUTANT WEAPON
+(D-403), and THE FORGOTTEN PLANET (D-528).
+</p>
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<h3>
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+
+
+<p>If you are missing any of these, they can be obtained directly from
+the publisher by sending the indicated sum, plus 5&cent; handling fee, to
+Ace Books, Inc. (Sales Dept.), 23 West 47th St., New York 36, N. Y.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: This World Is Taboo
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS WORLD IS TABOO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's note:
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright
+                   on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              THIS WORLD
+                               IS TABOO
+
+
+                                  by
+                           MURRAY LEINSTER
+
+
+
+
+                           ACE BOOKS, INC.
+               23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THIS WORLD IS TABOO
+
+1
+
+
+The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange
+and the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the
+Milky Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an
+unaccustomed angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying
+magnitudes.
+
+But Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to
+port, which was good. A breakout at no more than sixty light-hours
+from one's destination wasn't bad, in a strange sector of the galaxy
+and after three light-years of journeying blind.
+
+"Arise and shine, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "Comb your whiskers. Get
+set to astonish the natives!"
+
+A sleepy, small, shrill voice said: "_Chee!_"
+
+Murgatroyd the _tormal_ came crawling out of the small cubbyhole which
+was his own. He blinked at Calhoun.
+
+"We're due to land shortly," Calhoun observed. "You will impress the
+local inhabitants. I will get unpopular. According to the records,
+there's been no Med Ship inspection here for twelve standard years.
+And that was practically no inspection, to judge by the report."
+
+Murgatroyd said: "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers and
+then his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and looked
+interestedly at Calhoun. _Tormals_ are companionable small animals.
+They are charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deep
+satisfaction in imitating the actions of humans, as parrots and
+mynahs and parakeets imitate human speech. But _tormals_ have certain
+valuable, genetically transmitted talents which make them much more
+valuable than mere companions or pets.
+
+Calhoun got a light-reading for the banded sun. It could hardly be an
+accurate measure of distance, but it was a guide.
+
+"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd!" he said.
+
+Murgatroyd watched. He saw Calhoun make certain gestures which
+presaged discomfort. He popped back into his cubbyhole. Calhoun threw
+the overdrive switch and the Med Ship flicked back into that
+questionable state of being in which velocities of hundreds of times
+that of light are possible. The sensation of going into overdrive was
+unpleasant. A moment later, the sensation of coming out was no less
+so. Calhoun had experienced it often enough, and still didn't like it.
+
+The sun Weald burned huge and terrible in space. It was close, now.
+Its disk covered half a degree of arc.
+
+"Very neat," observed Calhoun. "Weald Three is our port, Murgatroyd.
+The plane of the ecliptic would be ... Hm...."
+
+He swung the outside electron telescope, picked up a nearby bright
+object, enlarged its image to show details, and checked it against the
+local star-pilot. He calculated a moment. The distance was too short
+for even the briefest of overdrive hops, but it would take time to get
+there on solar-system drive.
+
+He thumbed down the communicator button and spoke into a microphone.
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_ reporting arrival and asking coordinates
+for landing," he said matter-of-factly. "Purpose of landing is
+planetary health inspection. Our mass is fifty tons, standard. We
+should arrive at a landing position in something under four hours.
+Repeat. Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_...."
+
+He finished the regular second transmission and made coffee for
+himself while he waited for an answer. Murgatroyd came out for a cup
+of coffee for himself. Murgatroyd adored coffee. In minutes he held a
+tiny cup in a furry small paw and sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.
+
+A voice came out of the communicator:
+
+"_Aesclipus Twenty_, repeat your identification."
+
+Calhoun went to the control board.
+
+"_Aesclipus Twenty_," he said patiently, "is a Med Ship, sent by the
+Interstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection on
+Weald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first
+Med Ship visit in twelve standard years, I believe--which is
+inexcusable. But your health authorities will know all about it. Check
+with them."
+
+The voice said truculently:
+
+"What was your last port?"
+
+Calhoun named it. This was not his home sector, but Sector Twelve had
+gotten into a very bad situation. Some of its planets had gone
+unvisited for as long as twenty years, and twelve between inspections
+was almost commonplace. Other sectors had been called on to help it
+catch up.
+
+Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the
+emergency he'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be
+inspected one after another, instead of reporting back to sector
+headquarters after each visit. He'd had minor troubles before with
+landing-grid operators in Sector Twelve.
+
+So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one
+from which he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the
+communicator said sharply:
+
+"What port before that?"
+
+Calhoun named the one before the last.
+
+"Don't drive any closer," said the voice harshly, "or you'll be
+destroyed!"
+
+Calhoun said coldly, "Listen, my fine feathered friend! I'm from the
+Interstellar Medical Service. You get in touch with planetary health
+services immediately! Remind them of the Interstellar Medical
+Inspection Agreement, signed on Tralee two hundred and forty standard
+years ago. Remind them that if they do not cooperate in medical
+inspection that I can put your planet under quarantine and your space
+commerce will be cut off like that!
+
+"No ship will be cleared for Weald from any other planet in the galaxy
+until there has been a health inspection! Things have pretty well gone
+to pot so far as the Med Service in this sector is concerned, but it's
+being straightened up. I'm helping straighten it! I give you twenty
+minutes to clear this! Then I am coming in, and if I'm not landed a
+quarantine goes on! Tell your health authorities that!"
+
+Silence. Calhoun clicked off and poured himself another cup of coffee.
+Murgatroyd held out his cup for a refill. Calhoun gave it to him.
+
+"I hate to put on an official hat, Murgatroyd," he said, annoyed, "but
+there are some people who demand it. The rule is, never get official
+if you can help it, but when you must, out-official the official who's
+officialing you."
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" and sipped at his cup.
+
+Calhoun checked the course of the Med Ship. It bore on through space.
+There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings
+and rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful
+musical notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are
+carried by electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave lengths,
+are not likely to be the fabled music of the spheres.
+
+In fifteen minutes a different voice came from the speaker.
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus_! Med Ship _Aesclipus_!"
+
+Calhoun answered and the voice said anxiously:
+
+"Sorry about the challenge, but we have the blueskin problem always
+with us. We have to be extremely careful! Will you come in, please?"
+
+"I'm on my way," said Calhoun.
+
+"The planetary health authorities," said the voice, more anxiously
+still, "are very anxious to be cooperative. We need Med Service help!
+We lose a lot of sleep over the blueskin! Could you tell us the name
+of the last Med Ship to land here, and its inspector, and when that
+inspection was made? We want to look up the record of the event to be
+able to assist you in every possible way."
+
+"He's lying," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, "but he's more scared than
+hostile."
+
+He picked up the order folio on Weald Three. He gave the information
+about the last Med Ship visit.
+
+"What?" he asked, "is a blueskin?"
+
+He'd read the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward
+through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical
+inspection had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier--instead of
+three--a Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official
+conferences with health officials. There was a report on the birth
+rate, the death rate, the anomaly rate, and a breakdown of all
+reported communicable diseases. But that was all. There were no
+special comments and no overall picture.
+
+Presently Calhoun found the word in a Sector dictionary, where words
+of only local usage were to be found:
+
+     "_Blueskin: Colloquial term for a person recovered from a plague
+     which left large patches of blue pigment irregularly distributed
+     over the body. Especially, inhabitants of Dara. The condition is
+     said to be caused by a chronic, nonfatal form of Dara plague and
+     has been said to be noninfectious, though this is not certain. The
+     etiology of Dara plague has not been worked out. The blueskin
+     condition is hereditary but not a genetic modification, as markings
+     appear in non-Mendelian distributions_."
+
+Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sector
+directory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solar
+systems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously through
+indices and cross-references while the ship continued to travel
+onward.
+
+He found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was
+listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with
+a landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a
+flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently
+added to the entry in some change of editions: "_Since plague, special
+license from Med Service is required for landing._"
+
+That was all. Absolutely all.
+
+The communicator said suavely:
+
+"Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_! Come in on vision, please!"
+
+Calhoun went to the control board and threw on vision.
+
+"Well, what now?" he demanded.
+
+His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.
+
+"We have--ah--verified your statements," said the third voice from
+Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"
+
+"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.
+
+"Quite alone?" insisted the voice.
+
+"Obviously!" said Calhoun.
+
+"No other living creature?" insisted the voice again. "Of--oh!" said
+Calhoun, annoyed. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come
+here!"
+
+Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
+bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.
+
+"Very good!" it said. "Very, very good! Blueskins do not have
+_tormals_! You are Med Service! By all means come in! Your coordinates
+will be...."
+
+Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
+growled to Murgatroyd, "So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And
+you're my passport, because only Med Ships have members of your tribe
+aboard! What the hell's the matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they
+think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of
+plague germs!"
+
+He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
+exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
+overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
+aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
+questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have
+reached this planet or that, and the supplying of information about
+such as have not arrived.
+
+Then the lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to repeat
+the process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man because two
+could not stand the close contact without quarreling with each other.
+But Med Ships do carry _tormals_, like Murgatroyd, and a _tormal_ and
+a man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a highly
+unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.
+
+Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been
+operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct
+the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in this sector.
+But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for
+somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs
+to be done.
+
+The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in
+point. Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin
+pigmentation from other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly
+maintained a one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is
+normally an emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over,
+wiped out the need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't
+been done.
+
+Calhoun fumed to himself.
+
+The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a disk.
+The disk had icecaps and a reasonable proportion of land and water
+surface. The ship decelerated, voices notifying observation from the
+surface, and the little ship came to a stop some five planetary
+diameters out from solidity. The landing field's force-field locked on
+to it, and its descent began.
+
+The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
+appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the
+singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still
+lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly
+a mile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift
+them out to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for
+everyone.
+
+It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to
+greet Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit.
+There would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by
+whatever title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd
+would be petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to
+impress Calhoun with the splendid conduct of public health matters on
+Weald. He would be told much scandal.
+
+He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately labored to advance
+the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how to keep them well
+or, failing that, how to make them well when they got sick. And in two
+days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to the landing-grid,
+and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days in overdrive
+and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again.
+
+It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every
+human being he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins
+and the idea of blueskins obsessed everyone. Calhoun listened without
+asking questions until he had the picture of what blueskins meant to
+the people who talked of them. Then he knew there would be no use
+asking questions at random.
+
+Nobody mentioned ever having seen a blueskin. Nobody mentioned a
+specific event in which a blueskin had at any named time taken part.
+But everybody was afraid of blueskins. It was a patterned, an
+inculcated, a stage-directed fixed idea. And it found expression in
+shocked references to the vileness, the depravity, the monstrousness
+of the blueskin inhabitants of Dara, from whom Weald must at all costs
+be protected.
+
+It did not make sense. So Calhoun listened politely until he found an
+undistinguished medical man who wanted some special information about
+gene selection as practised halfway across the galaxy. He invited that
+man to the Med Ship, where he supplied the information not hitherto
+available. He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe
+a man feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly
+to know.
+
+"Now," said Calhoun, "tell me something? Why does everybody on this
+planet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobody
+claims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of
+hating them?"
+
+The Wealdian doctor grimaced.
+
+"They've blue patches on their skins. They're different from us. So
+they can be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make an
+election issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us from
+them. They had a plague on Dara, once. They're accused of still having
+it ready for export."
+
+"Hm," said Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagion
+here, eh? Doesn't anybody"--his tone was sardonic--"doesn't anybody
+urge that they be massacred as an act of piety?"
+
+"Yes-s-s-s," admitted the doctor reluctantly. "It's mentioned in
+political speeches."
+
+"But how's it rationalized?" demanded Calhoun. "What's the argument to
+make pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I'm
+assured is the case?"
+
+"In the public schools," said the doctor, "the children are taught
+that blueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived--three
+generations ago! That they hate everybody who isn't a blueskin. That
+they are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most of
+us will die and the rest will become blueskins. That's beyond
+rationalizing. It can't be true, but it's not safe to doubt it."
+
+"Bad business," said Calhoun coldly. "That sort of thing usually costs
+lives in the end. It could lead to massacre!"
+
+"Perhaps it has, in a way," said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't
+like to think about it." He paused. "Twenty years ago there was a
+famine on Dara. There were crop failures. The situation must have been
+very bad: They built a spaceship.
+
+"They've no use for such things normally, because no nearby planet
+will deal with them or let them land. But they built a spaceship and
+came here. They went in orbit around Weald. They asked to trade for
+shiploads of food. They offered any price in heavy metals--gold,
+platinum, irridium, and so on. They talked from orbit by vision
+communicators. They could be seen to be blueskins. You can guess what
+happened!"
+
+"Tell me," said Calhoun.
+
+"We armed ships in a hurry," admitted the doctor. "We chased their
+spaceship back to Dara. We hung in space off the planet. We told them
+we'd blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take to
+space again. We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched on
+visionscreens as it was done."
+
+"But you gave them food?"
+
+"No," said the doctor ashamedly. "They were blueskins."
+
+"How bad was the famine?"
+
+"Who knows? Any number may have starved! And we kept a squadron of
+armed ships in their skies for years--to keep them from spreading the
+plague, we said. And some of us believed it!"
+
+The doctor's tone was purest irony.
+
+"Lately," he said, "there's been a move for economy in our government.
+Simultaneously, we began to have a series of overabundant crops. The
+government had to buy the excess grain to keep the price up. Retired
+patrol ships, built to watch over Dara, were available for storage
+space. We filled them up with grain and sent them out into orbit.
+They're there now, hundreds of thousands or millions of tons of
+grain!"
+
+"And Dara?"
+
+The doctor shrugged. He stood up.
+
+"Our hatred of Dara," he said, again ironically, "has produced one
+thing. Roughly halfway between here and Dara there's a two-planet
+solar system, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to
+build an outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed
+to run wild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle
+there.
+
+"They did, but nobody wants to move near to blueskins! So Orede stayed
+uninhabited until a hunting party, shooting wild cattle, found an
+outcropping of heavy-metal ore. So now there's a mine there. And
+that's all. A few hundred men work the mine at fabulous wages. You may
+be asked to check on their health. But not Dara's!"
+
+"I see," said Calhoun, frowning.
+
+The doctor moved toward the Med Ship's exit port.
+
+"I answered your questions," he said grimly. "But if I talked to
+anyone else as I've done to you, I'd be lucky only to be driven into
+exile!"
+
+"I shan't give you away," said Calhoun. He did not smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the doctor had gone, Calhoun said deliberately, "Murgatroyd, you
+should be grateful that you're a _tormal_ and not a man. There's
+nothing about being a _tormal_ to make you ashamed!"
+
+Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of the
+Med Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to
+the planet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about the
+splendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion
+of the planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement. It was a domed
+city in the polar regions, where nobody ever had to go outdoors.
+
+He was less than professionally enthusiastic about the moving streets,
+and much less than approving of the dream broadcasts which supplied
+hypnotic, sleep-inducing rhythms to anybody who chose to listen to
+them. The price was that while asleep one would hear high praise of
+commercial products, and might believe them when awake.
+
+But it was not Calhoun's function to criticize when it could be
+avoided. Med Service had been badly managed in Sector Twelve. So at
+the banquet Calhoun made a brief and diplomatic address in which he
+temperately praised what could be praised, and did not mention
+anything else.
+
+The chief executive followed him. As head of the government he paid
+some tribute to the Med Service. But then he reminded his hearers
+proudly of the high culture, splendid health, and remarkable
+prosperity of the planet since his political party took office. This,
+he said, despite the need to be perpetually on guard against the
+greatest and most immediate danger to which any world in all the
+galaxy was exposed.
+
+He referred to the blueskins, of course. He did not need to tell the
+people of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was
+necessary against that race of deprived and malevolent deviants from
+the norm of humanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the
+torch of all that humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the
+lives of its people against blueskin contagion, but their noble
+heritage of ideals against blueskin pollution.
+
+When he sat down, Calhoun said very politely, "It looks as if some day
+it should be practical politics to urge the massacre of all blueskins.
+Have you thought of that?"
+
+The chief executive said comfortably, "The idea's been proposed. It's
+good politics to urge it, but it would be foolish to carry it out.
+People vote against blueskins. Wipe them out, and where'd you be?"
+
+Calhoun ground his teeth--quietly.
+
+There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with
+a written note for the chief executive. He read it and passed it to
+Calhoun. It was from the Ministry of Health. The spaceport reported
+that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian
+solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signaled its
+arrival from the mining planet Orede.
+
+But, having sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space.
+It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals. It
+drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and
+since it came from Orede, the planet nearest to Dara of the blueskins,
+the health ministry informed the planet's chief executive.
+
+"It'll be blueskins," said that astute person firmly. "They're next
+door to Orede. That's who's done this. It wouldn't surprise me if
+they'd seeded Orede with their plague, and this ship came from there
+to give us warning!"
+
+"There's no evidence for anything of the sort," protested Calhoun. "A
+ship simply came out of overdrive and didn't signal further. That's
+all!"
+
+"We'll see," said the chief executive ominously. "We'll go to the
+spaceport. There we'll get the news as it comes in, and can frame
+orders on the latest information."
+
+He took Calhoun by the arm. Calhoun said sharply, "Murgatroyd!"
+
+During the banquet, Murgatroyd had been visiting with the wives of the
+higher-up officials. They had enough of their husbands normally,
+without listening to their official speeches. Murgatroyd was brought,
+his small paunch distended with cakes and coffee and such delicacies
+as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose from overfeeding and
+overpetting, but he was glad to see Calhoun.
+
+Calhoun held the little creature in his arms as the official groundcar
+raced through traffic with screaming sirens claiming the right of way.
+It reached the spaceport, where enormous metal girders formed a
+monster frame of metal lace against a star-filled sky. The chief
+executive strode magnificently into the spaceport offices. There was
+no news; the situation remained unchanged.
+
+A ship from Orede had come out of overdrive and lay dead in emptiness.
+It did not answer calls. It did not move in space. It floated eerily
+in no orbit, going nowhere, doing nothing. And panic was the
+consequence.
+
+It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter
+accounted for the terror that he could feel building up. The
+unexplained bit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald.
+There was nobody awake of all the world's population who did not
+believe that there was a new danger in the sky. Nobody doubted that it
+came from blueskins. The treatment of the news was precisely
+calculated to keep alive the hatred of Weald for the inhabitants of
+the world Dara.
+
+Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the
+spaceport office. A small spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling
+grain ships from time to time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had
+thrust it swiftly out most of the way. Now it droned and drove on
+sturdily toward the enigmatic ship.
+
+Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials
+and news reporters at the spaceport. But he listened to the talk about
+him. As the investigating small ship drew nearer to the deathly-still
+cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of its breakout and
+following silence grew more and more wild.
+
+But, singularly, there was no single suggestion that the mystery might
+not be the work of blueskins. Blueskins were scape-goats for all the
+fears and all the uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.
+
+Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery ship and
+circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo ship
+dark. No lights anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surges
+from even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger craft
+maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported that
+microphones detected no motion whatever inside.
+
+"Let a volunteer go aboard," commanded the chief executive. "Let him
+report what he finds."
+
+A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name,
+from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompous
+heroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routine
+behavior.
+
+Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketed
+himself across the emptiness between the two again separated ships. He
+had opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the
+outer airlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported--
+
+The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and
+incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. The
+ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and
+Weald with cargos of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five
+men. There was no cargo in her holds now, though.
+
+Instead, there were men. They packed the ship. They filled the
+corridors. They had crawled into every space where a man could find
+room to push himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity.
+And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off
+with so preposterous a load of living creatures.
+
+But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been
+designed for a crew of five. It would purify the air for possibly
+twenty or more. But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in
+plain view in the cargo ship from Orede. There were many, many times
+more than her air apparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have
+taken care of. They couldn't even have been fed during the journey
+from Orede to Weald.
+
+But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship came
+out of overdrive.
+
+A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship's
+log which referred to its takeoff. There was no memorandum of the
+taking on of such an impossible number of passengers.
+
+"The blueskins did it," said the chief executive of Weald. He was
+pale. All about Calhoun men looked sick and shocked and terrified. "It
+was the blueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned
+to Calhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship--he'll have to stay
+there, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing
+contagion."
+
+Calhoun raged at him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald
+spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular
+because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,
+where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to react
+explosively when the word _blueskin_ was uttered in their hearing, and
+its adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness entered
+their minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formed
+and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.
+
+The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was
+safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship
+he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been
+doomed but for Calhoun.
+
+The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship he
+might have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of the
+plague still existed, and _if_ the men in the ship had caught it (but
+they certainly hadn't died of it), and _if_ there had been blueskins
+on Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and _if_
+blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the moment
+pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Weald
+if he were allowed to return.
+
+Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to its
+airlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. The
+combination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,
+after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and
+air from the ship let into the lock.
+
+If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,
+and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outside
+by a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd fling
+after it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.
+
+Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'd
+persuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.
+
+There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had been
+unpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy
+those people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as
+a pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not only
+the ship from Orede but other incidents which they interpreted as
+crimes against Weald.
+
+They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn
+out fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for an
+anti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusion
+bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, no
+fish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of the
+blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.
+
+One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that
+no other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar Medical
+Service. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it by
+broadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which a
+planet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.
+
+He did.
+
+So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'd
+curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
+come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft until
+Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
+cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was
+not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.
+
+He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,
+"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"
+
+He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
+while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
+dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Then
+there was silence.
+
+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.
+
+But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and
+there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.
+The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and
+meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all
+of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.
+
+Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
+Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
+unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical
+affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a
+civilization can be destroyed more surely and more terribly than by
+any imaginable war or plague germs. A plague kills off those who are
+susceptible to it, leaving immunes to build up a world again. But
+immunes are the first to be killed when a mass neurosis sweeps a
+population.
+
+Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another.
+And when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo spaceship
+which could not furnish them with air to breathe, and took off and
+went into overdrive before the air could fail.... Orede called for no
+less of worry.
+
+"I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."
+
+_Coffee_ was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized. Ordinarily
+he stirred immediately on hearing it, and watched the coffeemaker with
+bright, interested eyes. He'd even tried to imitate Calhoun's motions
+with it, once, and had scorched his paws in the attempt. But this time
+he did not move.
+
+Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tail
+coiled reflectively about a chair leg. He watched the door of the Med
+Ship's sleeping cabin.
+
+"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "I mentioned coffee!"
+
+"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd.
+
+But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lower
+in the other cabin, and the look of things was different than the
+control compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a
+man was able to be alone for weeks on end--alone save for his
+_tormal_--without becoming ship-happy.
+
+There were other carefully thought out items in the ship with the same
+purpose. But none of them should cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly and
+fascinatedly at the sleeping cabin door. Not when coffee was in the
+making!
+
+Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion that
+occurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to be
+impartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely with
+Weald in its enmity to blueskins.
+
+And the people of Weald had refused to help Dara in a time of famine,
+and had blockaded that pariah world for years afterward. And they had
+other reasons for hating the people they'd treated badly. It was
+entirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to consider that Calhoun
+must be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Weald abhorred.
+
+In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on the
+Med Ship to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of any
+report favorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such a
+stowaway would be in the sleeping cabin now, waiting for Calhoun to
+walk in unsuspiciously, only to be shot dead.
+
+So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where it
+would be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large one
+for himself, and then a second large one.
+
+He tapped on the sleeping cabin door, standing aside lest a
+blaster-bolt come through it.
+
+"Coffee's ready," he said sardonically. "Come out and join us."
+
+There was a long pause. Calhoun rapped again.
+
+"You've a seat at the captain's table," he said more sardonically
+still. "It's not polite to keep me waiting!"
+
+He listened, alert for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperate
+attempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared to
+shoot quite ruthlessly, because he was on duty and the Med Service did
+not approve of the extermination of populations, however justified
+another population might consider it.
+
+But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls whose
+sound made Calhoun start. The door of the cabin slid slowly aside. A
+girl appeared in the opening, desperately white and desperately
+composed.
+
+"H-how did you know I was there?" she asked shakily. She moistened her
+lips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enter
+the room!"
+
+Calhoun said grimly, "I've sources of information. Murgatroyd told me
+this time. May I present him? Murgatroyd, our passenger. Shake hands."
+
+Murgatroyd moved forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny,
+furry paw. She did not move. She stared at Calhoun.
+
+"Better shake hands," said Calhoun, as grimly as before. "It might
+relax the tension a little. And do you want to tell me your story? You
+have one ready, I'm sure."
+
+The girl swallowed. Murgatroyd shook hands gravely. He said,
+"_Chee-chee!_" in the shrillest of trebles and went back to his former
+position.
+
+"The story?" said Calhoun insistently.
+
+"There--there isn't any," said the girl unsteadily. "Just that I--I
+need to get to Orede, and you're going there. There's no other way to
+go, now."
+
+"To the contrary," said Calhoun. "There'll undoubtedly be a fleet
+heading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'm
+afraid that as a story yours isn't good enough. Try another."
+
+She shivered a little.
+
+"I'm running away...."
+
+"Ah!" said Calhoun. "In that case I'll take you back."
+
+"No!" she said fiercely. "I'll--I'll die first! I'll wreck this ship
+first!"
+
+Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But it
+shook visibly as she tried to aim it.
+
+"I'll shoot out the controls!"
+
+Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate of
+the situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now he
+had to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disable
+the ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't use
+energy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girl
+threatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was not
+actually an assassin at all.
+
+"I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'd
+get deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air
+and food to give out."
+
+Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter the
+conversation:
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee!_"
+
+"A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and
+have a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,
+since that's where you say you want to go."
+
+"I have a sweetheart there...."
+
+Calhoun shook his head.
+
+"No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packed
+itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But not
+all. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what
+men weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your
+sweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or
+saccho, and do you take cream?"
+
+She trembled a little, but she took the cup.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether he
+spoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go around
+trying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we even
+try to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practise
+it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you make
+such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
+Especially since we're going there anyhow."
+
+"You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.
+
+"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
+more believable presently. When did you eat last?"
+
+"Yesterday."
+
+"Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Or
+would you permit me to ready a snack?"
+
+"I--I'll do it," she said.
+
+She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how
+to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from
+storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at
+dialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food for
+oneself, in one's own chosen manner--again an item to help make
+solitude not unendurable.
+
+Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory,
+looking up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no
+reason to inform himself about it before. Now he read with every
+appearance of absorption.
+
+The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable
+interest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable.
+
+Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the micro-film reels
+which contained more information. He was specifically after the Med
+Service history of all the planets in this sector. He went through the
+filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.
+
+But Sector Twelve had not been run well. There was no adequate account
+of a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an
+inhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit,
+and was over before another Med Ship came by.
+
+There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after the
+fact. There should have been a collection of infectious material and a
+reasonably complete identification and study of the agent. It hadn't
+been made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it
+slipped by. Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector,
+resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and its
+consequences.
+
+He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man has
+resources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself during
+overdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of those
+resources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of the
+stowaway. But Murgatroyd watched her with charmed attention.
+
+Hours after her discovery, she said uneasily, "Please?"
+
+Calhoun looked up.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I don't know exactly how things stand."
+
+"You are a stowaway," said Calhoun. "Legally, I have the right to put
+you out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. When
+you're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well out
+here. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat.
+When we land on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business you
+have there. That's all."
+
+She stared at him.
+
+"But you don't believe what I've told you!"
+
+"No," agreed Calhoun, but didn't add to the statement.
+
+"But--I will tell you," she offered. "The police were after me. I had
+to get away from Weald! I had to! I'd stolen--"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No," he said. "If you were a thief, you'd say anything in the world
+except that you were a thief. You're not ready to tell the truth yet.
+You don't have to, so why tell me anything? I suggest that you get
+some sleep. Incidentally, there's no lock on the cabin door because
+there's only supposed to be one person on this ship at a time. But you
+can brace a chair to fasten it somehow or other. Good night."
+
+She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but then
+she went into the other cabin and closed herself in. There was the
+sound of a chair being wedged against the door.
+
+Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and then
+climbed up into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. He
+settled himself and was silent for moments. Then he said, "_Chee!_"
+
+"I believe you're right," said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald,
+or with the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one place
+she'd dread worse than Orede, which would be Dara. But I doubt she'd
+be afraid to land even on Dara."
+
+Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carried
+on a conversation, like humans.
+
+"_Chee-chee!_" he said with conviction.
+
+"Definitely," agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personal
+advantage. Whatever she thinks she'd doing, it's more important to her
+than her own life. Murgatroyd...."
+
+"_Chee?_" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone.
+
+"There are wild cattle on Orede," said Calhoun. "Herds and herds of
+them. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots of
+them. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have been
+slaughtered on Orede lately?"
+
+Murgatroyd yawned. He settled himself still more comfortably in
+Calhoun's lap.
+
+"_Chee_," he said drowsily.
+
+He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highly
+condensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate of
+increase, with other data, among herds of _bovis domesticus_ in a wild
+state, on planets where there are no natural enemies.
+
+It wasn't unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of
+Terran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran
+life-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems--very
+much to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard
+vegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise
+alien worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.
+
+They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of
+men to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo ship which couldn't
+possibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was
+in overdrive.
+
+Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, he
+had calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose on
+a suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens
+or even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably
+elapsed.
+
+The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound
+from without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at
+all that it was not buried in the heart of a planet instead of
+flashing through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.
+
+Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in
+the control room. Murgatroyd regarded her with great interest. Calhoun
+nodded politely and went back to what he'd been doing before she
+appeared.
+
+"Shall I have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+"Murgatroyd and I have," he told her. "Why not?"
+
+Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a very
+good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but
+who was busy with activities remote from stowaways.
+
+About noon, ship-time, she asked, "When will we get to Orede?"
+
+Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.
+
+"What--what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedy
+in the ship."
+
+"I don't know," said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities on
+Weald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins."
+
+"Wh-what are blueskins?" asked the girl.
+
+Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.
+
+"When lying," he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretend
+isn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!"
+
+"But what do you think they are?" she asked.
+
+"There used to be a human disease called smallpox," said Calhoun.
+"When people recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skin
+had little scar pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, it
+was expected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, and
+a large percentage would die of it.
+
+"And it was so much a matter of course that if they printed a picture
+of a criminal they never mentioned it if he were pock-marked. It was
+no distinction. But if he didn't have the markings, they'd mention
+that!" He paused. "Those pock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwise
+a blueskin is like a man who had them. He can't be anything else!"
+
+"Then you think they're human?"
+
+"There's never yet been a case of reverse evolution," said Calhoun.
+"Maybe Pithecanthropus had a monkey uncle, but no Pithecanthropus ever
+went monkey."
+
+She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during that
+day. He continued to busy himself with those activities which make Med
+Ship life consistent with retained sanity.
+
+Next day she asked without preliminary, "Don't you believe the
+blueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Weald
+and spread plague there?"
+
+"No," said Calhoun.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her. "With only dead men on
+board, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid
+could bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken
+living men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They
+might ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on
+Weald if they were found to be plague victims. So that would be no
+good, either! No, the ship wasn't intended to land plague on Weald."
+
+"Are you friendly to blueskins?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+"Within reason," said Calhoun, "I am a well-wisher to all the human
+race. You're slipping, though. When using the word _blueskin_ you
+should say it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined person
+liked to pronounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by the
+way. If you ever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much time
+left."
+
+She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced
+him and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again.
+Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He
+carefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald
+would willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a
+shipload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in,
+like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. Nobody from
+Weald would dream of landing on Orede! Not now!
+
+A little before the Med Ship was due to break out from overdrive, the
+girl said very carefully, "You've been very kind. I'd like to thank
+you. I--I didn't really believe I would live to get to Orede."
+
+Calhoun raised his eyebrows.
+
+"I wish I could tell you everything you want to know," she added
+regretfully. "I think you're ... really decent. But some thing...."
+
+Calhoun said caustically, "You've told me a great deal. You weren't
+born on Weald. You weren't raised there. The people of Dara--notice
+that I don't say blueskins, though they are--the people of Dara have
+made at least one space ship since Weald threatened them with
+extermination. There is probably a new food shortage on Dara now,
+leading to pure desperation. Most likely it's bad enough to make them
+risk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freeze beef to help. They've
+worked out--"
+
+She gasped and sprang to her feet. She snatched out the tiny blaster
+in her pocket. She pointed it waveringly at him.
+
+"I have to kill you!" she cried desperately. "I--I have to!"
+
+Calhoun reached out. She tugged despairingly at the blaster's trigger.
+Nothing happened. Before she could realize that she hadn't turned off
+the safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. He stepped
+back.
+
+"Good girl!" he said approvingly. "I'll give this back to you when we
+land. And thanks. Thanks very much!"
+
+She wrung her hands. Then she stared at him.
+
+"Thanks? When I tried to kill you?"
+
+"Of course!" said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know that
+they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one.
+Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in
+touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be
+pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable thing
+to get done!"
+
+He went to the ships' control board and sat down before it.
+
+"Twenty minutes to breakhour," he observed.
+
+Murgatroyd peered out of his little cubbyhole. His eyes were anxious.
+_Tormals_ are amiable little creatures. During the days in overdrive,
+Calhoun had paid less than the usual amount of attention to
+Murgatroyd, while the girl was fascinating.
+
+They'd made friends, awkwardly on the girl's part, very pleasantly on
+Murgatroyd's. But only moments ago there had been bitter emotion in
+the air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyhole to escape it. He was
+distressed. Now that there was silence again, he peered out unhappily.
+
+"_Chee?_" he queried plaintively. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"
+
+Calhoun said matter-of-factly, "It's all right, Murgatroyd. If we
+aren't blasted as we try to land, we should be able to make friends
+with everybody and get something accomplished."
+
+The statement was hopelessly inaccurate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+There was no answer from the ground when breakout came and Calhoun
+drove the Med Ship to a favourable position for a call. He patiently
+repeated, over and over again, that the Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_
+notified its arrival and requested coordinates for landing. He added
+that its mass was fifty standard tons and that the purpose of its
+visit was a planetary health inspection.
+
+But there was no reply. There should have been a crisp description of
+the direction from the planet's center at which, a certain time so
+many hours or minutes later, the force-fields of the grid would find
+it convenient to lock onto and lower the Med Ship. But the
+communicator remained silent.
+
+"There is a landing-grid," said Calhoun, frowning, "and if they're
+using it to load fresh meat for Dara, from the herds I'm told about,
+it should be manned. But they don't seem to intend to answer. Maybe
+they think that if they pretend I'm not here I'll go away."
+
+He reflected, and his frown deepened.
+
+"If I didn't know what I know, I might. So if I land on emergency
+rockets the blueskins down below may decide that I come from Weald.
+And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before I could
+land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship from
+Weald would conceivably land without impassioned assurance that it
+was safe. It would drop bombs." He turned to the girl. "How many
+Darians down below?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You don't know," said Calhoun, "or won't tell, yet. But they ought to
+be told about the arrival of that ship at Weald, and what Weald thinks
+about it! My guess is that you came to tell them. It isn't likely that
+Dara gets news directly from Weald. Where were you put ashore from
+Dara, when you set out to be a spy?"
+
+Her lips parted to speak, but she compressed them tightly. She shook
+her head again.
+
+"It must have been plenty far away," said Calhoun restlessly. "Your
+people would have built a ship, and made fine forged papers for it,
+and they'd travel so far from this part of space that when they landed
+nobody would think of Dara. They'd use make-up to cover the blue
+spots, but maybe it was so far away that blueskins had never been
+heard of!"
+
+Her face looked pinched, but she did not reply.
+
+"Then they'd land half a dozen of you, with a supply of make-up for
+the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various
+roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be
+done there to--" He stopped. "When did you find out positively that
+there wasn't any plague any more?"
+
+She began to grow pale.
+
+"I'm not a mind reader," said Calhoun. "But it adds up. You're from
+Dara. You've been on Weald. It's practically certain that there are
+other ... agents, if you like that word better, on Weald. And there
+hasn't been a plague on Weald so you people aren't carriers of it. But
+you knew it in advance, I think. How'd you learn? Did a ship in some
+sort of trouble land there, on Dara?"
+
+"Y--yes," said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the people
+didn't catch--they didn't die. They lived--"
+
+She stopped short.
+
+"It's not fair to trap me!" she cried passionately. "It's not fair!"
+
+"I'll stop," said Calhoun.
+
+He turned to the control board. The Med Ship was only planetary
+diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining
+stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous
+shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy
+color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and
+forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and
+squinted at it.
+
+"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
+killing wild cattle for sport."
+
+Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
+a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
+by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
+sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
+if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
+zone.
+
+Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
+would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
+near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
+would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.
+
+Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
+Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
+could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
+But its shadow would be distinctive.
+
+Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a
+temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
+mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
+cast a long, lacy shadow: the landing-grid.
+
+"But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down
+unwelcomed."
+
+He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency rockets boomed. The ship
+plunged planetward.
+
+A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of
+its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforce
+the sound.
+
+"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd," commanded Calhoun. "We may have to
+dodge some ack."
+
+But nothing came up from below. The Med Ship again inverted itself,
+and its rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin,
+blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued
+to descend. It was not directly above the grid.
+
+It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains
+in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the
+mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley
+in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an
+erratic course, lest there be opposition.
+
+But there was no sign. Then the rockets bellowed, and the ship slowed
+its forward motion, hovered momentarily, and settled to solidity
+outside the framework of the grid. The grid was small, as Calhoun
+reasoned. But it reached interminably toward the sky.
+
+The rockets cut off. Slender as the flames had been, they'd melted and
+bored thin drill-holes deep into the soil. Molten rock boiled and
+bubbled down below. But there seemed no other sound. There was no
+other motion. There was absolute stillness all around. But when
+Calhoun switched on the outside microphones a faint, sweet melange of
+high-pitched chirpings came from tiny creatures hidden under the
+vegetation of the mountainsides.
+
+Calhoun put a blaster in his pocket and stood up.
+
+"We'll see what it looks like outside," he said with a certain
+grimness. "I don't quite believe what the vision screens show."
+
+Minutes later he stepped down to the ground from the Med Ship's exit
+port. The ship had landed perhaps a hundred feet from what once had
+been a wooden building. In it, ore from the mines was concentrated and
+the useless tailings carried away by a conveyer belt to make a
+monstrous pile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building.
+
+Next to it there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The
+massive machinery could still be seen, but the structure was in
+fragments. Next to that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of
+the mine. They also were shattered practically to matchsticks.
+
+The look of the ground about the building sites was simply and purely
+impossible. It was a mass of hoofprints. Cattle by thousands and tens
+of thousands had trampled everything. Cattle had burst in the wooden
+sides of the buildings. Cattle had piled themselves up against the
+beams upholding roofs until the buildings collapsed.
+
+Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there
+was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died
+in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders
+which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by
+the smell of carrion.
+
+The settlement had been destroyed, positively by stampeded cattle in
+tens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and
+upon it. Senselessly, they'd trampled each other to horrible
+shapelessness. The mine shaft was not choked, because enormously
+strong timbers had fallen across and blocked it. But everything else
+was pure destruction.
+
+Calhoun said evenly, "Clever! Very clever! You can't blame men when
+beasts stampede. We should accept the evidence that some monstrous
+herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and
+bolted for the plains. This settlement got in the way and it was too
+bad for the settlement! Everything's explained, except the ship that
+went to Weald.
+
+"A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was a man
+stampede. Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattle
+trampled down this little town. The ship stampeded off into space as
+insanely as the cattle. But a stampede of men and cattle, in the same
+place? That's a little too much!"
+
+"But what--"
+
+"How," asked Calhoun directly, "do you intend to get in touch with
+your friends here?"
+
+"I--I don't know," she said, distressed. "But if the ship stays here,
+they're bound to come and see why. Won't they? Or will they?"
+
+"If they're sane, they won't," said Calhoun. "The one undesirable
+thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If
+your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they
+should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and
+pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered. That
+would be their best first move, certainly!"
+
+"What should I do?" she asked helplessly.
+
+"I'm far from sure. At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.
+I'll work something out. I've got the devil of a job before me,
+though. I can't spend but so much time here."
+
+"You can leave me here...."
+
+He grunted and turned away. It was naturally unthinkable that he
+should leave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet,
+with the knowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the
+future knowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of
+possible reasons to hide themselves away.
+
+He believed that there were Darians here, and the girl in the Med
+ship, so he also believed, was also a Darian. But any who might be
+hiding had so much to lose if they were discovered that they might be
+hundreds or even thousands of miles from anywhere a space ship would
+normally land--if they hadn't fled after the incident of the
+spaceship's departure with its load of doomed passengers.
+
+Considered detachedly, the odds were that there was again a food
+shortage on Dara; that blueskins, in desperation, had raided or were
+raiding or would raid the cattle herds of Orede for food to carry back
+to their home planet; that somehow the miners on Orede had found that
+they had blueskin neighbors, and died of the consequences of their
+terror. It was a risky guess to make on such evidence as Calhoun
+considered he had, but no other guess was possible.
+
+If his guess were right, he was under some obligation to do exactly
+what he believed the girl considered her mission--to warn all
+blueskins that Weald would presently try to find them on Orede, when
+all hell must break loose upon Dara for punishment. But if there were
+men here, he couldn't leave a written warning for them in default of
+friendly contact.
+
+They might not find it, and a search party of Wealdians might. All he
+could possibly do was try to make contact and give warning by such
+means as would leave no evidence behind that he'd done so. Weald
+would consider a warning sure proof of blueskin guilt.
+
+It was not satisfactory to be limited to broadcasts which might or
+might not be picked up, and were unlikely to be acknowledged. But he
+settled down with the communicator to make the attempt.
+
+He called first on a GC wave length and form. It was unlikely that
+blueskins would use general communication bands to keep in touch with
+each other, but it had to be tried. He broadcast, tuned as broadly as
+possible, and went up and down the GC spectrum, repeating his warning
+painstakingly and listening without hope for a reply.
+
+He did find one spot on the dial where there was re-radiation of his
+message, as if from a tuned receiver. But he could not get a fix on
+it: nobody might be listening. He exhausted the normal communication
+pattern. Then he broadcast on old-fashioned amplitude modulation which
+a modern communicator would not pick up at all, and which therefore
+might be used by men in hiding.
+
+He worked for a long time. Then he shrugged and gave it up. He'd
+repeated to absolute tedium the facts that any Darians--blueskins--on
+Orede ought to know. There'd been no answer. And it was all too likely
+that if he'd been received, that those who heard him took his message
+for a trick to discover if there were any hearers.
+
+He clicked off at last and stood up, shaking his head. Suddenly the
+Med Ship seemed empty. Then he saw Murgatroyd staring vexedly at the
+exit port. The inner door of that small airlock was closed. The
+telltale light said the outer door was not locked. Someone had gone
+out quietly. The girl. Of course.
+
+Calhoun said angrily, "How long ago, Murgatroyd?"
+
+"_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd indignantly.
+
+It wasn't an answer, but it showed that Murgatroyd was vexed that he'd
+been left behind. He and the girl were close friends, now. If she'd
+left Murgatroyd in the ship when he wanted to go with her, then she
+wasn't coming back.
+
+Calhoun swore. He made certain she was not in the ship. He flipped the
+outside-speaker switch and said curtly into the microphone, "Coffee!
+Murgatroyd and I are having coffee. Will you come back, please?"
+
+He repeated the call, and repeated it again. Multiplied as his voice
+was by the speakers, she should hear him within a mile. She did not
+appear. He went to a small and inconspicuous closet and armed himself.
+A Med Ship man was not ever expected to fight, but there were
+blast-rifles available for extreme emergency.
+
+When he'd slung a power-pack over his shoulder and reached the
+airlock, there was still no sign of his late stowaway. He stood in the
+airlock door for long minutes, staring angrily about. Almost certainly
+she wouldn't be looking in the mountains for men of Dara come here for
+cattle. He used a pair of binoculars, first at low-magnification to
+search as wide an area down-valley as possible, and then at highest
+power to search the most likely routes.
+
+He found a small, bobbing speck beyond a faraway hill crest. It was
+her head. It went down below the hilltop.
+
+He snapped a command to Murgatroyd, and when the _tormal_ was on the
+ground outside, he locked the port with that combination that nobody
+but a Med Ship man was at all likely to discover or use.
+
+"She's an idiot!" he told Murgatroyd sourly. "Come along! We've got to
+be idiots too!"
+
+He set out in pursuit.
+
+There was blue sky overhead, as was inevitable on any
+oxygen-atmosphere planet of a Sol-type yellow sun. There were
+mountains, as is universal in planets whose surface rises and falls
+and folds and bends from the effects of weather or vulcanism. There
+were plants, as has come about wherever microorganisms have broken
+down rock to a state where it can nourish vegetation. And naturally
+there were animals.
+
+There were even trees of severely practical design, and underbrush and
+ground-cover equivalent to grass. There was, in short, a perfectly
+predictable ecological system on Orede. The organic molecules involved
+in life here would be made up of the same elements in the same
+combinations as elsewhere where the same conditions of temperature and
+moisture and sunshine obtained.
+
+It was a distinctly Earthlike world, as it could not help but be, and
+it was reasonable for cattle to thrive and increase here. Only men's
+minds kept it from being a place where humans would thrive, too.
+
+But only Calhoun would have considered the splintered settlement a
+proof of that last.
+
+The girl had a long start. Twice Calhoun came to places where she
+could have chosen either of two ways onward. Each time he had to
+determine which she'd followed. That cost time. Then the mountains
+abruptly ended and a vast undulating plain stretched away to the
+horizon. There were at least two large masses and many smaller clumps
+of what could only be animals gathered together. Cattle.
+
+But here the girl was plainly in view. Calhoun increased his stride.
+He began to gain on her. She did not look behind.
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a complaining tone.
+
+"I should have left you behind," agreed Calhoun dourly, "but there was
+and is a chance I won't get back. You'll have to keep on hiking."
+
+He plodded on. His memory of the terrain around the mining settlement
+told him that there was no definite destination in the girl's mind.
+But she was in no such despair as to want deliberately to be lost.
+She'd guessed, Calhoun believed, that if there were Darians on the
+planet, they'd keep the landing-grid under observation.
+
+If they saw her leave that area and could see that she was alone, they
+should intercept her to find out the meaning of the Med Ship's
+landing. Then she could identify herself as one of them and give them
+the terribly necessary warning of Weald's suspicions.
+
+"But," said Calhoun sourly, "if she's right, they'll have seen me
+marching after her now, which spoils her scheme. And I'd like to help
+it, but the way she's going is too dangerous!"
+
+He went down into one of the hollows of the uneven plain. He saw a
+clump of a dozen or so cattle a little distance away. The bull looked
+up and snorted. The cows regarded him truculently. Their air was not
+one of bovine tranquility.
+
+He was up the farther hillside and out of sight before the bull worked
+himself up to a charge. Then Calhoun suddenly remembered one of the
+items in the data about cattle he'd looked into just the other day. He
+felt himself grow pale.
+
+"Murgatroyd!" he said sharply. "We've got to catch up! Fast! Stay with
+me if you can, but--" he was jog-trotting as he spoke--"even if you
+get lost I have to hurry!"
+
+He ran fifty paces and walked fifty paces. He ran fifty and walked
+fifty. He saw her, atop a rolling of the ground. She came to a full
+stop. He ran. He saw her turn to retrace her steps. He flung off the
+safety of the blast-rifle and let off a roaring blast at the ground
+for her to hear.
+
+Suddenly she was fleeing desperately, toward him. He plunged on. She
+vanished down into a hollow. Horns appeared over the hillcrest she'd
+just left. Cattle appeared. Four, a dozen fifteen, twenty! They moved
+ominously in her wake.
+
+He saw her again, running frantically over another upward swell of
+the prairie. He let off another blast to guide her. He ran on at top
+speed with Murgatroyd trailing anxiously behind. From time to time
+Murgatroyd called "_Chee-chee-chee!_" in frightened pleading not to be
+abandoned.
+
+More cattle appeared against the horizon. Fifty or a hundred. They
+came after the first clump. The first group of a bull and his harem
+were moving faster, now. The girl fled from them, but it is the
+instinct of beef-cattle on the open range--Calhoun had learned it only
+two days before--to charge any human they find on foot. A mounted man
+to their dim minds is a creature to be tolerated or fled from, but a
+human on foot is to be crushed and stamped and gored.
+
+Those in the lead were definitely charging now, with heads bent low.
+The bull charged furiously with shut eyes, as bulls do, but the cows,
+many times more deadly, charged with their eyes wide open and wickedly
+alert, and with a lumbering speed much greater than the girl could
+manage.
+
+She came up over the last rise, chalky-white and gasping, her hair
+flying, in the last extremity of terror. The nearest of the pursuing
+cattle were within ten yards when Calhoun fired from twenty yards
+beyond. One creature bellowed as the blast-bolt struck.
+
+It went down and others crashed into it and swept over it, and more
+came on. The girl saw Calhoun now, and ran toward him, panting. He
+knelt very deliberately and began to check the charge by shooting the
+leading animals.
+
+He did not succeed. There were more cattle following the first, and
+more and more behind them. It appeared that all the cattle on the
+plain joined in the blind and senseless charge. The thudding of hoofs
+became a mutter and then a rumble and then a growl.
+
+Plunging, clumsy figures rushed past on either side. But horns and
+heads heaved up over the mound of animals Calhoun had shot. He shot
+them too. More and more cattle came pounding past the rampart of his
+victims, but always, it seemed, some elected to climb the heap of
+their dead and dying fellows, and Calhoun shot and shot....
+
+But he split the herd. The foremost animals had been charging a
+sighted human enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of
+cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they
+feel. There was a dense, pounding, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising
+thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which hid everything but
+galloping beasts going past on either side.
+
+It lasted for minutes. Then the thunder of hoofs diminished. It ended
+abruptly, and Calhoun and the girl were left alone with the gruesome
+pile of animals which had divided the charging herd into two parts.
+They could see the rears of innumerable running animals, stupidly
+continuing the charge, hardly different, now, from a stampede, whose
+original objective none now remembered.
+
+Calhoun thoughtfully touched the barrel of his blast-rifle and winced
+at its scorching heat.
+
+"I just realized," he said coldly, "that I don't know your name. What
+is it?"
+
+"Maril," said the girl. She swallowed. "Th--thank you."
+
+"Maril," said Calhoun, "you are an idiot! It was half-witted at best
+to go off by yourself! You could have been lost! You could have cost
+me days of hunting for you, days badly needed for more important
+matters!"
+
+He stopped and took breath. "You may have spoiled what little chance
+I've got to do something about the plans Weald's already making! You
+have just acted with the most concentrated folly, and the most
+magnificent imbecility that you or anybody else could manage!"
+
+He said more bitterly still, "And I had to leave Murgatroyd behind to
+get to you in time! He was right in the path of that charge!"
+
+He turned away from her and said dourly, "All right! Come on back to
+the ship. We'll go to Dara. We'd have to, anyhow. But Murgatroyd--"
+
+Then he heard a very small sneeze. Out of a rolling wall of
+still-roiling dust, Murgatroyd appeared forlornly. He was
+dust-covered, and draggled, and his tail dropped, and he sneezed
+again. He moved as if he could barely put one paw before another, but
+at sight of Calhoun he sneezed yet again and said "_Chee!_" in a
+disconsolate voice. Then he sat down and waited for Calhoun to come
+and pick him up.
+
+When Calhoun did so, Murgatroyd clung to him pathetically and said
+"_Chee-chee!_" and again "_Chee-chee!_" with the intonation of one
+telling of incredible horrors and disasters endured. And as a matter
+of fact the escape of a small animal like Murgatroyd was remarkable.
+He'd escaped the trampling hoofs of at least hundreds of charging
+animals. Luck must have played a great part in it, but an hysterical
+agility in dodging must have been required, too.
+
+Calhoun headed back for the valley where the settlement had been, and
+the Med Ship was. Murgatroyd clung to his neck. The girl Maril
+followed discouragedly. She was at that age when girls--and men of
+corresponding type--can grow most passionately devoted to ideals or
+causes in default of a promising personal romance. When concerned with
+such causes they become splendidly confident that whatever they decide
+to do is sensible if only it is dramatic. But Maril was shaken, now.
+
+Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way. A mile back toward
+the mountains, they began to see stragglers from the now-vanished
+herd. A little farther, those stragglers began to notice them. It
+would have been a matter of no moment if they'd been domesticated
+dairy cattle, but these were range cattle gone wild. Twice, Calhoun
+had to use his blast-rifle to discourage incipient charges by
+irritated bulls or even more irritated cows. Those with calves darkly
+suspected Calhoun of designs upon their offspring.
+
+It was a relief to enter the valley again. But it was two miles more
+to the landing-grid with the Med Ship beside it and the reek of
+carrion in the air.
+
+They were perhaps two hundred feet from the ship when a blast-rifle
+crashed and its bolt whined past Calhoun so close that he felt the
+monstrous heat. There had been no challenge. There was no warning.
+There was simply a shot which came horribly close to ending Calhoun's
+career in a completely arbitrary fashion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a
+mass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood
+afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around
+the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have
+killed him ten times over, but it was more desirable to open
+communication. So he missed intentionally.
+
+Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, but
+they did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty
+blast-rifles. One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding
+place. That man's rifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained.
+
+One, so Calhoun presently discovered--was working his way behind
+underbrush to a shelf from which he could shoot down at Calhoun.
+Calhoun had dropped into a hollow and pulled Maril to cover at the
+first shot. The second man happily planned to get to a point where he
+could shoot him like a fish in a barrel.
+
+The third man had fired half a dozen times and then disappeared.
+Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to the rear, hoping
+there was no protection from that direction for Calhoun. It would take
+some time for him to manage it.
+
+So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying to
+get above him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to
+Calhoun's breastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at
+which the other man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless.
+
+Then Calhoun sent a dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It
+heated up. Steam rose in a whitish mass and blew directly away from
+Calhoun. He saw that antagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he
+was positive that there was a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand
+side of the back of his neck.
+
+He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thick
+undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading
+flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle tactics
+with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But
+something from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground
+directly upwind from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.
+
+It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl
+Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the
+flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril
+altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not
+scorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and
+plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them.
+They were then halfway to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.
+
+But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles
+twitched and tensed. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of
+agitation. He swore, but a Med Ship man would not react to such
+symptoms as a non-medically-trained man would have done. Calhoun was
+familiar enough with tear gas, used by police on some planets.
+
+But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged Maril
+onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it--panic
+gas. Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.
+Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering
+terror.
+
+A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physical
+sensations: wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and a
+frantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physical
+sensations are induced by other means will, ordinarily, find his mind
+yielding to terror.
+
+Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude
+enabled him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base
+of the Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not
+be counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some
+moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only
+feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let
+loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the rifle of all
+its charges.
+
+Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook and
+trembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outer
+airlock door just as another blast-bolt hit.
+
+"They--they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they only
+knew...."
+
+"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and he
+raged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.
+
+He pushed a button on the control board. He pointed to a microphone.
+He got at an oxygen bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously,
+should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to
+increase the oxygenation of the bloodstream and muscles, and to make
+superhuman exertion possible if necessary.
+
+Breathing ninety-five percent oxygen produced the effect the
+terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normal
+and his body relaxed. He held out his hand and it did not tremble.
+He'd been affronted to see it shake uncontrollably when he pushed the
+microphone button for Maril.
+
+He turned to her. She hadn't spoken into the mike.
+
+"They may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! They
+could be somebody else, maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine
+for a shipload of its ore."
+
+"Nonsense," said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be
+sure. But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more
+on the way here from wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we
+know some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and
+we'll go on."
+
+He took the microphone. An instant later his voice boomed in the
+stillness outside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill whirring
+of invisible small creatures.
+
+"This is the Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_," said Calhoun's voice,
+amplified to a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the
+cargo ship from here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald
+they don't know how it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or
+later they'll search here.
+
+"Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've ever been
+here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talk of
+fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your traces, they'll
+be still more scared! So cover up your tracks and get away from here!"
+
+The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. But
+it was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, and
+it could be heard for miles.
+
+But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time.
+Then he shrugged and seated himself at the control board.
+
+"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they've
+outsmarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"
+
+The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end all
+noises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By the
+time it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clear
+space and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether.
+
+He busied himself with those astrogational chores which began with
+orienting oneself to galactic directions after leaving a planet which
+rotates at its own individual speed. Then one computes the overdrive
+course to another planet, from the respecting coordinates of the world
+one is leaving and the one one aims for.
+
+Then, in this case at any rate, there was the very finicky task of
+picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose planets one was his
+destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine precision.
+
+"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"
+
+Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation
+of falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity,
+and the blackness outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in
+overdrive again.
+
+After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily, "I don't know what
+you plan now--"
+
+"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the
+blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know.
+But this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine people
+shouldn't do things out of desperation! Being desperate jogs the brain
+off-center. One doesn't think straight!"
+
+"I know now that I was ... very foolish."
+
+"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I
+run into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and
+cleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service
+obligation; it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at the
+basic problem, those idiots on Orede--It'd happened before I reached
+Weald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead men
+that nobody intended to kill."
+
+Maril shook her head.
+
+"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun, annoyed, "shouldn't have gone
+to Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at least
+have stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald
+digging a mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They
+could be spotted! I believe they were.
+
+"And again, if it had been a long way from the mine installation, they
+could probably have wiped out the people who sighted them before they
+could get back with the news! But it looks like miners saw men
+hunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins, and then got
+back to the mine with the news!"
+
+She waited for him to explain.
+
+"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "So
+something had to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped
+out or the story that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited.
+The blueskins tried for both. They used panic gas on a herd of cattle
+and it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like the
+four-footed lunatics they are!
+
+"And the blueskins used panic gas on the settlement itself as the
+cattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.
+After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd been
+out of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of the
+settlement to think about.
+
+"He wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen or heard before-hand. They
+might try to verify the blueskin story later, but they wouldn't
+believe anything with certainty. It should have worked!"
+
+Again she waited.
+
+"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the
+ship. Also unfortunately, panic gas got into the ship with them. So
+they stayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off. They
+headed for Weald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set for
+Weald anyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away from
+whatever he imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship
+were still crazy with panic from the gas they kept breathing until
+they died!"
+
+Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked, "You don't think the
+Darians intended to kill?"
+
+"I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always
+urging the police to use panic gas in case of public tumult. But it's
+too dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take a
+hundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit to
+their craziness! The whole thing was handled wrong!"
+
+"But you don't blame them?"
+
+"For being stupid, yes," said Calhoun fretfully. "But if I'd been in
+their place, perhaps--"
+
+"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly.
+
+Calhoun jerked his head around. "No! Not where you're guessing, or
+hoping. Not on Dara. Just because I act as if Darians were human
+doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a Med Service man, and I'm acting
+as I think I should." His tone became exasperated.
+
+"Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual, and
+possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it finds proof
+that blueskins are in space again and caused the death of Wealdians,
+it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombs
+on Dara to wipe it out!"
+
+Maril said fiercely, "They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker
+than starvation, at least!"
+
+Calhoun looked at her, more exasperated than before.
+
+"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he said
+bitterly, "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he said
+drearily, "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of health
+problems! And that's right in my lap with all the rest!"
+
+He stood up. Then he sat down again.
+
+"I'm tired!" he said flatly. "I'd like to get some sleep. Would you
+mind taking a book or something and going into the other cabin?
+Murgatroyd and I would like a little relaxation from reality. With
+luck, if I go to sleep, I may only have a nightmare. It'll be a
+terrific improvement on what I'm in now!"
+
+Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was not
+possible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and brooded. There
+is brooding and brooding. It can be a form of wallowing in self-pity,
+engaged in for emotional satisfaction. But it can be, also, a way of
+bringing out unfavorable factors in a situation. A man in optimistic
+mood can ignore them. But no awkward situation is likely to be
+remedied while any of its elements are neglected.
+
+Calhoun dourly considered the situation of the people of the planet
+Dara, which it was his job as a Med Service man to remedy or at least
+improve. Those people were marked by patches of blue pigment as an
+inherited consequence of a plague of three generations past. Because
+of the marking, which it was easy to believe a sign of continuing
+infection, they were hated and dreaded by their neighbors. Dara was a
+planet of pariahs--excluded from the human race by those who feared
+them.
+
+And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were of
+no mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede,
+monstrous herds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for
+Darians to build a ship or ships and try to bring food back to its
+starving people. But that desperately necessary enterprise had now
+roused Weald to a frenzy of apprehension.
+
+Weald was, if possible, more hysterically afraid of blueskins than
+ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of the starving
+planet's population. Weald itself prospered. Ironically, it had such
+an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them in unneeded spaceships in
+orbits about itself.
+
+Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight
+hulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try to
+steal--if it could be called stealing--some of the innumerable wild
+cattle of Orede.
+
+The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not
+to hear. Or maybe that didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed
+by all of humanity off their world. They'd been threatened and
+oppressed by guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any
+spacecraft they might send aloft....
+
+So Calhoun brooded, while Murgatroyd presently yawned and climbed to
+his cubbyhole and curled up to sleep with his furry tail carefully
+adjusted over his nose.
+
+A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on
+a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises
+carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun
+raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come from
+outside.
+
+He knocked on the door of the sleeping cabin. The noises stopped
+instantly.
+
+"Come out," he commanded through the door.
+
+"I'm--I'm all right," said Maril's voice. But it was not quite steady.
+She paused. "Did I make a noise? I was having a bad dream."
+
+"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth just
+occasionally! Come out, please!"
+
+There were stirrings. After a little it opened and Maril appeared. She
+looked as if she'd been crying. She said, quickly, "I probably look
+queer, but it's because I was asleep."
+
+"To the contrary," said Calhoun, fuming. "You've been lying awake
+crying. I don't know why. I've been out here wishing I could, because
+I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can help me with
+my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I need facts.
+Will you give them to me?"
+
+She swallowed. "I'll try."
+
+"Coffee?" he asked.
+
+Murgatroyd popped his head out of his miniature sleeping cabin.
+
+"_Chee?_" he asked interestedly.
+
+"Go back to sleep!" snapped Calhoun.
+
+He began to pace back and forth.
+
+"I need to know something about the pigment patches," he said jerkily.
+"Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now--first things
+first, you know. But this is a first thing! So long as Darians don't
+look like the people of other worlds, they'll be believed to be
+different. If they look repulsive, they'll be believed to be evil.
+
+"Tell me about those patches. They're different sizes and different
+shapes and they appear in different places. You've none on your face
+or hands, anyhow."
+
+"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+"Not everybody," she said defensively. "Nearly, yes. But not all. Some
+people don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches on
+their skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow
+up they're just like the people of Weald or any other world. And their
+children never have them."
+
+Calhoun stared.
+
+"You couldn't possibly be proved to be a Darian, then?"
+
+She shook her head. Calhoun remembered, and started the coffee.
+
+"When you left Dara," he said, "you were carried a long, long way, to
+some planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where
+the name meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else
+and forgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not a
+blueskin?"
+
+"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters,
+and Korvan--"
+
+Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the
+name she'd mentioned.
+
+"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," he
+said absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once!
+There's a virus, a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans
+are immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical
+condition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do.
+But once they're established they're passed on from mother to child.
+And when they die out it's during childhood, too!"
+
+He poured coffee for the two of them. Murgatroyd swung down to the
+floor and said, impatiently, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
+
+Calhoun absently filled Murgatroyd's tiny cup and handed it to him.
+
+"But this is marvellous!" he said exuberantly. "The blue patches
+appeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered--when
+they recovered?"
+
+Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professional
+considerations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely
+a source of information.
+
+"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating
+questions you want to ask?"
+
+He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully, "I'm stupid, Maril, but you're
+touchy. There's nothing personal--"
+
+"There is to me!" she said fiercely. "I was born among blueskins, and
+they're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on
+Weald if I'd been known as ... what I am! And there's Korvan, who
+arranged for me to be sent away as a spy and advised me to do just
+what you said: abandon my home world and everybody I care about!
+Including him! It's personal to me!"
+
+Calhoun wrinkled his forehead helplessly.
+
+"I'm sorry," he repeated. "Drink your coffee!"
+
+"I don't want it," she said bitterly. "I'd like to die!"
+
+"If you stay around where I am," Calhoun told her, "you may get your
+wish. All right, there'll be no more questions."
+
+She turned and moved toward the door to the cabin. Calhoun looked
+after her.
+
+"Maril."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why were you crying?"
+
+"You wouldn't understand," she said evenly.
+
+Calhoun shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He was a
+professional man. In his profession he was not incompetent. But there
+is no profession in which a really competent man tries to understand
+women. Calhoun, annoyed, had to let fate or chance or disaster take
+care of Maril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with.
+
+But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in the
+reference tapes. He came up with an explicit collection of information
+on exactly the subject he needed. He left the control room to go down
+into the storage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultra
+frigid storage box, whose contents were kept at the temperature of
+liquid air.
+
+He donned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a
+tiny block of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was
+embedded. It frosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage
+box was closed again the block was covered with a thick and opaque
+coating of frozen moisture.
+
+He went back to the control room and pulled down the panel which made
+available a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological
+laboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raise
+it very, very gradually to a specific temperature and hold it there.
+It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity
+of the same culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with
+great exactitude.
+
+"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I
+can rest."
+
+Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med
+Ship. The girl may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in a
+chair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable of
+sleeping places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curled
+over his nose.
+
+There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissable murmurings now and
+again. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for such
+infinitesimal stirrings of sound, carefully recorded for this exact
+purpose, the feel of the ship would have been that of a tomb.
+
+But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the taped
+sounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but nevertheless
+establishing an atmosphere of their own.
+
+Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read the
+instruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the
+block--no longer frosted--in the culture microscope and saw its
+enclosed, infinitesimal particles of life in the process of
+multiplying on the food that had been frozen with them when they were
+reduced to the spore condition. He beamed. He replaced the block in
+the incubation oven and faced the day cheerfully.
+
+Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted, with
+Murgatroyd eating from his own platter on the floor, a tiny cup of
+coffee alongside.
+
+"I've been thinking," said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you a
+hearing for whatever ideas you may have to help Dara."
+
+"Kind of you," murmured Calhoun.
+
+In theory, a Med Service man had all the authority needed for this or
+any other emergency. The power to declare a planet in quarantine, so
+cutting it off from all interstellar commerce, should be enough to
+force cooperation from any world's government. But in practice Calhoun
+had exactly as much power as he could exercise.
+
+And Weald could not think straight where blueskins were concerned, and
+certainly the authorities on Dara could not be expected to be
+levelheaded. They had a history of isolation and outlawry, and long
+experience of being regarded as less than human. In cold fact, Calhoun
+had no power at all.
+
+"May I ask whose influence you'll exert?" asked Calhoun.
+
+"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who thinks a great deal of
+me. I don't know his present official position, but he was certain to
+become prominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your
+attitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help
+you, I'm sure."
+
+"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."
+
+She started. "How did you know?"
+
+"Intuition," said Calhoun dryly. "All right. I'll count on him."
+
+But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day
+and all the next. The girl was very quiet. Murgatroyd tried to enter
+into pretended conversation with her, but she was not able to match
+his pretense.
+
+On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached. While the
+ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look
+forward with confidence to the future. But when contact and, in a
+fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer,
+prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but
+there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.
+
+Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.
+
+"I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out. If
+I can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow my
+advice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideas
+it probably will get; and isn't doing what I suspect it is--why,
+maybe something can be done."
+
+"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
+
+Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock. There was no sensation
+attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. It
+was now time for the end. He might find most anything having happened.
+His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could have
+sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of
+desperation....
+
+As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly a
+light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhoun
+went into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of
+the blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it.
+
+He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for
+coordinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There was
+confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not
+ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the
+ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward.
+
+Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each
+other, until the ship actually touched ground.
+
+Then he opened the exit port--and faced armed men in the darkness,
+with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained
+on the Med Ship itself.
+
+"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Your
+ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were
+emaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the
+ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung
+loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their
+cheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotches
+of pigment of which Calhoun had heard.
+
+The man nearest the Med Ship's port had a monstrous, irregular
+dull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon his
+forehead. The man next to him had a blue throat. The next man again
+was less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed a
+splashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.
+
+The leader of the truculent group--it might have been a firing
+squad--made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, except
+for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter than
+white.
+
+"Out!" said that man savagely. "We're taking over your stock of food.
+You'll get your share of it, like everybody else, but--"
+
+Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence or
+two. It should have amounted to identification but there was
+skepticism in the armed party.
+
+"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard leader sardonically.
+"You'll have a chance to prove that. Come out of there!"
+
+Calhoun spoke abruptly, "This is a Med Ship," he said. "There are
+medicines and bacterial culture inside it. They shouldn't be meddled
+with. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"
+
+The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before, "I said the
+government was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you're
+not taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you're
+leaving!"
+
+"And I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We've
+just come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as he
+named Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping
+fusion-bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the
+authority to take a few sensible precautions!"
+
+He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "_Chee! Chee!_" from
+behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling
+apprehensively to his neck.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A _tormal_" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know
+something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and
+he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and he
+stays with me!"
+
+The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to
+ask you questions. Here!"
+
+A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid
+enclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used
+on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.
+
+"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you
+want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"
+
+The groundcar was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from
+the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior
+and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of
+the grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It picked
+up speed.
+
+There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed
+lights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set a
+pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not
+seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair.
+
+The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds,
+and the groundcar needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a
+paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other
+depressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up to
+perfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleaned
+lately, litter here and there.
+
+Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling of
+wretchedness and gloom and, ultimately, of hunger.
+
+Maril spoke nervously to the driver.
+
+"The famine isn't any better?"
+
+He moved his head in negation, but did not speak. There was a splotch
+of blue pigment at the back of his neck. It extended upward into his
+hair.
+
+"I left two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then.
+Rationing hadn't started."
+
+The driver said evenly, "There's rationing now!"
+
+The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights about
+its perimeter seemed few and pale.
+
+"Everything seems worse. Even the lights."
+
+"Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow
+crops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either."
+
+Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips.
+
+"I was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent and
+then make my way to Weald. I mailed reports of what I found out back
+to Trent. Somebody got them back to here whenever it was possible."
+
+The driver said, "Everybody knows the man on Trent disappeared. Maybe
+he got caught, maybe somebody saw him without make-up. Or maybe he
+just quit being one of us. What's the difference? No use!"
+
+Calhoun found himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. He
+was hopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accept
+hostility from those about them as a device of fate for their
+destruction.
+
+Maril said quickly to Calhoun, "You understand? Dara's a heavy-metals
+planet. There aren't many light elements in our soil. Potassium is
+scarce. So our ground isn't very fertile. Before the Plague we traded
+metals and manufactured products for imports of food and potash. But
+since the Plague we've had no off-planet commerce. We've been
+quarantined."
+
+"I gathered as much," said Calhoun. "It was up to Med Service to see
+that that didn't happen. It's up to Med Service now to see that it
+stops."
+
+"Too late now for anything," said the driver. "Whatever Med Service
+may be! They're talking about cutting down our population so there'll
+be food enough for some to live. There are two questions about it. One
+is who's to be kept alive, and the other is why."
+
+The groundcar aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on
+the far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grew
+nearer. Maril said hesitantly, "There was someone, Korvan--" Calhoun
+didn't catch the rest of the name. Maril said hesitantly, "He was
+working on food plants. I thought he might accomplish something...."
+
+The driver said caustically, "Sure! Everybody's heard about him! He
+came up with a wonderful thing! He and his outfit worked out a way to
+process weeds so they can be eaten. And they can. You can fill your
+belly and not feel hungry, but it's like eating hay. You starve just
+the same. He's still working. Head of a government division."
+
+The groundcar passed through a gate. It stopped before a lighted door.
+The armed men hanging to its outside dropped off. They watched Calhoun
+closely as he stepped out with Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder.
+
+Minutes later they faced a hastily summoned group of officials of the
+Darian government. For a ship to land on Dara was so remarkable an
+event that it called practically for a cabinet meeting. And Calhoun
+noted that they were no better fed than the guards at the spaceport.
+
+They regarded Calhoun and Maril with oddly burning, eyes. It was, of
+course, because the two of them showed no signs of hunger. They
+obviously had not been on short rations. Darians had this, now, to
+increase a hatred which was inevitable anyhow, directed at all peoples
+off their own planet.
+
+"My name is Calhoun," said Calhoun briskly. "I've the usual Med
+Service credentials. Now--"
+
+He did not wait to be questioned. He told them of the appalling state
+of things in the Twelfth Sector of the Med Service, so that men had
+been borrowed from other sectors to remedy the intolerable, and he was
+one of them. He told of his arrival at Weald and what had happened
+there, from the excessively cautious insistence that he prove he was
+not a Darian, to the arrival of the death-ship from Orede.
+
+He was giving them the news affecting them, as they had not heard it
+before. He went on to tell of his stop at Orede and his purpose, and
+his encounter with the men he found there. When he finished there was
+silence. He broke it.
+
+"Now," he said, "Maril's an agent of yours. She can add to what I've
+told you. I'm Med Service. I have a job to do here to carry out what
+wasn't done before. I should make a planetary health inspection and
+make recommendations for the improvement of the state of things. I'll
+be glad if you'll arrange for me to talk to your health officials.
+Things look bad, and something should be done."
+
+Someone laughed without mirth.
+
+"What will you recommend for long-continued undernourishment?" he
+asked derisively. "That's our health problem!"
+
+"I recommend food," said Calhoun.
+
+"Where'll you fill the prescription?"
+
+"I've the answer to that, too," said Calhoun curtly. "I'll want to
+talk to any space pilots you've got. Get your astrogators together and
+I think they'll approve my idea."
+
+The silence was totally skeptical.
+
+"Orede--"
+
+"Not Orede," said Calhoun. "Weald will be hunting that planet over for
+Darians. If they find any, they'll drop bombs here."
+
+"Our only space pilots," said a tall man, presently, "are on Orede
+now. If you've told the truth, they'll probably head back because of
+your warning. They should bring meat."
+
+His mouth worked peculiarly, and Calhoun knew that it was at the
+thought of food.
+
+"Which," said another man sharply, "goes to the hospitals! I haven't
+tasted meat in two years!"
+
+"Nobody has," growled another man still. "But here's this man Calhoun.
+I'm not convinced he can work magic, but we can find out if he lies.
+Put a guard on his ship. Otherwise let our health men give him his
+head. They'll find out if he's from this Medical Service he tells of!
+and this Maril...."
+
+"I can be identified," said Maril. "I was sent to gather information
+and send it in secret writing to one of us on Trent. I have a family
+here. They'll know me! And I--there was someone who was working on
+foods, and I believe he made it possible to use ... all sorts of
+vegetation for food. He will identify me."
+
+Someone laughed harshly.
+
+Maril swallowed.
+
+"I'd like to see him," she repeated. "And my family."
+
+Some of the blue-splotched men turned away. A broad-shouldered man
+said bluntly, "Don't look for them to be glad to see you. And you'd
+better not show yourself in public. You've been well fed. You'll be
+hated for that."
+
+Maril began to cry. Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, "_Chee! Chee!_"
+
+Calhoun held him close. There was confusion. And Calhoun found the
+Minister of Health at hand. He looked most harried of all the
+officials gathered to question Calhoun. He proposed that he get a look
+at the hospital situation right away.
+
+It wasn't practical. With all the population on half rations or less,
+when night came people needed to sleep. Most people, indeed, slept as
+many hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage. It
+was much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly nagged
+at by continued hunger.
+
+And there was the matter of simple decency. Continuous gnawing hunger
+had an embittering effect upon everyone. Quarrelsomeness was a common
+experience. And people who would normally be the leaders of opinion
+felt shame because they were obsessed by thoughts of food. It was best
+when people slept.
+
+Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak. What he found moved
+him to savage anger. There were too many sick children. In every case
+undernourishment contributed to their sickness. And there was not
+enough food to make them well. Doctors and nurses denied themselves
+food to spare it for their patients. And most of that self-denial was
+doubtless voluntary, but it would not be discreet for anybody on Dara
+to look conspicuously better fed than his fellows.
+
+Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the Med
+Ship while the guard in the ship looked on. He demonstrated the
+processes of synthesis and auto-catalysis that enabled such small
+samples to be multiplied indefinitely. He was annoyed by a clamorous
+appetite. There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical
+techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody
+was half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved of
+Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function.
+
+He was, of course, a Med Service _tormal_, and _tormals_ were
+creatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the
+Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals. But the
+remarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract any
+disease. Not any.
+
+They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins,
+and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to which
+a _tormal_ could not more or less immediately develop antibody
+resistance. So that in interstellar medicine _tormals_ were priceless.
+
+Let Murgatroyd be infected with however localized, however specialized
+an inimical organism, and presently some highly valuable defensive
+substance could be isolated from his blood and he'd remain in his
+usual exuberant good health.
+
+When the antibody was analyzed by those techniques of microanalysis
+the Service had developed, that was that. The antibody could be
+synthesized and one could attack any epidemic with confidence.
+
+The tragedy for Dara was, of course, that no Med Ship had come to Dara
+three generations ago, when the Dara plague raged. Worse, after the
+plague Weald was able to exert pressure which only a criminally
+incompetent Med Service director would have permitted. But criminal
+incompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned to
+Sector Twelve to help remedy. He was not at ease, though. No ship
+arrived from Orede to bear out his account of an attempt to get that
+lonely world evacuated before Weald discovered it had blueskins on it.
+Maril had vanished, to visit or return to her family, or perhaps to
+consult with the mysterious Korvan who'd arranged for her to leave
+Dara to be a spy, and had advised her simply to make a new life
+somewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and out-caste
+world.
+
+Calhoun had learned of two achievements the same Korvan had made for
+his world. Neither was remarkably constructive. He'd offered to prove
+the value of the second by dying of it. Which might make him a very
+admirable character, or he could have a passion for martyrdom, which
+is much more common than most people think. In two days Calhoun was
+irritable enough from unaccustomed hunger to suspect the worst of him.
+
+Meanwhile Calhoun worked doggedly; in the hospitals while the patients
+were awake and in the Med Ship, under guard, afterward. He had hunger
+cramps now, but he tested a plastic cube with a thriving biological
+culture in it.
+
+He worked at increasing his store of it. He'd snipped samples of
+pigmented skin from dead patients in the hospitals, and examined the
+pigmented areas, and very, very painstakingly verified a theory. It
+took an electron microscope to do it, but he found a virus in the blue
+patches which matched the type discovered on Tralee.
+
+The Tralee viruses had effects which were passed on from mother to
+child, and heredity had been charged with the observed results of
+quasi-living viral particles. And then Calhoun very, very carefully
+introduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in a
+plastic cube. He watched what happened.
+
+He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he yawned and
+yawned and barely managed to stagger off to bed. The watching guard in
+the Med Ship watched him in amazement.
+
+That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloody
+carcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning
+Maril came back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expression
+was of someone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life.
+
+"I'm all right," she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've been
+visiting my family. I've seen Korvan. I'm quite all right."
+
+"You haven't eaten any better than I have," Calhoun observed.
+
+"I couldn't!" admitted Maril. "My sisters, my little sisters so
+thin.... There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficiently
+arranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I gave
+most of my food to my sisters and they--they squabbled over it!"
+
+Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said, in a no
+less desolate tone, "Korvan said I was foolish to come back."
+
+"He could be right," said Calhoun.
+
+"But I had to!" protested Maril. "And now I--I've been eating all I
+wanted to, in Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they're
+half-starved and I'm not. And when you see what hunger does to
+them.... It's terrible to be half-starved and not able to think of
+anything but food!"
+
+"I hope," said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get hold
+of an astrogator or two--"
+
+"The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told him
+shakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one load's not enough to
+make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us on
+Orede, we daren't go back for more meat."
+
+She said abruptly, "There are some prisoners. They were miners. They
+were crowded out of the ship. The Darians who'd stampeded the cattle
+took them prisoners. They had to!"
+
+"True," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't have been wise to leave Wealdians
+around on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tell
+about a rumor of blueskins. Even if their throats will be cut now. Is
+that the program?"
+
+Maril shivered.
+
+"No. They'll be put on short rations like everybody else. And people
+will watch them. The Wealdians expect to die of plague any minute
+because they've been with Darians. So people look at them and laugh.
+But it's not very funny."
+
+"It's natural," said Calhoun, "but perhaps lacking in charity. Look
+there! How about those astrogators? I need them for a job I have in
+mind."
+
+Maril wrung her hands.
+
+"C--come here," she said in a low tone.
+
+There was an armed guard in the control room of the ship. He'd watched
+Calhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed his
+mysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He was
+bored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control board, though, he
+was uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the way
+into the other cabin and slid the door shut.
+
+"The astrogators are coming," she said swiftly. "They'll bring some
+boxes with them. They'll ask you to instruct them so they can handle
+our ship better. They lost themselves coming back from Orede. No,
+they didn't lose themselves, but they lost time, enough time almost to
+make an extra trip for meat. They need to be experts. I'm to come
+along, so they can be sure that what you teach them is what you've
+been doing right along."
+
+Calhoun said, "Well?"
+
+"They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would do
+something monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stop
+it by being more monstrous sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there are
+enough. So they want to use your ship--it's faster in overdrive and so
+on. And they'll go to Weald in this ship and--they say they'll give
+Weald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"
+
+Calhoun said dryly, "This pays me off for being too sympathetic with
+blueskins! But if I'd been hungry for a couple of years, and was
+despised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I might
+react the same way. No," he said curtly as she opened her lips to
+speak again, "don't tell me the trick. Considering everything, there's
+only one trick it could be. But I doubt profoundly that it would work.
+All right."
+
+He slid the door back and returned to the control room. Maril followed
+him. He said detachedly, "I've been working on a problem outside of
+the food one. It isn't the time to talk about it right now, but I
+think I've solved it."
+
+Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmac
+outside the ship. Both doors of the airlock were open. Four men came
+in. They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as most
+Darians, but there was a reason for that. Their leader introduced
+himself and the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had
+built to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said their
+self-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot their
+destination. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They needed
+instruction.
+
+Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. They
+were, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement was
+a patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a blue
+birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. A
+third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a
+dull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.
+
+"We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board and
+learn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we've
+got."
+
+"I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we
+go along.... Those boxes?"
+
+Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the four
+very carefully brought them inside.
+
+"They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywhere
+without rations, except Orede."
+
+"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," said
+Calhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"
+
+"Yes," said the young man.
+
+He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhoun
+shrugged.
+
+"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there's
+the button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted."
+
+The young man seated himself at the control board. Very
+professionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift by
+landing-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He
+went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him.
+
+"Hold it!"
+
+He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at the
+control board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the
+doors.
+
+The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found
+occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a
+training voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskin
+pilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoun
+grew stern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald.
+
+The young men glanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. He
+made the acting pilot look up the intrinsic brightness of its sun and
+measure its apparent brightness from just off Dara. He made him
+estimate the change in brightness to be expected after so many hours
+in overdrive, if one broke out to measure.
+
+The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour of
+duty with more respect for Calhoun then he'd had at the beginning. The
+second was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilled
+him in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparent
+brightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated with
+angular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearer
+heavens.
+
+It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out on Dara,
+and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and other fine
+points of space-piloting. They'd done enough, in a few trips to Orede,
+to realize that they needed to know more. Calhoun showed them.
+
+Calhoun did not try to make things easy for them. He was hungry and
+easily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and to
+phrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in
+command of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use
+Weald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship
+came out of overdrive pointing in an unknown direction and with a
+precessory motion.
+
+He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestial
+globe containing hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course in
+overdrive toward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute the
+distance to Weald from such data as he could get from observation,
+without reference to any records.
+
+By this time the first man was chafing to take a second turn. Calhoun
+gave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, a
+highly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space.
+His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least
+one breakout from overdrive in each watch.
+
+He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of being
+hungry--though there had been no reason for them to stint on food on
+Orede--in growing pride in what they came to know.
+
+When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highly
+qualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better
+spacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward
+Calhoun was respectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young,
+the combination is impressive.
+
+Maril had served as passenger only. In theory she was to compare
+Calhoun's lessons with his practise when alone. But he did nothing on
+this journey which, teaching considered, was different from the two
+interstellar journeys Maril had made with him.
+
+She occupied the sleeping cabin during two of the six watches of each
+ship-day. She operated the food-readier, which was almost completely
+emptied of its original store of food, it having been confiscated by
+the government of Dara. That amount of food would make no difference
+to the planet, but it was wise for everyone on Dara to be equally
+ill-fed.
+
+On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude of
+minus five-tenths. The electron telescope could detect its larger
+planets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo.
+Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing
+out the difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med
+Ship were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc.
+
+"And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduate
+you as pilots. Maril, four cups of coffee, please."
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee?_" The Med Ship was badly crowded with six
+humans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroyd
+alone. The little _tormal_ had spent most of his time in his
+cubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about on
+what had been a spacious ship before.
+
+"No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "You didn't do your
+lessons. This is for the graduating class only."
+
+Murgatroyd came out of his miniature den. He found his little cup and
+offered it insistently, saying, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
+
+"No!" said Calhoun firmly. He regarded his class of four young men
+with their blueskin markings. "Drink it down!" he commanded. "That's
+the last order I'll give you. You're graduate pilots, now!"
+
+They drank the coffee with a flourish. There was not one who did not
+admire Calhoun for having made them admire themselves. They were,
+actually, almost as much better pilots as they believed.
+
+"And now," said Calhoun, "I suppose you'll tell me the truth about
+those boxes you brought on board. You said they were rations, but
+they haven't been opened in six days. I have an idea what they mean,
+but you tell me."
+
+The four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause.
+
+"They could be," said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped on
+Weald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has
+decided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother
+with you. Is that right?"
+
+The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
+into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
+provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
+not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
+the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
+blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
+four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
+in emptiness.
+
+"Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were ordered
+to do."
+
+"I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald a
+little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
+day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
+imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
+claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
+do anything of the kind."
+
+One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
+closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
+heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
+went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
+attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and
+he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and
+reproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"
+
+He collapsed.
+
+Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
+comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
+throat. Murgatroyd looked agitated. He said anxiously, "_Chee? Chee?_"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "They'll wake up presently."
+
+Maril said in a tense and desperate whisper, "You're betraying us!
+You're going to take us to Weald!"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "We'll only orbit around it. First, though, I want
+to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the
+way. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while a
+fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable
+Cepheids of known period."
+
+He put the four boxes carefully in the disposal unit. He operated it.
+The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of
+metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control desk.
+
+"I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate in
+the spread of plagues, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be
+another matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald
+busy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some
+food for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is thousands of
+tons, or tens of thousands." Then he said, "Overdrive coming,
+Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"
+
+The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied
+the change. Murgatroyd burped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright
+half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had icecaps at its
+poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had
+that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas
+which was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free,
+and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to
+man.
+
+There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a
+sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,
+still bound hand and foot upon the control room floor. Murgatroyd
+regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry
+forehead wrinkled helplessly.
+
+"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as
+his search had no result. "They can't! It would be too sensible for
+them to have done it!"
+
+Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a subdued voice.
+
+"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar
+orbit would be ridiculous! They--" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of
+course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
+
+He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian
+landing-grid, which was mapped in the Sector Directory, against the
+look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible
+outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar system
+drive.
+
+"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the
+first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in
+space, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit
+and at what distance will you put it?"
+
+Maril did not answer.
+
+"Obviously," said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from the
+landing-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it on
+the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the
+way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night
+without having to calculate anything.
+
+"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in
+exactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above the
+equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on
+the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the
+landing-grid and directly over the equator."
+
+He scribbled for a moment.
+
+"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few
+hundred, and--here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!"
+
+He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushed
+the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The
+sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.
+Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once
+more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating
+satisfaction.
+
+He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,
+handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said
+depressedly, "_Chee!_"
+
+"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, and
+there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody
+bumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do
+want to bump, but gently."
+
+Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something dark
+appeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril,
+despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly
+larger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Ship
+maneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. A
+fourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.
+
+They were spaceships, huge by comparison with _Aesclipus Twenty_. They
+floated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not in
+formation. They were not at even distances from each other. They did
+not point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like
+derelicts.
+
+Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there
+came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance
+out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med
+Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast surface of welded metal.
+
+Calhoun relaxed. He opened a wall panel and brought out a vacuum suit.
+He began briskly to get it on.
+
+"Things moving smoothly," he commented. "We weren't challenged. So
+it's extremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor
+ought to begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now
+whether I'm a hero or in sure-enough trouble!"
+
+Maril said drearily, "I don't know what you've done, except--"
+
+Calhoun blinked at her, in the act of hauling the vacuum suit up his
+chest and over his shoulders.
+
+"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogation
+lessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them
+dump germ-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see the
+point? These are space ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They're
+not manned and they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing but
+sky-riding storage bins!"
+
+He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his arms
+into the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air tanks over
+his shoulder and hooked them to the suit.
+
+"I'll be back," he said. "I hope with good news. I've reason to be
+hopeful, though, because these Wealdians are very practical men. They
+have things all prepared and tidy. I suspect I'll find these ships
+with stores of air and fuel, maybe even food, so that if Weald should
+manage to make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'd
+only have to bring out crews."
+
+He lifted the space helmet down from its rack and put it on. He tested
+it, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data from
+the lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above his
+eye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking through
+the helmet's opened faceplate.
+
+"If our friends should wake up before I get back," he added, "please
+restrain them. I'd hate to be marooned."
+
+He went waddling into the airlock with the coil of space rope over one
+vacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him. A little
+later Maril heard the outer lock open. Then silence.
+
+Murgatroyd whimpered a little. Maril shivered. Calhoun had gone out of
+the ship to nothingness. He'd said that what he was looking for, and
+what he'd found, was forty-two thousand miles from Weald. One could
+imagine falling forty-two thousand miles, where one couldn't imagine
+falling a light-year.
+
+Calhoun was walking on the steel plates of a gigantic spaceship which
+floated among dozens of its fellows, all seeming derelicts and
+seemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on the nearest because of
+magnetic-soled shoes. He trusted his life to them and to a flimsy
+space rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship's airlock.
+
+Time passed. A clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to the
+second which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Very
+small and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing
+utter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship.
+
+Maril found herself listening tensely for something else. One of the
+four bound blueskins snored, and stirred, and slept again. Murgatroyd
+gazed about unhappily, and swung down to the control room floor, and
+then paused for lack of any place to go or anything to do. He sat down
+and began half-heartedly to lick his whiskers. Maril stirred.
+
+Murgatroyd looked at her hopefully.
+
+"_Chee?_" he asked shrilly.
+
+She shook her head. It became a habit to act as if Murgatroyd were a
+human being. "No," she said unsteadily. "Not yet."
+
+More time passed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintest
+of clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in the
+airlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises.
+
+The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fog
+came out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of the
+lock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly
+heavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two spacesuits and a
+curious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside his
+faceplate, and said briskly, "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it,
+will you, Maril?"
+
+He began to work his way out of his own vacuum-suit.
+
+"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practical
+tribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon as
+they're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat
+enough to keep a ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively
+near zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."
+
+He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where
+their beams played. But the metal spacesuits glistened and steamed,
+and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and
+utterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, which
+re-evaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and was
+immediately replaced.
+
+"Item," said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suit
+sleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping
+friends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble,
+provided only that nobody comes out here to bother us before they
+leave."
+
+He shed the last of the spacesuit, stepping out of its legs.
+
+"And," he finished wryly, "I brought back an emergency supply of ship
+provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough to
+feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving."
+
+Maril said, "But there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!"
+
+He gaped at her.
+
+"What do you think we're here for?"
+
+He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness.
+It was not a difficult task. The dosage mixed in the coffee given them
+as a graduation ceremony--the ceremony which had consisted solely of
+drinking coffee and passing out--allowed for waking-up processes.
+Calhoun took the precaution of disarming them first, but presently
+four hot-eyed young men glared at him.
+
+"I'm calling," said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently in his
+hand, "I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There've
+been unmanageable crop surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government
+grimly rations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been
+buying surplus grain to keep the price up.
+
+"To save storage costs, it's loaded the grain into out-of-date
+spaceships it once used to stand sentry over Dara to keep it out of
+space when there was another famine there. Those ships have been put
+out in orbit, where we're hooked on to one of them.
+
+"It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've brought
+spacesuits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, and
+I've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling for
+volunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it's
+needed. Do I get any volunteers?"
+
+He got four. Not immediately, because they were ashamed that he'd made
+it impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and now
+offered something much better to make up for it. They raged. But half
+a million bushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise die
+might live.
+
+Ultimately, truculently, first one and then another angrily agreed.
+
+"Good!" said Calhoun. "Now, how many of you dare risk the trip alone?
+I've got one grain ship warming up. There are plenty of others around
+us. Every one of you can take a ship and half a million bushels to
+Dara, if you have the nerve!"
+
+The atmosphere changed. Suddenly they clamored for the task he offered
+them. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them and
+taught them until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd
+pinned their ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy
+ships and unimaginable quantities of food with which to break the
+famine....
+
+There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so far
+warming up. Three more had to be entered, in spacesuits, and each had
+to have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it,
+and at least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up to
+reasonable temperature for use on the journey.
+
+Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length of
+journey that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun
+had to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sun
+under all circumstances and aim for it with the requisite high
+precision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout. When
+all that was accomplished, Calhoun might reasonably hope that they'd
+arrive. But it wasn't a certainty.
+
+Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the fine
+tolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than their
+teacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because their
+messages might be picked up on Weald.
+
+Of course, for this high heroic action to be successful, it had to be
+performed with the stealth of sneak-thieves.
+
+What seemed a long time passed. The one ship turned slowly upon some
+unseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A
+second twisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar
+system drive to get clear of the rest. The fourth--
+
+One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara at
+many times the speed of light. Another. Two more.
+
+That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness.
+And Calhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in
+such a pathetically small number of days. If the four ships reached
+Dara, their pilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with
+that estate over their bitter objection. But they would glory in
+it--if they reached Dara.
+
+Maril looked at him with very strange eyes.
+
+"Now what?" she asked.
+
+"We hang around," said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Weald
+to find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort of
+signal when a ship goes into overdrive. Usually it doesn't mean a
+thing. Nobody pays any attention. But if somebody comes out here...."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It'll be regrettable," said Calhoun. He was suddenly very tired.
+"It'll spoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more
+food, like interstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'll
+expect us to try it again. They might get set to fight. Or they might
+simply land the rest of these ships."
+
+"If I'd realized what you were about," said Maril, "I'd have joined in
+the lessons. I could have piloted a ship."
+
+"You wouldn't have wanted to," said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn't
+want to be a heroine. No normal girl does."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Korvan," said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him. He's
+been trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins.
+All he's accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly. He
+wouldn't feel comfortable with a girl who'd helped make starving
+unnecessary. He'd admire you politely, but he'd never marry you. And
+you know it."
+
+She shook her head, but it was not easy to tell whether she denied the
+reaction of Korvan, whom Calhoun had never met, or denied that he was
+more important to her than anything else. The last was what Calhoun
+plainly implied.
+
+"You don't seem to be trying to be a hero!" she protested.
+
+"I'd enjoy it," admitted Calhoun, "but I have a job to do. It's got to
+be done. It's more important than being admired."
+
+"You could take another ship back," she told him. "It would be worth
+more to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realize
+that you'd planned everything."
+
+"Ah," said Calhoun, "but you've no idea how much this ship matters to
+Dara!"
+
+He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his
+ears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave
+lengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no
+mention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft.
+There was no mention of the ships at all. There was plenty of mention
+of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going
+on to see which political party could promise the most complete
+protection against blueskins.
+
+After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung
+the Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around
+which Dara rolled. He said, "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
+
+Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and the
+Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signal
+could come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be no
+sound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.
+
+Calhoun yawned again.
+
+"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily,
+"and I'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on
+Dara. It's one way not to feel hungry. And one dreams such delicious
+meals! But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara."
+
+Maril said tensely, "You're going back? After they took the ship from
+you?"
+
+"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,
+and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing as
+a blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got
+to do something to make sure there are no more famines."
+
+She looked at him oddly.
+
+"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."
+
+"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I didn't get
+much sleep on the way here, while running a seminar on astrogation. I
+think I'll take a nap."
+
+She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leave
+him alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let a
+Med Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,
+turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantly
+asleep.
+
+For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
+happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very
+far away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads of
+grain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each
+great ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.
+
+Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to
+their stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion had
+been explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to be
+counted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but
+the tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible created
+things.
+
+It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it
+was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the
+human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of
+the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone
+with no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.
+
+On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhat
+distastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him
+in a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with
+his furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.
+
+Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter
+of six or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of
+a long process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and again
+culturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculated
+time.
+
+"Better wait until tomorrow," he observed, and put the bit of clear
+liquid in a temperature-controlled place of safekeeping.
+
+"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"
+
+"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "How
+about some music?"
+
+She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtape
+into it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she
+had never heard before. It was another device to counteract isolation
+and monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing its
+effectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.
+
+Any indulgence frequently repeated would become a habit, in the sense
+that it would give no special pleasure when indulged in, but would
+make for stress if it were omitted. Calhoun deliberately went for
+weeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to be
+looked forward to and cherished.
+
+When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee with
+tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers,
+Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.
+
+"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like
+other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what
+other people have to get in crazy ways--making their work feed their
+vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can
+put your whole mind on your work."
+
+He thought it over.
+
+"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," he
+admitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites.
+But there are instincts...."
+
+She waited. He did not finish.
+
+"What do you do about the instincts that work and music and such
+things can't satisfy?"
+
+Calhoun grinned wryly, "I'm stern with them. I have to be."
+
+He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for
+the night. She went.
+
+It was after breakfast time of the next ship-day when he got out the
+sample of clear liquid he'd worked so long to produce.
+
+"We'll see how it works," he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case of
+a slip-up. It's perfectly safe so long as he's aboard and there are
+only the two of us."
+
+She watched as he injected half a cc. under his own skin. Then she
+shivered a little.
+
+"What will it do?"
+
+"That remains to be seen." He paused a moment. "You and I," he said
+with some dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catch
+something from me, it will be infectious indeed!"
+
+She gazed at him utterly without comprehension.
+
+He took his own temperature. He brought out the folios which were his
+orders, covering each of the planets he should give a standard Medical
+Service inspection. Weald was there. Dara wasn't. But a Med Service
+man has much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routine
+of normal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations,
+he necessarily has much more. Calhoun went over the folios.
+
+Two hours later he took his temperature again. He looked pleased. He
+made an entry in the ship's log. Two hours later yet he found himself
+drinking thirstily and looked more pleased still.
+
+He made another entry in the log and matter-of-factly drew a small
+quantity of blood from his own vein and called to Murgatroyd.
+Murgatroyd submitted amiably to the very trivial operation Calhoun
+carried out. Calhoun put away the equipment and saw Maril staring at
+him with a certain look of shock.
+
+"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!_"
+
+"Very well," agreed Calhoun. "We'll all have some."
+
+He made coffee. Murgatroyd sipped at the cup especially made for his
+little paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had no
+pain nerves. It itched. But he was perfectly content. Murgatroyd
+would always be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.
+
+Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and
+with a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long
+enough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to
+Murgatroyd's heartbeat, while Murgatroyd dozed.
+
+"Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, and
+ninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four."
+
+She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later, still not stirring
+to disturb Murgatroyd, he had her write down another time and sequence
+of figures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour later
+still, a third set. But then he put Murgatroyd down, well satisfied.
+
+He took his own temperature. He nodded.
+
+"Murgatroyd and I have one more chore to do," he told her. "Would you
+go in the other cabin for a moment?"
+
+Disturbed, she went into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a small sample
+of blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroyd
+submitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhoun
+had diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it up
+thoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and white
+corpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered that
+Calhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of
+antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would
+assuredly take care of two patients.
+
+But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of
+those scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures
+from store.
+
+Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back.
+
+"It was nothing," he explained, "but you might have felt
+uncomfortable. We simply had a bit of Med Service routine that had to
+be gone through. It's all right now."
+
+He offered no further explanation. She said, "I'll fix lunch." She
+hesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do you
+want to--"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service
+fault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations until
+everybody eats."
+
+He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he
+considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening
+meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily.
+He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated
+game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of
+probability increased one's chance of winning.
+
+By midnight she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun
+was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was
+satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive off
+Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the
+other cabin.
+
+Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made for
+him, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood pressure after the injection of
+the same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself and
+later, without contact with him or the culture, in Maril. He put a
+professional comment at the end:
+
+     _The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics
+     during long storage in the spore state. It received and reproduced
+     rapidly. I injected .5 cc. under my skin and in less than one hour
+     my temperature was 30.8 deg. C. An hour later it was 30.9 deg. C. This was
+     its peak. It immediately returned to normal. The only other
+     observable symptom was slightly increased thirst. Bloodpressure
+     and pulse remained normal. The other person in the Med Ship
+     displayed the same symptoms, in prompt and complete repetition,
+     without physical contact._
+
+He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole, his tail
+draped carefully over his nose.
+
+The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship-time. Calhoun
+made contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.
+
+It was almost two hours later, at 1500 hours ship-time, when the
+people of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was to be
+executed immediately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+From the viewpoint of Darians, who were also blueskins, the decision
+of Calhoun's guilt and the decision to execute him were reasonable
+enough. Maril protested fiercely, and her testimony agreed with
+Calhoun's in every respect, but from a blueskin viewpoint their own
+statements were damning.
+
+Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only
+semiskilled space pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
+Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there
+he had instructed them in modern guidance methods for ships of space.
+
+So far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more
+competent pilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for
+example, to raid the enormous cattle herds there. And he'd had them
+drive the Med Ship to Weald, against which there could be no
+objection.
+
+But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them
+drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd
+been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots
+off separately, so he and Maril claimed, in huge ships crammed with
+grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow.
+
+Nobody believed in shiploads of grain to be had for the taking. They
+did know that the only four partially experienced space pilots on Dara
+had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent out of the ship
+after they'd been drugged.
+
+Had they been trained, and had they been helped or even permitted to
+sow the seeds of plague on Weald, and had they come back prepared to
+pass on training to other men to handle other space ships now
+feverishly being built in hidden places on Dara, then Dara might have
+a chance of survival.
+
+But a space battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous
+at best. With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So
+Calhoun, by his own story, appeared to have doomed every living being
+on Dara to massacre from the bombs of Weald.
+
+It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing
+in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun
+had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships
+and could build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct
+them.
+
+Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced spacemen to
+man some ships fully and train the crews of others. If it had become
+desperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life on
+Dara would be delayed. Dara might have gained time at least to build
+ships which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way.
+
+But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Weald
+already had a fleet of huge ships which only needed to be emptied of
+grain and filled with guns and men, then Dara was doomed. But if he
+did not tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So
+Calhoun would be killed.
+
+His execution was to take place in the open space of the landing-grid,
+with vision cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin
+planet. Half-starved men with grisly blue blotches on their skins,
+marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet
+which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in
+their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall.
+Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as
+atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death would be satisfying.
+
+So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered
+to him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the
+landing-grid floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire
+upon him at the same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be
+destroyed. He would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon
+him.
+
+His death was remarkably close, nothing remaining but the order to
+fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything.
+One of the grain ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its
+pilot was triumphantly calling for landing coordinates. The grid
+office relayed his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to
+get it on the communication system of the whole planet.
+
+"Calling ground," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
+student pilots Calhoun had trained. "Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
+captured ship requests coordinates for landing! Purpose of landing is
+to deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!"
+
+At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
+vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to
+be used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on
+its second voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when
+it threatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in
+the sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the
+center of the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where
+he was to have been executed.
+
+The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then did
+Calhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the
+grid's metal-lace wall.
+
+The big ship touched ground, and its exit port revolved and opened,
+and the student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handfuls of
+grain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd,
+then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoice
+when Calhoun's living body exploded into flame.
+
+They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the Med
+Ship, nevertheless. He was surrounded by ecstatically admiring
+citizens of Dara. They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until
+he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in
+their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and
+affection, minutes since they'd thirsted for his blood.
+
+Two hours after the first ship, a second landed. Dara went wild again.
+Four hours later still, the third arrived. The fourth came down to
+ground on the following day.
+
+When Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the second
+time his tone and manner were very dry.
+
+"Now," he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators to train.
+I think it likely that we can raid the Wealdian grain fleet one more
+time, and in so doing get the beginning of a fleet for defense. I
+insist, however, that it must not be used in combat. We might as well
+be sensible about this situation! After all, four shiploads of grain
+won't break the famine! They'll help a lot, but they're only the
+beginning of what's needed for a planetary population!"
+
+"How much grain can we hope for?" demanded a man with a blue mark
+covering all his chin.
+
+Calhoun told him.
+
+"How long before Weald can have a fleet overhead, dropping fusion
+bombs?" demanded another, grimly.
+
+Calhoun named a time. But then he said, "I think we can keep them from
+dropping bombs if we can get the grain fleet and some capable
+astrogators."
+
+"How?"
+
+He told them. It was not possible to tell the whole story of what he
+considered sensible behavior. An emotional program can be presented
+and accepted immediately. A plan of action which is actually
+intelligent, considering all elements of a situation, has to be
+accepted piecemeal. Even so, the military men growled.
+
+"We've plenty of heavy elements," said one. "If we'd used our brains,
+we'd have more bombs than Weald can hope for! We could turn that whole
+planet into a smoking cinder!"
+
+"Which," said Calhoun acidly, "would give you some satisfaction but
+not an ounce of food! And food's more important than satisfaction.
+Now, I'm going to take off for Weald again. I'll want somebody to
+build an emergency device for my ship, and I'll want the four pilots
+I've trained and twenty more candidates. And I'd like to have some
+decent rations! The last trip brought back two million bushels of
+grain. You can certainly spare adequate food for twenty men for a few
+days!"
+
+It took some time to get the special device constructed, but the Med
+Ship lifted in two days more. The device for which it had waited was
+simply a preventive of the disaster overtaking the ship from the mine
+on Orede. It was essentially a tank of liquid oxygen, packed in the
+space from which stores had been taken away. When the ship's air
+supply was pumped past it, first moisture and then CO_{2} froze out.
+
+Then the air flowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the
+CO_{2} with more useful breathing material. Then the moisture was
+restored to the air as it warmed again. For so long as the oxygen
+lasted, fresh air for any number of men could be kept purified and
+breathable. The Med Ship's normal equipment could take care of no more
+than ten. But with this it could journey to Weald with almost any
+complement on board.
+
+Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protested
+shrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closing
+airlock.
+
+"_Chee!_" he said indignantly. "_Chee! Chee!_"
+
+"No," said Calhoun. "We'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see her
+later."
+
+He nodded to one of the first four student pilots, who crisply made
+contact with the landing-grid office, and very efficiently supervised
+as the grid took the ship up. The other three of the four
+first-trained men explained every move to sub-classes assigned to
+each. Calhoun moved about, listening and making certain that the
+instruction was up to standard.
+
+He felt queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution
+in space. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside
+himself crowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each
+other's way. They trampled on each other. There was always somebody
+eating, and always somebody sleeping, and there was no need whatever
+for the background tape to keep the ship from being intolerably
+quiet. But the air system worked well enough, except once when the
+reheating unit quit and the air inside the ship went down below
+freezing before the trouble could be found and corrected.
+
+The journey to Weald, this time, took seven days because of the
+training program in effect. Calhoun bit his nails over the delay. But
+it was necessary for each of the students to make his own line-ups on
+Weald's sun, and compute distances, and for each of them to practise
+maneuverings that would presently be called for. Calhoun hoped
+desperately that preparations for active warfare did not move fast on
+Weald.
+
+He believed, however, that in the absence of direct news from Dara,
+Wealdian officials would take the normal course of politicos. They had
+proclaimed the ship from Orede an attack from Dara. Therefore, they
+would specialize on defensive measures before plumping for offense.
+They'd get patrol ships out to spot invasion ships long before they
+worked on a fleet to destroy the blueskins. It would meet the public
+demand for defense.
+
+Calhoun was right. The Med Ship made its final approach to Weald under
+Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his
+previous journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly
+accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading
+beyond two decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough
+from the Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its
+planets with the electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could
+aim for Weald itself, allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent
+motion of its image because of the limited speed of light. He tried
+the briefest of overdrive hops, and came out within the solar system
+and well inside any watching patrol.
+
+That was pure fortune. It continued. He'd broken through the screen of
+guard ships in undetectable overdrive. He was within half an hour's
+solar system drive of the grain fleet. There was no alarm, at first.
+Of course radars spotted the Med Ship as an object, but nobody paid
+attention. It was not headed for Weald. It was probably assumed to be
+a guard boat itself. Such mistakes do happen.
+
+Again from the storage space from which supplies had been removed,
+Calhoun produced vacuum suits. The four first students went out, each
+escorting a less-accustomed neophyte and all fastened firmly together
+with space ropes. They warmed the interiors of four ships and went on
+to others. Presently there were eight ships making ready for an
+interstellar journey, each with a scared but resolute new pilot
+familiarizing himself with its controls. There were sixteen ships.
+Twenty. Twenty-three.
+
+A guard ship came humming out from Weald. It would be armed, of
+course. It came droning, droning up the forty-odd thousand miles from
+the planet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell
+them what was toward. The guard ship would overhear. He could not
+trust untried young men to act rationally if they were unaware and the
+guard ship arrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of
+them.
+
+Then he was inspired. He called Murgatroyd, placed him before the
+communicator, and set it at voice-only transmission. This was familiar
+enough, to Murgatroyd. He'd often seen Calhoun use a communicator.
+
+"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd. "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+A startled voice came out of the speaker: "What's that?"
+
+"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd zestfully.
+
+The communicator was talking to him. Murgatroyd adored three things,
+in order. One was Calhoun. The second was coffee. The third was
+pretending to converse like a human being. The speaker said
+explosively, "You there, identify yourself!"
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee-chee!_" observed Murgatroyd. He wriggled with
+pleasure and added, reasonably enough, "_Chee!_"
+
+The communicator bawled, "Calling ground! Calling ground! Listen to
+this! Something that ain't human's talking at me on a communicator!
+Listen in an' tell me what to do!"
+
+Murgatroyd interposed with another shrill, "_Chee!_"
+
+Then Calhoun pulled the Med Ship slowly away from the clump of
+still-lifeless grain ships. It was highly improbable that the guard
+boat would carry an electron telescope. Most likely it would have only
+an echo-radar, and so could determine only that an object of some sort
+moved of its own accord in space. Calhoun let the Med Ship accelerate.
+That would be final evidence. The grain ships were between Weald and
+its sun. Even electron telescopes on the ground--and electron
+telescopes were ultimately optical telescopes with electronic
+amplification--could not get a good image of the ship through sunlit
+atmosphere.
+
+"_Chee?_" asked Murgatroyd solicitously. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"
+
+"Is it blueskins?" shakily demanded the voice from the guard boat.
+"Ground! Ground! Is it blueskins?"
+
+A heavy, authoritative voice came in with much greater volume. "That's
+no human voice," it said harshly. "Approach its ship and send back an
+image. Don't fire first unless it heads for ground."
+
+The guard ship swerved and headed for the Med Ship. It was still a
+very long way off.
+
+"_Chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd encouragingly.
+
+Calhoun changed the Med Ship's course. The guard ship changed course
+too. Calhoun let it draw nearer, but only a little. He led it away
+from the fleet of grain ships.
+
+He swung his electron telescope on them. He saw a spacesuited figure
+outside one, safely roped, however. It was easy to guess that someone
+had meant to return to the Med Ship for orders or to make a report,
+and found the Med Ship gone. He'd go back inside and turn on a
+communicator.
+
+"_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd.
+
+The heavy voice boomed. "You there! This is a human-occupied world! If
+you come in peace, cut your drive and let our guard ship approach!"
+
+Murgatroyd replied in an interested but doubtful tone. The booming
+voice bellowed. Another voice of higher authority took over.
+Murgatroyd was entranced that so many people wanted to talk to him. He
+made what for him was practically an oration. The last voice spoke
+persuasively and suavely.
+
+"_Chee-chee-chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd.
+
+One of the grain ships flickered and ceased to be. It had gone into
+overdrive. Another. And another. Suddenly they began to flick out of
+sight by twos and threes.
+
+"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd with a note of finality.
+
+The last grain ship vanished.
+
+"Calling guard ship," said Calhoun dryly. "This is Med Ship _Aesclipus
+Twenty_. I called here a couple of weeks ago. You've been talking to
+my _tormal_, Murgatroyd."
+
+A pause. A blank pause. Then profanity of deep and savage
+intemperance.
+
+"I've been on Dara," said Calhoun.
+
+Dead silence fell.
+
+"There's a famine there," said Calhoun deliberately. "So the grain
+ships you've had in orbit have been taken away by men from
+Dara--blueskins if you like--to feed themselves and their families.
+They've been dying of hunger and they don't like it."
+
+There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suave
+voice said waspishly, "Well? The Med Service will hear of your
+interference!"
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself. I have a message for you.
+Dara is ready to pay for every ounce of grain and for the ships it was
+stored in. They'll pay in heavy metals--irridium, uranium, that sort
+of thing."
+
+The suave voice fairly curdled.
+
+"As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground
+here!"
+
+"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium
+melts at 1150 deg. centigrade, and tungsten at 3370 deg. and irridium at
+2350 deg.. You could load such things and melt them down in space and then
+tow them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful
+materials!"
+
+The suave voice was infuriated: "I'll report this! You'll suffer for
+this!"
+
+Calhoun said pleasantly, "I'm sure that what I say is being recorded,
+so that I'll add that it's perfectly practical for Wealdians to land
+on Dara, take whatever property they think wise--to pay for damage
+done by blueskins, of course--and get back to Wealdian ships with
+absolutely no danger of carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the
+recording's clear...."
+
+He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be
+outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do
+whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not
+use the word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of
+bringing back infection. He gave exact details.
+
+Then he said, "My radar says you've four ships converging on me to
+blast me out of space. I sign off."
+
+The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that
+improbably stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and
+in which physical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the
+speed of light in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet.
+It was too high. For another, a ship could travel very many times
+186,000 miles per second in overdrive.
+
+The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and
+Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence, with only the
+small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice.
+
+Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had
+twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the
+ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and
+someone else. One need not be snobbish to wish to be alone sometimes!
+
+Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully.
+
+"I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may
+remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of
+grain reaching them. Maybe, just possibly, they'll listen to me and
+act sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not
+with ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with
+bombs!"
+
+Driving direct, without pausing for practising, the Med Ship could
+arrive at Dara in a little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward
+to relaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an
+adequate meal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then,
+presently, he sat down to a double meal of Darian famine-rations,
+which were far from appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on
+board.
+
+He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went on in the
+normal, non-overdrive universe. Suns flared, and comets hurtled on
+their way, and clouds formed and dropped down rain, and all sorts of
+celestial and meteorological phenomena took place. On Weald,
+obviously, there would be purest panic.
+
+The vanishing of the grain fleet wouldn't be charged against
+twenty-four men. A Darian fleet would be suspected, and with the
+suspicion would come terror, and with terror a governmental crisis.
+Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft that could take to
+space, and the agitated improvisation of a space fleet.
+
+But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine
+Calhoun's instructions for equipment by which armed men could be
+landed on a plague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again.
+Military and governmental officials would come to the eminently sane
+conclusion that while Calhoun could not well take active measures
+against blueskins, as a sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would
+be on the side of law and order and propriety and justice--in short,
+of Weald. So they ordered sample anticontagion suits made according to
+Calhoun's directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.
+
+On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed placidly back to it, grain was
+distributed lavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal
+ration almost doubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the
+relief was great. There was considerable gratitude felt for Calhoun,
+which as usual included a lively anticipation of further favors to
+come. Maril was interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to
+discuss him, and she did his reputation no harm. That was all that
+happened on Dara....
+
+No. There was something else. A very curious thing, too. There was a
+spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease.
+They lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran
+a temperature which peaked at 30.9 deg. centigrade, and drank more water
+than usual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all
+about it. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are
+rarely recorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was
+the case here.
+
+Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain ships
+would arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time they
+would make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle herds, and bring
+back incredible quantities of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almost
+everybody would get to taste meat again, which would be most
+gratifying.
+
+Then, the industries of Dara would labor at government-required tasks.
+An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into
+bombs--a concession by Calhoun--and plastic factories would make an
+astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy
+metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there
+would be some guns and minor items.
+
+Perhaps somebody could have predicted any of these items in advance,
+but it was unlikely that anyone did. Nobody but Calhoun, however,
+would ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that things
+would work out. He could see a promising total result. In fact, in the
+Med Ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of his journey, he
+thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of all those
+happenings when they got mixed together.
+
+He got back to Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted
+her with enthusiasm.
+
+"Something strange has happened," said Maril, very much subdued. "I
+told you that sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and
+then neither they nor their children ever have markings again."
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember that you told me."
+
+"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said they
+only took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but then
+they could be passed on from mother to child, until sometimes they
+died out."
+
+Calhoun blinked.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Korvan," said Maril very carefully. "Has worked out an idea that
+that's what happens to the blueskin markings on Darians. He thinks
+that people almost dead of the plague could get the virus, and if they
+recovered from the plague pass the virus on and be blueskins."
+
+"Interesting," said Calhoun, noncommittally.
+
+"And when we went to Weald," said Maril very carefully indeed, "you
+were working with some culture material. You wrote quite a lot about
+it in the ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? And
+Murgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" She
+moistened her lips. "You said that if infection passed between us,
+something would be very infectious indeed?"
+
+"This is a long discussion," said Calhoun. "Does it arrive at a
+point?"
+
+"It does," said Maril. "Thousands of people are having their
+pigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And Korvan
+has found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they
+felt feverish and very thirsty, and then felt all right again. You
+tried out something that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too,
+in the ship. Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that
+is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are
+always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence
+of one that's making _blueskin_ no longer a word with any meaning."
+
+"Remarkable!" said Calhoun.
+
+"Did you do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic that
+wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?"
+
+Calhoun said in feigned astonishment, "How can you think such a thing,
+Maril?"
+
+"Because I was there," said Maril. She said, somehow desperately, "I
+know you did it! But the question is, are you going to tell? When
+people find they're not blueskins any longer, when there's no such
+thing as a blueskin any longer, will you tell them why?"
+
+"Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan--"
+
+"He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself. He's
+found the proof. He's very proud. I'd have to tell him how the ideas
+got into his head if you were going to tell. And he'd be ashamed and
+angry."
+
+Calhoun considered, staring at her.
+
+"How it happened doesn't matter," he said at last. "The idea of
+anybody doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't
+get about. So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover
+what's happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened. But not
+why."
+
+She read his face carefully.
+
+"You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it
+was that way."
+
+She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded
+and went away.
+
+An hour later the Wealdian space fleet was reported massed in space
+and driving for Dara.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+There were small scout ships which came on ahead of the main fleet.
+They'd originally been guard boats, intended for solar system duty
+only and quite incapable of overdrive. They'd come from Weald in the
+cargo holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. The
+scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet,
+of all they might see before they were shot down. They found the
+landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship,
+_Aesclipus Twenty_.
+
+They searched here and there. They flittered to and fro, scanning wide
+bands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways and
+industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. It
+looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former
+grain ships which Calhoun had said the blueskins had seized and rushed
+away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.
+
+Dara offered no opposition to the ships. Nothing rose to space to
+oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion
+of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of
+military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main
+fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no
+sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by
+which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a
+pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it
+might be dangerous.
+
+Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensive
+movement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground.
+With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, there
+was something like an embarrassed pause. The Wealdian ships were ready
+to bomb. They were less anxious to be vaporized by possible suicide
+dashes of defending ships which might blow themselves up near contact
+with their enemies.
+
+But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a
+mere threat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material
+for total devastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or
+thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the
+world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make
+a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products. And they could settle
+down and kill every living thing not destroyed by the explosions
+themselves. Even the creatures of the deepest oceans would die of
+deadly, purposely-contrived fallout particles.
+
+The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness. It found no
+capacity for defense on Dara. It moved forward.
+
+But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara. It said
+that a ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space.
+The Darian fleet now hurtled toward Weald. It was a fleet of
+thirty-seven giant ships. They carried such-and-such bombs in
+such-and-such quantities. Unless its orders were countermanded, it
+would deliver those bombs on Weald, set to explode. If Weald bombed
+Dara, the orders could not be withdrawn. So Weald could bomb Dara. It
+could destroy all life on the pariah planet. But Weald would die with
+it.
+
+The fleet ceased its advance. The situation was a stalemate with pure
+desperation on one side and pure frustration on the other. This was no
+way to end the war. Neither planet could trust the other, even for
+minutes. If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now was
+possible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack at
+some other moment. Ultimately one or the other must perish, and the
+survivor would be the one most skilled in treachery.
+
+But then the pariah planet made a new proposal. It would send a
+messenger ship to stop its own fleet's bombardment if Weald would
+accept payment of the grain ships and their cargos. It would pay in
+ingots of irridium and uranium and tungsten, and gold if Weald wished
+it, for all damages Weald might claim.
+
+It would even pay indemnity for the miners of Orede, who had died by
+accident but perhaps in some sense through its fault. It would pay.
+But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomic fire and the fleet of
+Weald would have no home planet to return to.
+
+This proposal seemed both craven and foolish. It would allow the fleet
+of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It
+seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for
+blueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender.
+
+The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierce
+resentment filled the pariah planet's people. There was almost
+revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopeless and however
+fatal. But not all of Dara realized that a vital change had come about
+in the state of things on Dara. The enemy fleet had not a hint of it.
+
+In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of
+Dara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasing
+arrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald came
+heavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched
+gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they
+had been assured was theirs. The ship's outer hull would be sterilized
+before it returned to Weald, of course. And there was adequate
+protection for the landing-party.
+
+Men came out of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparent
+sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested,
+and which were perfect protection against contagion. They were double
+garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible
+envelope.
+
+Men wearing such sag-suits could walk about on Dara. They could work
+on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must
+remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they
+would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled
+around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra
+assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would
+burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ever
+having come within two layers of plastic of infection.
+
+What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before it
+was returned to Weald. Metals could be melted, if necessary. Gems
+could be sterilized. It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realize
+that blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed. There was only
+one bit of irrelevant information the space fleet of Weald did not
+have.
+
+That information was that the people of Dara weren't blueskins any
+longer. There'd been a trivial epidemic....
+
+The sag-suited men of Weald went zestfully about their business. They
+took over the landing-grid's operation, driving the Darian operators
+away. For the first time in history the operators of a landing-grid
+wore make-up to look like they did have blue pigment in their skins.
+They didn't. The Wealdian landing-party tested the grid's operation.
+They brought down another giant ship. Then another. And another.
+
+Parties in the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were the
+huge stockpiles of precious metals, brought in readiness to be
+surrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these into
+the holds of the ships of Weald. Some went forthrightly after personal
+loot.
+
+They came upon very few Darians. Those they saw kept sullenly away
+from them. They entered shops and took what they fancied. They
+zestfully removed the treasure of banks.
+
+Triumphant and scornful reports went up to the hovering great ships.
+The blueskins, said the reports, were spiritless and cowardly. They
+permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had
+been observed that the population was streaming out of the city,
+fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins
+had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, but
+there was more to be taken.
+
+More ships came down, and more. Some of the first, heavily loaded,
+were lifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of
+their hulls began. There was jealousy among the ships in space for
+those upon the ground. The first-landed ships had had their choice of
+loot. There were squabblings about priorities, now that the navy of
+Weald plainly had a license to steal. There was confusion among the
+members of the landing-parties. Discipline disappeared. Men in plastic
+sag-suits roved about as individuals, seeking what they might loot.
+
+There were armed and alerted landing-parties around the grid itself,
+of course, but the capital city of Dara lay open. Men coming back with
+loot found their ships already lifted off to make room for others.
+They were pushed into re-embarking-parties of other ships. There were
+more and more men to be found on ships where they did not belong, and
+more and more not to be found where they did.
+
+By the time half the fleet had been aground, there was no longer any
+pretense of holding a ship down until all its crew returned. There
+were too many other ships' companies clamoring for their turn to loot.
+The rosters of many ships, indeed, bore no particular relationship to
+the men actually on board.
+
+There were less than fifteen ships whose to-be-fumigated holds were
+still emptied, when the watchful government of Dara broadcast a new
+message to the invaders. It requested that the looting stop. No matter
+what payment Weald claimed, it had taken payment five times over. Now
+was time to stop.
+
+It was amusing. The space admiral of Weald ordered his ships alerted
+for action. The message ship, ordering the Darian fleet away from
+Weald, had been sent off long since. No other ship could get away now!
+The Darians could take their choice: accept the consequences of
+surrender, or the fleet would rise to throw down bombs.
+
+Calhoun was asking politely to be taken to the Wealdian admiral when
+the trouble began. It wasn't on the ground, at all. Everything was
+under splendid control where a landing force occupied the grid and all
+the ground immediately about it. The space admiral had headquarters in
+the landing-grid office. Reports came in, orders were issued,
+admirably crisp salutes were exchanged among sag-suited men.
+Everything was in perfect shape there.
+
+But there was panic among the ships in space. Communicators gave off
+horrified, panic-stricken yells. There were screamings. Intelligible
+communications ceased. Ships plunged crazily this way and that. Some
+vanished in overdrive. At least one plunged at full power into a
+Darian ocean.
+
+The space admiral found himself in command of fifteen ships only out
+of all his former force. The rest of the fleet went through a period
+of hysterical madness. In some ships it lasted for minutes only. In
+others it went on for half an hour or more. Then they hung overhead,
+but did not reply to calls.
+
+Calhoun arrived at the spaceport with Murgatroyd riding on his
+shoulder. A bewildered officer in a sag-suit halted him.
+
+"I've come," said Calhoun, "to speak to the admiral. My name is
+Calhoun and I'm Med Service, and I think I met the admiral at a
+banquet a few weeks ago. He'll remember me."
+
+"You'll have to wait," protested the officer. "There's some trouble--"
+
+"Yes," said Calhoun. "I know about it. I helped design it. I want to
+explain it to the admiral. He needs to know what's happened, if he's
+to take appropriate measures."
+
+There were jitterings. Many men in sag-suits had still no idea that
+anything had gone wrong. Some appeared, brightly carrying loot. Some
+hung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waiting
+their turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of
+their suits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic
+and happy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich
+they were going to be back on Weald.
+
+But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. There
+was strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdian
+admiral.
+
+"I came to explain something," said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situation
+has changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure."
+
+The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which covered
+him almost like a gift-wrapped parcel.
+
+"Be quick!" he rasped.
+
+"First," said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins. An epidemic of
+something or other has made the blue patches on the skins of Darians
+fade out. There have always been some who didn't have blue patches.
+Now nobody has them."
+
+"Nonsense!" rasped the admiral. "And what has that got to do with this
+situation?"
+
+"Why, everything," said Calhoun mildly. "It seems that Darians can
+pass for Wealdians whenever they please. That they _are_ passing for
+Wealdians. That they've been mixing with your men, wearing sag-suits
+exactly like the one you're wearing now. They've been going aboard
+your ships in the confusion of returning looters. There's not a ship
+now aloft, which has been aground today, which hasn't from one to
+fifteen Darians--no longer blueskins--on board."
+
+The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray.
+
+"You can't take your fleet back to Weald," said Calhoun gently, "if
+you believe its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara
+plague. You wouldn't be allowed to land, anyhow."
+
+The admiral said through stiff lips, "I'll blast--"
+
+"No," said Calhoun, again gently. "When you ordered all ships alerted
+for action, the Darians on each ship released panic gas. They only
+needed tiny, pocket-sized containers of the gas for the job. They had
+them. They only needed to use air tanks from their sag-suits to
+protect themselves against the gas. They kept them handy.
+
+"On nearly all your ships aloft your crews are crazy from panic gas.
+They'll stay that way until the air is changed. Darians have
+barricaded themselves in the control rooms of most if not all your
+ships. You haven't got a fleet. The few ships who will obey your
+orders--if they drop one bomb, our fleet off Weald will drop fifty.
+
+"I don't think you'd better order offensive action. Instead, I think
+you'd better have your fleet medical officers come and learn some of
+the facts of life. There's no need for war between Dara and Weald, but
+if you insist...."
+
+The admiral made a choking noise. He could have ordered Calhoun
+killed, but there was a certain appalling fact. The men aground from
+the fleet were breathing Wealdian air from tanks. It would last so
+long only. If they were taken on board the still obedient ships
+overhead, Darians would unquestionably be mixed with them. There was
+no way to take off the parties now aground without exposing them to
+contact with Darians, on the ground or in the ships. There was no way
+to sort out the Darians.
+
+"I--I will give the orders," said the admiral thickly. "I do not know
+what you devils plan, but--I do not know how to stop you."
+
+"All that's necessary," said Calhoun warmly, "is an open mind. There's
+a misunderstanding to be cleared up, and some principles of planetary
+health practises to be explained, and a certain amount of prejudice
+that has to be thrown away. But nobody need die of changing their
+minds. The Interstellar Medical Service has proved that over and
+over!"
+
+Murgatroyd, perched on his shoulder, felt that it was time to take
+part in the conversation. He said, "_Chee-chee!_"
+
+"Yes," agreed Calhoun. "We do want to get the job done. We're behind
+schedule now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not, of course, possible for Calhoun to leave immediately. He
+had to preside at various meetings of the medical officers of the
+fleet and the health officials of Dara. He had to make explanations,
+and correct misapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological
+experiments as would prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no
+longer a plague on Dara, whatever had been the case three generations
+before.
+
+He had to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian
+doctor--one of his names was Korvan--rather condescendingly
+demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product
+quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a
+very trivial epidemic of such and such.
+
+Calhoun regarded that young man with a detached interest. Maril
+thought him wonderful, even if she had to give him the material for
+his work. He agreed with her that he was wonderful. Calhoun shrugged
+and went on with his own work.
+
+The return of loot, mutual, full, and complete agreement that Darians
+were no longer carriers of plague, if they had ever been--unless Weald
+convinced other worlds of this, Weald itself would join Dara in
+isolation from neighboring worlds. A messenger ship had to recall the
+twenty-seven ships once floating in orbit about Weald. Most of them
+would be used for some time, to bring beef from Orede. Some would haul
+more grain from Weald. It would be paid for. There would be a need for
+commercial missions to be exchanged between Weald and Dara. There
+would have to be....
+
+It was a full week before he could go to the little Med Ship and
+prepare for departure. Even then there were matters to be attended to.
+All the food-supplies that had been removed could not be replaced.
+There were biological samples to be replaced and some to be destroyed.
+
+Maril came to the Med Ship again when he was almost ready to leave.
+She did not seem comfortable.
+
+"I wanted you to meet Korvan," she said regretfully.
+
+"I met him," said Calhoun. "I think he will be a most prominent
+citizen, in time. He has all the talents for it."
+
+Maril smiled very faintly.
+
+"But you don't admire him."
+
+"I wouldn't say that," protested Calhoun. "After all, he is desirable
+to you, which is something I couldn't manage."
+
+"You didn't try," said Maril. "Just as I didn't try to be fascinating
+to you. Why?"
+
+Calhoun spread out his hands. But he looked at Maril with respect. Not
+every woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelled
+to make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do with
+desirability or charm or anything else.
+
+"You're going to marry him," he said. "I hope you'll be very happy."
+
+"He's the man I want," said Maril frankly. "And I doubt he'll ever
+look at another woman. He looks forward to splendid discoveries. I
+wish he didn't."
+
+Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said
+thoughtfully, "There's something you could do. It needs to be done.
+The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a
+number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan
+would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter.
+But they should be known...."
+
+Maril said, "I can guess what you mean. I dropped hints about the way
+the blueskin markings went away, yes. You've got books for me?"
+
+Calhoun nodded. He found them.
+
+"If we had only fallen in love with each other, Maril, we'd be a team!
+Too bad! These are a wedding present you'll do well to hide."
+
+She put her hands in his.
+
+"I like you almost as much as I like Murgatroyd! Yes! Korvan will
+never know, and he'll be a great man." Then she added defensively,
+"But I don't think he'll only discover things from hints I drop him.
+He'll make wonderful discoveries."
+
+"Of which," said Calhoun, "the most remarkable is you. Good luck,
+Maril!"
+
+She went away smiling. But she wiped her eyes when she was out of the
+ship.
+
+Presently the Med Ship lifted. Calhoun aimed it for the next planet on
+the list of those he was to visit. After this one more he'd return to
+sector headquarters with a biting report to make on the way things had
+been handled before him.
+
+"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
+
+Then the stars went out and there was silence, and privacy, and a
+faint, faint, almost unbearable series of background sounds which kept
+the Med Ship from being totally unendurable.
+
+Long, long days later the ship broke out of overdrive and Calhoun
+guided it to a round and sunlit world. In due time he thumbed the
+communicator button.
+
+"Calling ground," he said crisply. "Calling ground! Med Ship
+_Aesclipus Twenty_ reporting arrival and asking coordinates for
+landing. Purpose of landing is planetary health inspection. Our mass
+is fifty standard tons."
+
+There was a pause while the beamed message went many, many thousands
+of miles. Then the speaker said, "_Aesclipus Twenty_, repeat your
+identification!"
+
+Calhoun repeated it patiently. Murgatroyd watched with bright eyes.
+Perhaps he hoped to be allowed to have another long conversation with
+somebody by communicator.
+
+"You are warned," said the communicator sternly, "that any deceit or
+deception about your identity or purpose in landing will be severely
+punished. We take few chances, here! If you wish to land
+notwithstanding this warning--"
+
+"I'm coming in," said Calhoun. "Give me the coordinates."
+
+He wrote them down. His expression was slightly pained. The Med Ship
+drove on, in solar system drive. Murgatroyd said, "_Chee-chee? Chee?_"
+
+Calhoun sighed.
+
+"That's right, Murgatroyd! Here we go again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FEAR RIDES THE ROCKETS
+
+
+The Interstellar Medical Service was just about the only remaining
+galactic organization that every one of the hundreds of inhabited
+planets respected. So when their service broke down in Star Sector
+Twelve, it created a very dangerous situation.
+
+When Calhoun took his Med ship out of overdrive near that sector's
+planet Weald, he was vaguely aware of the risks. But the crisis came
+home to him with a crash the moment he radioed in for landing
+coordinates.
+
+"Contamination! Full mobilization! Red alert! Death to blueskins!"
+Such were the nature of his greetings.
+
+And it began to look like a case of the cosmic jitters that only the
+most drastic of orbital surgery could cure.
+
+Murray Leinster, whose real name is Will F. Jenkins, has been
+entertaining the public with his exciting fiction for several decades.
+Called the dean of modern science-fiction, he was writing these
+amazing super-science adventures back in the early twenties before
+there ever was such a thing as an all-fantasy magazine. His short
+stories, novelettes, and serial novels have appeared in most of the
+major American magazines, both slick and pulp, and many have been
+reprinted all over the world. He has made a distinguished name for
+himself (or rather two names) in the fields of adventure, historical,
+western, sea, and suspense stories.
+
+Ace Books has still available the following Murray Leinster novels:
+CITY ON THE MOON (D-277), THE PIRATES OF ZAN and THE MUTANT WEAPON
+(D-403), and THE FORGOTTEN PLANET (D-528).
+
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+
+D-508 MORE MACABRE Edited by Donald A. Wollheim
+
+D-509 THE BEAST MASTER by Andre Norton
+      _and_ STAR HUNTER by Andre Norton
+
+D-516 THE SWORDSMAN OF MARS
+      by Otis Adelbert Kline
+
+D-517 BRING BACK YESTERDAY by A. Bertram Chandler
+      _and_ THE TROUBLE WITH TYCHO by Clifford Simak
+
+40c
+
+F-104 MAYDAY ORBIT by Poul Anderson
+      _and_ NO MAN'S WORLD by Kenneth Bulmer
+
+F-105 THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
+      Fifth Series. Edited by Anthony Boucher.
+
+F-108 THE SUN SABOTEURS by Damon Knight
+      _and_ THE LIGHT OF LILITH by G. McDonald Wallis
+
+F-109 STORM OVER WARLOCK by Andre Norton
+
+F-113 REBELS OF THE RED PLANET by Charles Fontenay
+      _and_ 200 YEARS TO CHRISTMAS by J. T. McIntosh
+
+If you are missing any of these, they can be obtained directly from
+the publisher by sending the indicated sum, plus 5c handling fee, to
+Ace Books, Inc. (Sales Dept.), 23 West 47th St., New York 36, N. Y.
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+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This World Is Taboo, by Murray Leinster
+
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