[Transcriber's Note:

 This etext was first published in Amazing Stories, July 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. ]

[Illustration]

COMPLETE BOOK-LENGTH NOVEL

PARIAH PLANET

By MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by FINLAY

 _When the blue plague appeared on the planet of Dara, fear struck nearby worlds. The fear led to a hate that threatened the lives of millions and endangered the Galactic peace. _

CHAPTER I

The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange andthe Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the MilkyWay and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an unaccustomedangle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying magnitudes. ButCalhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to port, which was good. A breakout at no more than sixty light-hours fromone's destination wasn't bad, in a strange sector of the Galaxy andafter three light-years of journeying blind. 

[Illustration]

"Arise and shine, Murgatroyd, " said Calhoun. "Comb your whiskers. Getset to astonish the natives!"

A sleepy, small, shrill voice said;

"_Chee!_"

Murgatroyd the _tormal_ came crawling out of his small cubbyhole. Heblinked at Calhoun. 

"We're due to land shortly, " Calhoun observed. "You'll impress the localinhabitants. I'll be unpopular. According to the records, there's beenno Med Ship inspection here for twelve standard years. And that waspractically no inspection, to judge by the report. "

Murgatroyd said;

"_Chee-chee!_"

He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers andthen his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and lookedinterestedly at Calhoun. _Tormals_ are companionable small animals. Theyare charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deepsatisfaction in imitating the actions of humans, as parrots and mynahsand parrokets imitate human speech. But _tormals_ have certain useful, genetically transmitted talents which make them much more valuable thanmere companions or pets. 

Calhoun got a light-reading for the banded sun. It could hardly be anaccurate measure of distance, but it was a guide. He said;

"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd!"

Calhoun threw the overdrive switch and the Med Ship flicked back intothat questionable state of being in which velocities of some hundreds oftimes that of light are possible. The sensation of going into overdrivewas unpleasant. A moment later, the sensation of coming out was no lessso. 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. Itsdisk covered half a degree of arc. 

"Very neat, " observed Calhoun. "Weald Three is our port, Murgatroyd. Theplane of the ecliptic would be--Hm. .. . "

He swung the outside electron telescope, picked up a nearby brightobject, enlarged its image to show details, and checked it against thelocal star-pilot. He calculated a moment. The distance was too short foreven the briefest of overdrive hops, but it would take time to get thereon solar-system drive. 

He thumbed down the communicator-button and spoke into a microphone. 

"Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty reporting arrival and asking coördinates forlanding. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection. Our mass isfifty tons standard. We should arrive at a landing position in somethingunder four hours. Repeat. Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty . .. "

He finished the regular second transmission and made coffee for himselfwhile he waited for an answer. Murgatroyd wanted a cup of coffee too. Murgatroyd adored coffee. He held a tiny cup in a furry small paw andsipped 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 theInterstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection onWeald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first MedShip 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 hadgotten into a very bad situation. Some of its planets had gone unvisitedfor as long as twenty years, and twelve between inspections was almostcommon-place. Other sectors had been called on to help it catch up. Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the emergencyhe'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be inspected one afteranother, instead of reporting back to sector headquarters after eachvisit. He'd had minor troubles before with landing-grid operators inSector Twelve. 

So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one fromwhich he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the communicator saidsharply;

"_What port before that?_"

Calhoun named the one before the last. 

"_Don't drive any closer, _" said the voice harshly, "_or you'll bedestroyed!_"

Calhoun said coldly;

"Now you listen to me, friend! I'm from the Interstellar MedicalService! You get in touch with planetary health services immediately!Remind them of the Interstellar Medical Inspection Agreement, signed onTralee two hundred and forty standard years ago. Remind them that ifthey do not cooperate in medical inspection that I can put your planetunder quarantine and your space commerce will be cut off like that! Noship will be cleared for Weald from any other planet in the galaxy untilthere has been a health inspection! Things have pretty well gone to potso far as the Med Service in this sector is concerned, but we're tryingto straighten it out. You have twenty minutes to clear this and then, I'm coming in. If I'm not landed, a quarantine goes on! Tell your healthauthorities 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 annoyedly, "butthere are some people who won't have any other way. "

Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" and sipped at his cup. 

 * * * * *

Calhoun checked the course of the Med Ship. It bored on through space. There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings andrustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful musicalnotes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are carried byelectromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave-lengths, are not likelyto be the fabled music of the spheres. He waited. 

 * * * * *

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 alwayswith 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 anxiouslystill, "_are very anxious to be coöperative. We need Med Service help!We lose a lot of sleep over the blueskins! Could you tell us the name ofthe last Med Ship to land here, and its inspector, and when thatinspection was made? We want to look up the record of the event to beable to assist you in every possible way. _"

"He's lying, " Calhoun told Murgatroyd, "but he's more scared thanhostile. "

He picked up the order-folio on Weald Three. He gave the informationabout the last Med Ship visit. He clicked off. 

"What?" he asked, "is a blueskin?"

He'd read the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onwardthrough emptiness he went through it again. The last medical inspectionhad been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier--instead of three--aMed Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official conferences withhealth 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 ofonly local usage were to be found. 

"Blueskin; Colloquial term for a person recovered from a plague whichleft large patches of blue pigment irregularly distributed over thebody. Especially, inhabitants of Dara. The condition is said to becaused by a chronic, non-fatal form of Dara plague and has been said tobe non-infectious, though this is not certain. The etiology of Daraplague has not fully been worked out. The blueskin condition ishereditary but not a genetic modification, as markings appear innon-Mendellian distributions. .. . "

Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sectordirectory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solarsystems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously throughindices and cross-references while the ship continued travel onward. Hefound no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was listedas an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with alanding-grid and at the time the main notice was written out, aflourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently addedto the entry in some change of editions. 

"Since plague, special license from Med Service is required forlanding. "

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 fromWeald. "_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 annoyedly. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come here!"

Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. Thebland 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 coördinateswill be . .. _"

Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again andgrowled to Murgatroyd;

"So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And you're my passport, becauseonly Med Ships have members of your tribe aboard! What the hell's thematter, Murgatroyd? They act like they think somebody's trying to getdown on their planet with a load of plague-germs!"

He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is notexactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space inoverdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three daysaground, checking official documents and statistics, and askingquestions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have reachedthis planet or that, and the supplying of information about such as havenot arrived. Then lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, torepeat the process somewhere else. Med Ships carry only one man becausetwo could not stand the close contact without quarreling with eachother. 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 ahighly unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both. 

Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had beenoperated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct theresults of incompetence in directing Med Service in the twelfth sector. But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up forsomebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs tobe done. 

The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in point. Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin-pigmentation fromother people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly maintained aone-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is normally anemergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over, wiped out theneed 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 ice-caps and a reasonable proportion of land and watersurface. The Med Ship decelerated, and voices notified observation fromthe surface, and the little craft came to a stop some five planetarydiameters out from solidity. The landing-field force-field locked on toit, and its descent began. 

The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim whichappeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to thesingular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank stilllower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly amile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift themout to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for everyone. 

It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to greetCalhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit. Therewould be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by whatevertitle he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd would bepetted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to impress Calhounwith the splendid conduct of public health matters on Weald. He would betold much scandal. He might find one man, somewhere, who passionatelylabored to advance the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out howto keep them well, or failing that how to make them well when they gotsick. And in two days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to thelanding-grid, and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days inoverdrive and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again. 

It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every humanbeing he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins and theidea of blueskins obsessed everyone. Calhoun listened without askingquestions until he had the picture of what blueskins meant to the peoplewho talked of them. Then he knew there would be no use asking questionsat random. Nobody mentioned ever having seen a blueskin. Nobodymentioned a specific event in which a blueskin had at any named timetaken part. But everybody was afraid of blueskins. It was a patterned, an inculcated, a stage-directed fixed idea. And it found expression inshocked references to the vileness, the depravity, the monstrousness ofthe blueskin inhabitants of Dara, from whom Weald must at all costs beprotected. 

It did not make sense. So Calhoun listened politely until he found anundistinguished medical man who wanted some special information aboutgene-selection as practised halfway across the galaxy. He invited thatman to the Med Ship, where he supplied the information not hithertoavailable. He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe aman feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly toknow. 

"Now, " said Calhoun, "tell me something! Why does everybody on thisplanet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobodyclaims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of hatingthem?"

The Wealdian doctor grimaced. 

"They've blue patches on their skins. They're different from us. So theycan be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make anelection issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us fromthem. They had a plague on Dara, once. They're accused of still havingit ready for export. "

"Hm, " said Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagionhere, eh? Doesn't anybody"--his tone was sardonic--"doesn't anybody urgethat they be massacred as an act of piety?"

"Yes--s--s--s, " admitted the doctor reluctantly. "It's mentioned inpolitical speeches. "

"But how's it rationalized?" demanded Calhoun. "What's the argument tomake pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I'massured is the case?"

"In the public schools, " said the doctor, "the children are taught thatblueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived threegenerations ago! That they hate everybody who isn't a blueskin. Thatthey are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most ofus will die and the rest 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 costslives, in the end. It could lead to massacre!"

"Perhaps it has, in a way, " said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't liketo think about it. " He paused, and said; "Twenty years ago there was afamine on Dara. There were crop-failures. The situation must have beenvery bad. They built a space-ship. They've no use for such thingsnormally, because no nearby planet will deal with them or let them land. But they built a space-ship and came here. They went in orbit aroundWeald. They asked to trade for shiploads of food. They offered any pricein heavy metals, gold, platinum, iridium, and so on. They talked fromorbit by vision communicators. They could be seen to be blueskins. Youcan guess what happened!"

"Tell me, " said Calhoun. 

"We armed ships in a hurry, " admitted the doctor, "We chased theirspace-ship back to Dara. We hung in space off the planet. We told themwe'd blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take tospace again. We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched onvisionscreens 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 armedships in their skies for years. To keep them from spreading the plague, we said. And some of us believed it, probably!"

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 over-abundant crops. Thegovernment had to buy the excess grain to keep the price up. Retiredpatrol-ships--built to watch over Dara--were available forstorage-space. We filled them up with grain and sent them out intoorbit. They're there now, hundreds of thousands or millions of tons ofgrain!"

"And Dara?"

The Doctor shrugged. He stood up. 

"Our hatred of Dara, " he said, again ironically, "has produced onething. Roughly halfway between here and Dara there's a two-planet solarsystem, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to buildan outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed to runwild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle there. Theydid, but nobody wants to move nearer to blueskins! So Orede stayeduninhabited until a hunting-party shooting wild cattle found anoutcropping of heavy-metal ore. So now there's a mine there. And that'sall. A few hundred men work the mine at fabulous wages. You may be askedto 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 anyoneelse 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 aman. There's nothing about being a _tormal_ to make you ashamed!"

Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of theMed Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to theplanet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about thesplendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion ofthe planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement. It was a domed cityin the polar regions, where nobody ever had to go outdoors. He was lessthan professionally enthusiastic about the moving streets, and much lessapproving of the dream-broadcasts which supplied hypnotic, sleep-inducing rhythms to anybody who chose to listen to them. The pricewas that while asleep one would hear high praise of commercial products, and one 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 banquetCalhoun made a brief and diplomatic address in which he temperatelypraised what could be praised, and did not mention anything else. 

The chief executive followed him. As head of the government he paid sometribute to the Med Service. But then he reminded his hearers proudly ofthe high culture, splendid health, and remarkable prosperity of theplanet since his political party took office. This, he said, was inspite of the need to be perpetually on guard against the greatest andmost 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 thepeople of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was necessaryagainst that race of depraved and malevolent deviants from the norm ofhumanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the torch of allthat humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the lives of itspeople against blueskin contagion, but their noble heritage of idealsagainst Blueskin pollution. 

When he sat down, Calhoun said very politely;

"It looks like some day it should be practical politics to urge themassacre 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 wouldbe foolish to carry it out. People vote against blueskins. Wipe themout, and where'd you be?"

Calhoun ground his teeth, quietly. 

 * * * * *

There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with awritten note for the chief executive. He read it and passed it toCalhoun. It was from the Ministry of Health. The space-port reportedthat a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdiansolar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signalled itsarrival from the mining-planet Orede. But, having sent off its automaticsignal, the ship lay dead in space. It did not drive toward Weald. Itdid not respond to signals. It drifted like a derelict upon no course atall. It seemed ominous, and since it came from Orede--the planet nearestto Dara of the blueskins--the health ministry informed the planet'schief executive. 

"It'll be blueskins, " said that astute person, firmly. "They'renext-door to Orede. That's who's done this. It wouldn't surprise me ifthey'd seeded Orede with their plague, and this ship came from there togive us warning!"

"There's no evidence for anything of the sort, " protested Calhoun. "Aship simply came out of overdrive and didn't signal further. That'sall. "

"We'll see, " said the chief executive ominously. "We'll go directly tothe spaceport. "

Calhoun retrieved Murgatroyd who had been visiting with the wives of thehigher-up officials. His small paunch distended with cakes and coffeeand such delicacies as he'd been plied with. He was half comatose fromover-feeding and over-petting, but he was glad to see Calhoun. At thespaceport they discovered 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 inno orbit around anything, going nowhere; doing nothing. And panic wasthe consequence. 

It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter accountedfor the terror that he could feel building up. The so-far-unexplainedbit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald. There was nobodyawake of all the world's population who did not believe that there was anew danger in the sky. Nobody doubted that it came from blueskins. Thetreatment of the news was precisely calculated to keep alive the hatredof Weald for the inhabitants of the world Dara. 

Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the spaceportoffice. A small space-boat, designed to inspect the circling grain-shipsfrom time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had thrust it swiftly outmost of the way. Now it droned and drove on sturdily toward theenigmatic ship. 

Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials andnews reporters at the space-port. But he listened to the talk about him. As the investigating small ship drew nearer and nearer to thedeathly-still cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of itsbreakout and following silence grew more and more wild. But, singularly, there was not one suggestion that the mystery might not be the work ofblueskins. Blueskins were scapegoats for all the fears and all theuneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed. 

Presently the investigating space-boat reached the mystery ship andcircled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo-ship dark. No lights shone anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surgesfrom even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger-craftmaneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported thatmicrophones detected no motion whatever inside. 

"Let a volunteer go aboard, " commanded the chief executive. "Have himreport what he finds. "

A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name, from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompousheroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routinebehavior. 

Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketedhimself across the emptiness between the two again-separated ships. Hehad opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the outerairlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported. 

The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror andincredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. Theship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede andWeald with cargoes of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than fivemen. There was no cargo in her holds now, though. Instead, there weremen. They packed the ship. They filled the corridors. They had crawledinto every cargo and other space where a man could find room to pushhimself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity. And it had beengreater insanity still for the ship to have taken off with sopreposterous a load of living creatures. 

But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been designedfor a crew of five. It could purify the air for possibly twenty or more. But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in plain view in thecargo-ship from Orede. There were many, many times more than her airapparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have serviced. They couldn'teven have been fed during the journey from Orede to Weald!

But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship cameout of overdrive. 

A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship'slog which referred to its take-off. There was no memorandum of thetaking 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 theblueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned toCalhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship . .. He'll have to staythere, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringingcontagion . .. "

Calhoun raged at him. 

CHAPTER 2

There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Wealdspaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popularbecause Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily, whereblueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to reactexplosively when the word "blueskin" was uttered in their hearing, andits adults tended to say "blueskin" when anything to cause uneasinessentered their minds. So a planet-wide habit of non-rational response hadformed and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody hadit. 

The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede wassafe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the shiphe'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have beendoomed but for Calhoun. The reaction of his fellow-citizens was that byentering the ship he might have become contaminated by blueskininfective material if the plague still existed, and if the men in theship had caught it--but they certainly hadn't died of it--and if therehad been blueskins on Orede to communicate it--for which there was noevidence--and if blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which wasat the moment pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring deathback to Weald if he were allowed to return. 

Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guard-ship admit him to itsairlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. Thecombination would sterilize and partly even eat away his space-suit, after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and airfrom the ship let into the lock. If he stripped off the space-suitwithout touching its outer surface, and reëntered the investigating shipwhile the suit was flung outside by a man in another space-suit, handling it with a pole he'd fling after it, there could be no possiblecontamination brought back. 

Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'dpersuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk. 

There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had beenunpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy thosepeople who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as a piousact. They'd appeared on every visionscreen, citing not only the shipfrom Orede but other incidents which they interpreted as crimes againstWeald. They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified toturn out fusion-bomb materials while a space-fleet was made ready for ananti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain offusion-bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred ofvegetation, no fish in the deepest ocean, not even a livingvirus-particle of the blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskinworld!

One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that noother course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar MedicalService. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it bybroadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which aplanet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools. He did. 

So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'dcurtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship hadcome. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small space-craft untilWeald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfullycast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was notenough 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 ofdizziness, of nausea, and of a spiralling fall to nothingness. Thenthere was silence. The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was apreposterous number of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutelysolid, absolutely firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly asif 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 aport--there is only utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to makeone's eardrums crack. 

But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and therewere sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave. Thereel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and meaninglesshums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all of which werejust above the threshold of the inaudible. 

Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientiousMed Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession gounmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a civilization canbe destroyed more surely and more terribly than by any imaginable war orplague-germ. A plague kills off those who are susceptible to it, leavingimmunes to build up a world again. But immunes are the first to bekilled when a mass neurosis sweeps a population. 

Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another. Andwhen hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo-boat which could notfurnish them with air to breathe, and took off and went into overdrivebefore 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 immediately. Hewould usually watch the coffee-maker with bright, interested eyes. He'deven tried to imitate Calhoun's motions with it, once, and had scorchedhis paws in the attempt. This time he did not move. 

Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tailcoiled reflectively about a chair-leg. He watched the door of the MedShip'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 inthe other cabin, and the look of things was different from thecontrol-compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a manwas able to be alone for weeks on end--alone save for his_tormal_--without becoming ship-happy. There were other carefullythought out items in the ship with the same purpose. But none of themshould cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly and fascinatedly at thesleeping-cabin door. Not when coffee was in the making!

Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion thatoccurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to beimpartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely with Wealdin its enmity to blueskins. The people of Weald had refused to help Darain a time of famine; they'd blockaded that pariah world for yearsafterward; they had other reasons for hating the people they'd treatedbadly. It was entirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to considerthat Calhoun must be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Wealdabhorred. 

In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on the MedShip to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of any reportfavorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such a stowawaywould be in the sleeping-cabin now, waiting for Calhoun to walkunsuspiciously in to be shot dead. 

So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where itwould be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large one forhimself, and then a second large one. 

He tapped on the sleeping-cabin door, standing aside lest a blaster-boltcame 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 desperateattempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared toshoot quite ruthlessly. 

But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls. The doorof 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 herlips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enterthe room!"

Calhoun said grimly;

"I've sources of information. " He pointed to Murgatroyd. 

The girl did not move. Her eyes went from Murgatroyd to Calhoun. 

"And now, " said Calhoun, "do you want to tell me your story? You haveone ready, I'm sure. "

"There--there isn't any, " said the girl unsteadily. "Just--I--I need toget 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 fleetheading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'mafraid that's not a very good story. 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 shipfirst!"

Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But itshook 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 ofthe situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now hehad to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disablethe ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't useenergy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. 

"I'd rather you didn't do that, " said Calhoun drily. "Besides, you'd getdeadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air and foodto give out. "

Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter theconversation. He said;

"_Chee-chee-chee!_"

"A very sensible suggestion, " observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and havea cup of coffee. " To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede, sincethat's where you say you want to go. "

"I--there's a boy there--"

Calhoun shook his head. 

"No, " he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packeditself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But notall. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what menweren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your fellow had diedon the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or saccho, and do you takecream?"

She trembled a little, but she took the cup. 

"I--don't understand--. "

"Murgatroyd and I, " explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether hespoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go aroundtrying to keep people from getting killed. It's our profession. Wepractise it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since youmake 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 somethingmore believable presently. When did you eat last?"

"Yesterday--. "

"Better have something now. We'll talk more later. " Calhoun showed herhow to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted fromstorage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served atdialed-for intervals. 

 * * * * *

Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory, lookingup the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no reason toinform himself about it before. Now he read with every appearance ofabsorption. 

The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable interest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable. 

Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the microfilm reelswhich contained more information. He was specifically after the MedService history of all the planets in this sector. He went through thefilmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara. ButSector Twelve had not been well-run. There was no adequate account of aplague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of aninhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit, andwas over before another Med Ship came by. But there should have beenpainstaking investigation, even after the fact. There should have been acollection of infective material and a reasonably completeidentification and study of the infective agent. It hadn't been made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it slipped by. But Calhoun--whose career was not to be spent in this sector--resolvedon a blistering report about this negligence and its consequences. 

He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man hasresources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself duringoverdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of thoseresources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of thestowaway. 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 putyou out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. Whenyou're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well here. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat. When weland on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business you havethere. That's all. "

She stared at him. 

"But--you don't believe what I've told you!"

"No, " agreed Calhoun. But he didn't add to the statement. 

"But--I will tell you, " she offered. "The police were after me. I had toget 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 worldexcept 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 somesleep. "

She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but thenshe went into the other cabin and closed herself in. 

Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and then climbedup into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. He settledhimself and was silent for moments. Then he said;

"_Chee!_"

"I believe you're right, " said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald, orwith the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one place she'ddread worse than Orede, and that would be Dara. But I doubt she'd beafraid to land even on Dara. "

Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carried ona conversation, like humans. 

"_Chee-chee!_" he said with conviction. 

"Definitely, " agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personaladvantage. Whatever she thinks she's doing, it's more important to herthan her own life. Murgatroyd--"

"_Chee?_" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone. 

"There are wild cattle on Orede, " said Calhoun. "Herds and herds ofthem. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots ofthem. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have beenslaughtered on Orede lately?"

Murgatroyd yawned. He settled himself still more comfortably inCalhoun's lap. 

"_Chee, _" he said drowsily. 

He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highlycondensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate ofincrease, with other data, among herds of _bivis domesticus_ in a wildstate, on planets where they have no natural enemies. It wasn'tunheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of Terran faunaand flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran life-formscould play the devil with alien ecological systems, very much tohumanity's benefit. Familiar microörganisms and a standard vegetationadded to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise alienworlds. But sometimes the results were strange. 

They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of mento pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo-ship which couldn'tpossibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was inoverdrive. 

Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, hehad calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose on asuitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens oreven hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably elapsed. 

The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound fromwithout, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at all thatit was not buried deep in the heart of a planet instead of flashingthrough emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning. 

 * * * * *

Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in thecontrol-room. "Shall I--have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly. 

"Why not?"

Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave theimpression that he would respond politely when spoken to, but that hewas busy with activities that kept him 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 inthe ship?"

"I don't know, " said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities onWeald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins. "

"Wh-what are blueskins?"

Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly. 

"When lying, " he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretendisn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!"

"B--but what do you think they are?" she asked. 

"There used to be a human disease called smallpox, " said Calhoun. "Whenpeople recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skin hadlittle scar-pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, it wasexpected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, and alarge percentage would die of it. And it was so much a matter of coursethat if they printed a description of a criminal, they never mentionedit if he were pock-marked--scarred. It was no distinction. But if hedidn't have the markings, they'd mention that!" He paused. "Thosepock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwise a blueskin is like a manwho 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 everwent monkey. "

She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during that day. He continued to busy himself with those activities which make a MedShip man's life consistent with retained sanity. 

Next day she asked without preliminary;

"Don't you believe the blueskins planned for the ship with the dead mento arrive at Weald and spread plague there?"

"No, " said Calhoun. 

"Why?"

"It couldn't possibly work, " Calhoun told her. "With only dead men onboard, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid couldbring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken living menwouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They might ask forhelp, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on Weald if they werefound to be plague-victims. So that would be no good, either! No, theship 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 humanrace. You're slipping, though. When using the word 'blueskin' you shouldsay it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined person liked topronounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by the way. If youever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much time. "

She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced himand opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again. Calhounshrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He carefullykept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald wouldwillingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a shipload ofminers preferred death to remaining there. It tied in, like everythingelse that was unpleasant, to blueskins. Nobody from Weald would dream oflanding on Orede! Not now!

 * * * * *

A little before the Med Ship was due to break out from overdrive, thegirl said very carefully;

"You've been--very kind. I'd like to thank you. I--didn't really believeI would--live to get to Orede. "

Calhoun raised his eyebrows. 

"I--wish I could tell you everything you want to know, " she addedregretfully. "I think you're--really decent. But some things. .. . "

Calhoun said caustically;

"You've told me a great deal. You weren't born on Weald. You weren'traised 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-shipsince Weald threatened them with extermination. There is probably a newfood-shortage on Dara now, leading to pure desperation. Most likely it'sbad enough to make them risk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freezebeef to help. They've worked out. "

She gasped and sprang to her feet. She snatched out the tiny blaster inher 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 offthe safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. He steppedback. 

"Good girl!" he said approvingly. "I'll give this back to you when weland. And thanks. Thanks very much!"

She stared at him. "Thanks? When I tried to kill you?"

"Of course!" said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know that theywere 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 touchwith your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be prettywell scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable thing to getdone!"

He went to the ship's control-board and sat down before it. 

"Twenty minutes to break-hour, " 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 thegirl's part, very pleasantly on Murgatroyd's. But only moments ago therehad been bitter emotion in the air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyholeto escape it. He was distressed. Now that there was silence again, hepeered 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, weshould be able to make friends with everybody and get somethingaccomplished. "

The statement was hopelessly inaccurate. 

CHAPTER 3

There was no answer from the ground when breakout came and Calhoun drovethe Med Ship to a favorable position for a call. He patiently repeated, over and over again, that Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty notified its arrivaland requested coördinates for landing. There should have been a crispdescription of the direction from the planet's center at which, acertain time so many hours or minutes later, the force-fields of thegrid would find it convenient to lock onto and lower the Med Ship. Butthe communicator remained silent. 

"There is a landing-grid, " said Calhoun, frowning, "and if they're usingit to load fresh meat for Dara, from the herds I'm told about, it shouldbe manned. But they don't seem to intend to answer. Maybe they thinkthat if they pretend I'm not here I'll go away. "

He reflected, and his frown deepened. 

"If I didn't know what I do know, I might. So if I land onemergency-rockets the blueskins down below may decide that I come fromWeald. And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before Icould land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship fromWeald would conceivably land without impassioned assurance that it wassafe. It would drop bombs. " He turned to the girl. "How many Dariansdown below?"

She shook her head. 

"You don't know, " said Calhoun, "or won't tell, yet. But they ought tobe told about the arrival of that ship at Weald, and what Weald thinksabout it! My guess is that you came to tell them. It isn't likely thatDara gets news direct 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 herhead again. 

"It must have been plenty far away, " said Calhoun restlessly. "Yourpeople would have built a ship, and made fine forged papers for it, andthey'd travel so far from this part of space that when they landednobody would think of Dara. They'd use makeup 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 makeup for theblue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went variousroundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could bedone there to. .. . " He stopped. "When did you find out positively thatthere 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 fromDara. You've been on Weald. It's practically certain that there areother, agents, if you like that word better, on Weald. And there hasn'tbeen a plague on Weald so you people aren't carriers of it. But youknew it in advance, I think. How'd you learn? Did a ship in some sort oftrouble land there, on Dara?"

"Y-yes, " said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the peopledidn'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 planetarydiameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shiningstars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbousshining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddycolor which is sea-bottom, and varicolored areas which were plains andforests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image andsquinted 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 asingle human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find byrandom search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for sportwould not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So if theyfound a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate zone. Cattlewould not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine would not beon a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be near the edge ofmountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate. Forested areas could be ruledout. And there would be a landing-grid. Handling only one ship at atime, it might be a very small grid. It need be only hundreds of yardsacross and less than half a mile high. But its shadow would bedistinctive. 

Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in atemperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it many-fold, and it wasthe mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was somethingwhich cast a long, lacy shadow. The landing-grid. 

"But they don't answer our call, " observed Calhoun, "so we go downunwelcomed. "

He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency-rockets boomed. The shipplunged planetward. 

A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise ofits rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforcethe sound. 

"Hold on to something, Murgatroyd, " commanded Calhoun. "We may have tododge some ack. "

But nothing came up from below. The Med Ship again inverted itself, andits rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin, blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued todescend. It was not directly above the grid. It swept downward untilalmost level with the peaks of the mountains in which the mine lay. Ittilted again, and swept onward over the mountain-tops, and then tiltedonce more and went racing up the valley in which the landing-grid wasplainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an erratic course, lest there beopposition. 

But there was no sign. Then the rockets bellowed, and the ship slowedits forward motion, hovered momentarily, and settled to solidity outsidethe framework of the grid. The grid was small, as Calhoun reasoned. Butit reached interminably toward the sky. 

The rocket cut off. Slender as the flame had been, they'd melted andbored thin drill-holes deep into the soil. Molten rock boiled andbubbled down below. But there seemed no other sound. There was no othermotion. There was absolute stillness all around. But when Calhounswitched on the outside microphones a faint, sweet melange ofhigh-pitched chirpings came from tiny creatures hidden under thevegetation 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 visionscreens show. "

 * * * * *

Minutes later he stepped down to the ground from the Med Ship'sexit-port. The ship had landed perhaps a hundred feet from what once hadbeen a wooden building. In it, ore from the mines was concentrated andthe useless tailings carried away by a conveyor-belt to make a monstrouspile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building. Next to itthere had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The massivemachinery could still be seen, but the structure was fragments. Next tothat, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of the mine. They alsowere shattered practically to match-sticks. 

The look of the ground about the building-sites was simply and purelyimpossible. It was a mass of hoofprints. Cattle by thousands and tens ofthousands had trampled everything. Cattle had burst in the wooden sidesof the buildings. Cattle had piled themselves up against the beamsupholding roofs until the buildings collapsed. Then cattle had goneplunging over the wrecked buildings until there was nothing left butindescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died in the crush. There wereheaps of dead beasts about the metal girders which were the foundationof the landing-grid. The air was tainted by the smell of carrion. 

The settlement had been destroyed, positively, by stampeded cattle intens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and uponit. Senselessly, they'd trampled each other to horrible shapelessnesses. The mine-shaft was not choked, because enormously strong timbers hadfallen across and blocked it. But everything else was pure destruction. 

Calhoun said evenly;

"Clever! Very clever! You can't blame men when beasts stampede! Weshould accept the evidence that some monstrous herd, making its waythrough a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and bolted for the plainsand this settlement got in the way and it was too bad for thesettlement. Everything's explained, except the ship that went to Weald. A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was aman-stampede! Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattletrampled down this little town. The ship stampeded off into space asinsanely as the cattle. But a stampede of men _and_ cattle, in the sameplace, --that's a little too much at one time!"

"How, " asked Calhoun directly, "do you intend to get in touch with yourfriends here?"

"I--I don't know, " she said distressedly. "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 friendsare a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they should cover uptheir tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and pray that no signsof their former presence are ever discovered. That would be their bestfirst 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 too much time here. "

"You can--leave me here. .. . "

He grunted and turned away. It was naturally unthinkable that he shouldleave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet, with theknowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the furtherknowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of possible reasonsto hide themselves away. 

He believed that there were Darians here, and the girl in the Medship--so he also believed--was a Darian. But any who might be hiding hadso much to lose if they were discovered that they might be hundreds oreven thousands of miles from anywhere a space-ship would normallyland--if they hadn't fled after the incident of the space-ship'sdeparture with its load of doomed passengers. 

Considered detachedly, the odds were that there was again afood-shortage on Dara. That blueskins, in desperation, had raided orwere raiding or would raid the cattle-herds of Orede for food to carryback to their home planet. That somehow the miners on Orede had foundthat they had blueskin neighbors, and died of the consequences of theirterror. It was a risky guess to make on such evidence as Calhounconsidered he had, but no other guess was possible. 

If his guess was right, he was under some obligation to do exactly whathe believed the girl considered her mission, to warn all blueskins thatWeald would presently try to find them on Orede, when all hell mustbreak loose upon Dara for punishment. But if there were men here, hecouldn't leave a written warning for them in default of friendlycontact. 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 bysuch means as would leave no evidence behind that he'd done so. Wealdwould consider a warning sure proof of blueskin guilt. 

It was not satisfactory to be limited to broadcasts which might not bepicked up, and were unlikely to be acknowledged. But he settled downwith the communicator to make the attempt. 

 * * * * *

He called first on a GC wave-length and form. It was unlikely thatblueskins would use general-communication bands to keep in touch witheach other, but it had to be tried. He broadcast, as broadly tuned aspossible, and went up and down the GC spectrum, repeating his warningpainstakingly and listening without hope for a reply. He did find onespot on the dial where there was re-radiation of his message, as if froma tuned receiver. But he could not get a fix on it, and nobody might belistening. He exhausted the normal communication pattern. Then hebroadcast on old-fashioned amplitude modulation which a moderncommunicator would not pick up at all, and which therefore might be usedby men in hiding. 

He worked for a long time. Then he shrugged and gave it up. He'drepeated to absolute tedium the facts that any Darians--blueskins--onOrede ought to know. There'd been no answer. And it was all too likelythat if he'd been received, that those who heard him took his messagefor a trick to discover if there were any hearers. 

He clicked off at last and stood up, shaking his head. Suddenly the MedShip seemed empty. Then he saw Murgatroyd staring at the exit-port. Theinner door of that small airlock was closed. The tell-tale said theouter was not locked. Someone had gone out, quietly. The girl. Ofcourse. 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'dbeen left behind. He and the girl were close friends, now. If she'd leftMurgatroyd in the ship when he wanted to go with her, she wasn't comingback. 

Calhoun swore. Then he made certain. She was not in the ship. He flippedthe 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 wasby 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 MedShip man was not ever expected to fight, but there were blast-riflesavailable 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 airlockdoor for long minutes, staring angrily about. Almost certainly shewouldn't be looking in the mountains for men of Dara come here forcattle. He used a pair of binoculars, first at low-magnification tosearch as wide an area down-valley as possible, and then at highestpower to search the most likely routes. 

He found a small, bobbing speck beyond a far-away hillcrest. It was herhead. It went down below the hilltop. 

He snapped a command to Murgatroyd, and when the _tormal_ was on theground outside, he locked the port with that combination that nobody buta Med Ship man was at all likely to discover or use. 

"She's an idiot!" he told Murgatroyd sourly. "Come along! We've got tobe idiots too!"

He set out in pursuit. 

The girl had a long start. Twice Calhoun came to places where she couldhave chosen either of two ways onward. Each time he had to determinewhich she'd followed. That cost time. Then the mountains ended, abruptly, and a vast undulating plain stretched away to the horizon. There were at least two large masses and many smaller clumps of whatcould only be animals gathered together. Cattle. 

But here the girl was plainly in view. Calhoun increased his stride. Hebegan 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 wasand 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 settlementtold him that there was no definite destination in the girl's mind. Butshe was in no such despair as to want deliberately to be lost. She'dguessed, Calhoun believed, that if there were Darians on the planet, they'd keep the landing-grid under observation. If they saw her leavethat area and could see that she was alone, they should intercept her tofind out the meaning of the Med Ship's landing. Then she could identifyherself as one of them and give them the terribly necessary warning ofWeald's suspicions. 

"But, " said Calhoun sourly, "if she's right, they'll have seen memarching after her now, which spoils her scheme. And I'd like to helpit, but the way she's going is too dangerous!"

 * * * * *

He went down into one of the hollows of the uneven plain. He saw a clumpof a dozen or so cattle a little distance away. The bull looked up andsnorted. The cows regarded him truculently. Their air was not one ofbovine tranquility. 

He was up the farther hillside and out of sight before the bull workedhimself up to a charge. Then Calhoun suddenly remembered one of theitems in the data about cattle he'd looked into just the other day. Hefelt himself grow pale. 

"Murgatroyd!" he said sharply. "We've got to catch up! Fast! Stay withme if you can, but . .. " He was jog-trotting as he spoke--"even if youget lost I have to hurry!"

He ran fifty paces and walked fifty paces. He ran fifty and walkedfifty. He saw her, atop a rolling of the ground. She came to a fullstop. He ran. He saw her turn to retrace her steps. He flung to thesafety of the blast-rifle and let off a roaring blast at the ground forher to hear. 

Suddenly she was fleeing desperately, toward him. He plunged on. Shevanished down into a hollow. Horns appeared over the hillcrest she'djust left. Cattle appeared. Four--a dozen--fifteen--twenty. They movedominously in her wake. He saw her again, running frantically overanother upward swell of the prairie. He let off another blast to guideher. He ran on at top speed with Murgatroyd trailing anxiously behind. From time to time Murgatroyd called "_Chee-chee-chee!_" in frightenedpleading not to be abandoned. 

More cattle appeared against the horizon. Fifty or a hundred. They cameafter the first clump. The first-seen group of a bull and his harem weremoving faster, now. The girl fled from them, but it is the instinct ofbeef-cattle on the open range--Calhoun had learned it only two daysbefore--to charge any human they find on foot. A mounted man to theirdim minds is a creature to be tolerated or fled from, but a human onfoot is to be crushed and stamped and gored. 

 * * * * *

Those in the lead were definitely charging now, with heads bent low. Thebull charged furiously with shut eyes, as bulls do, but themany-times-more-deadly cows charged with their eyes wide open andwickedly alert, and with a lumbering speed much greater than the girlcould manage. 

She came up over the last rise, chalky-white and gasping, her hairflying, in the last extremity of terror. The nearest of the pursuingcattle were within ten yards when Calhoun fired from twenty yardsbeyond. One creature bellowed as the blast-bolt struck. It went down andothers crashed into it and swept over it, and more came on. The girl sawCalhoun, now, and ran toward him, panting, and he knelt verydeliberately and began to check the charge by shooting the leadinganimals. 

He did not succeed. There were more cattle following the first, and moreand more behind them. It appeared that all the cattle on the plainjoined in the blind and senseless charge. The thudding of hooves becamea mutter and then a rumble and then a growl. Plunging, clumsy figuresrushed past on either side. But horns and heads heaved up over the moundof animals Calhoun had shot. He shot them too. More and more cattle camepounding past the rampart of his victims, but always, it seemed, someelected to climb the heap of their dead and dying fellows, and Calhounshot and shot. 

But he split the herd. The foremost animals had been charging a sightedhuman enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of cattle tojoin their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they feel. Therewas a dense, pounding, horrible mass of running bulls and cows andcalves; bellowing, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising thick andimpenetrable clouds of dust which had everything but galloping beastsgoing past on either side. 

It lasted for minutes. Then the thunder of hooves diminished. It endedabruptly, and Calhoun and the girl were left alone with the gruesomepile of animals which had divided the charging herd into two parts. Theycould see the rears of innumerable running animals, stupidly continuingthe charge--hardly different, now, from a stampede--whose originalobjective none now remembered. 

Calhoun thoughtfully touched the barrel of his blast-rifle and winced atits scorching heat. 

 * * * * *

"I just realized, " he said coldly, "that I don't know your name. What isit?"

"M-maril, " said the girl. She swallowed. "Th-thank you--. "

"Maril, " said Calhoun, "you are an idiot! It was half-witted at best togo off by yourself! You could have been lost! You could have cost medays of hunting for you, days badly needed for more important matters!"He stopped and took breath. "You may have spoiled what little chanceI've got to do something about the plans Weald's already making!"

He said more bitterly still;

"And I had to leave Murgatroyd behind to get to you in time! He wasright 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 ofstill-roiling dust, Murgatroyd appeared forlornly. He was dust-covered, and draggled, and his tail drooped, and he sneezed again. He moved as ifhe could barely put one paw before another, but at the sight of Calhounhe sneezed yet again and said, "_Chee!_" in a disconsolate voice. Thenhe sat down and waited for Calhoun to pick him up. 

When Calhoun did so, Murgatroyd clung to him pathetically and said, "_Chee-chee!_" and again "_Chee-chee!_" with the intonation of onetelling of incredible horrors and disasters endured. 

Calhoun headed back for the valley, the settlement and the Med Ship. Murgatroyd clung to his neck. The girl Maril followed visibly shaken. 

Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way. A mile back towardthe mountains, they began to see stragglers from the now-vanished herd. A little further, those stragglers began to notice them. And it wouldhave been a matter of no moment if they'd been domesticateddairy-cattle, but these were range-cattle gone wild. Twice, Calhoun hadto use his blast-rifle to discourage incipient charges by irritatedbulls or even more irritated cows. Those with calves darkly suspectedCalhoun of designs upon their offspring. 

It was a relief to enter the valley again. But it was two miles more tothe landing-grid with the Med Ship beside it and the reek of carrion inthe air. 

They were perhaps two hundred feet from the ship when a blast-riflecrashed and its bolt whined past Calhoun so close that he felt themonstrous heat. There had been no challenge. There was no warning. Therewas simply a shot which came horribly close to ending Calhoun's careerin a completely arbitrary fashion. 

CHAPTER 4

Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a massof splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afireby a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the manit had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed himten times over, but it was more desirable to open communication. So hemissed, intentionally. 

Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, butthey 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'srifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained. One--so Calhounpresently discovered--was working his way behind underbrush to a shelffrom which he could shoot down at Calhoun. Calhoun had dropped into ahollow and pulled Maril to cover at the first shot. The second manhappily planned to get to a point where he could shoot him like a fishin a barrel. The third man had fired half a dozen times and thendisappeared. Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to therear, in hope 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 getabove him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to Calhoun'sbreastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at which theother man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless. Then Calhoun senta dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It heated up. Steam rosein a whitish mass and blew directly away from Calhoun. He saw thatantagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he was positive that therewas a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand side of the back of hisneck. 

He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thickundergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreadingflames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle-tactics withblast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But somethingfrom him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground directly upwindfrom Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently. 

It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girlMaril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from theflung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched orburning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. Inclear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them. They were then halfwayto the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead. 

But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles twitchedand tense. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of agitation. Calhoun was familiar enough with tear-gas, used by police on someplanets. But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urgedMaril 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 physicalsensations, wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and afrantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physicalsensations are induced by other means will--ordinarily--find his mindyielding to terror. 

Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical attitude enabledhim to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base of theMed Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not becounted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for somemoments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feetfrom Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose astaccato of fire which emptied the rifle of all its charges. 

Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook andtrembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outerairlock door just as another blaster-bolt hit. 

"They--they don't realize, " said Maril desperately. "If they onlyknew--. "

"Talk to them, if you like, " said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and heraged, because the symptom was of terror he denied. 

He pushed a button on the control-board. He pointed to a microphone. Hegot at an oxygen-bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously, should bean antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to increase theoxygenation of the blood-stream and muscles, and to make superhumanexertion possible if necessary. Breathing ninety-five per cent oxygenproduced the effect the terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heartslowed nearly to normal and his body relaxed. He held out his hand andit did not tremble. 

 * * * * *

He turned to Maril. She hadn't spoken into the mike yet. 

"They--may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! Theycould be somebody else--maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine fora 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 theway here wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we know some of themare in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and we'll go on. "

He took the microphone. Instants later his voice boomed in the stillnessoutside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill of invisible smallcreatures. 

"This is the Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty, " said Calhoun's voice, amplifiedto a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the cargo-shipfrom here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald they don't knowhow it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or later they'llsearch here. Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you'veever been here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talkof fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find yourtraces, they'll be more scared still! So cover up your tracksand--get--away--from--here!"

The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. Butit was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, andit could be heard for miles. 

But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time. Thenhe shrugged and seated himself at the control-board. 

"It isn't easy, " he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they'veout-smarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"

[Illustration]

The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end allnoises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By thetime it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clearspace and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether. He busied himself withthose astrogational chores which began with orienting oneself togalactic directions after leaving a planet which rotates at its ownindividual speed. Then one computes the overdrive course to anotherplanet, from the respective coördinates of the world one is leaving andthe one one aims for. Then, --in this case at any rate--there was thevery finicky task of picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whoseplanets one was his destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fineprecision. 

"Overdrive coming, " he said presently. "Hold on!"

Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation offalling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity, andthe blackness of the Pit outside the Med Ship. The little craft was inoverdrive 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 theblueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know. Butthis thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine, people shouldn'tdo things out of desperation!"

"I know now that I was--very foolish--. "

"Forget it, " commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I runinto a situation that the Med Service should have caught and cleaned upgenerations ago! But it's not only a Med Service obligation, it's acurrent mess! Before I could begin to get at the basic problem, thoseidiots on Orede--. It'd happened before I reached Weald! An emotionalexplosion triggered by a ship full of dead men that nobody intended tokill. "

Maril shook her head. 

 * * * * *

"Those Darian characters, " said Calhoun annoyedly, "shouldn't have goneto Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at leasthave stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald digginga mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They could bespotted! I believe they were! And again, if it had been a long way fromthe mine installation, they could probably have wiped out the people whosighted them before they could get back with the news! But it looks likeminers 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 somethinghad to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped out or thestory that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited. The blueskinstried for both. They used panic-gas on a herd of cattle and it made themcrazy and they charged the settlement like the four-footed lunatics theyare! And the blueskins used panic-gas on the settlement itself as thecattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely. After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd beenout of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of thesettlement to think about, and he wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen orheard beforehand. They might try to verify the blueskin story later, butthey wouldn't believe anything certainly! It should have worked!"

Again she waited. So Calhoun said very wrily indeed;

"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the ship. Also unfortunately, panic-gas got into the ship with them. So theystayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off and headed forWeald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set for Wealdanyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away from whateverhe imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship were stillcrazy with panic from the gas they were re-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 alwaysurging the police to use panic-gas in case of public tumult. But it'stoo dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take ahundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit totheir 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 intheir place, perhaps . .. "

"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly. 

Calhoun jerked his head around. He said;

"No! Not where you're guessing--or hoping. Not on Dara. Just because Iact as if Darians were human doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a MedService man, and I'm acting as I think I should. " His tone becameexasperated. "Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual and possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it findsproof that blueskins are in space again and caused the death ofWealdians it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to dropfusion-bombs on Dara to wipe it out!"

Maril said fiercely;

"They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker than starvation, atleast!"

Calhoun looked at her more exasperatedly than before. 

"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he saidbitterly; "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he saiddrearily; "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of healthproblems! 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. "

Maril understood. She picked up a book and went into the other cabin. 

 * * * * *

Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was notpossible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and considered thesituation of the people of the planet Dara. Those people were marked bypatches of blue pigment as an inherited consequence of a plague of threegenerations past. Dara was a planet of pariahs, excluded from the humanrace by those who had been conditioned to fear them. 

And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were ofno mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede, monstrousherds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for Darians tobuild a ship or ships and try to bring food back to its starving people. But that desperately necessary enterprise had now roused Weald to afrenzy of apprehension. Weald was if possible more hysterically afraidof blueskins than ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of thestarving planet's population. Weald itself throve and prospered. Ironically, it had such an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them inunneeded space-ships in orbits about itself. Hundreds of thousands oftons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight hulks, while the people ofDara starved and only dared try to steal--it could be calledstealing--some of the innumerable wild cattle of Orede. 

The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not tohear--or maybe they didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed byall of humanity beyond their world. They'd been threatened and oppressedby guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any space-craftthey might send aloft. 

So Calhoun pondered . .. 

 * * * * *

A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on aMed Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefullygenerated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun raised hishead. He listened sharply. No sound could come from outside. 

He knocked on the door of the sleeping-cabin. The noises stoppedinstantly. 

"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. "I was just having a bad dream. "

"I wish, " said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth occasionally! Comeout, please!"

There were stirrings. After a little the door 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 awakecrying. I don't know why. I've been out here wishing I could sleep, because I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can helpme with my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I needfacts. How about it?"

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 that is a first thing! So long as Darians don't look likethe people of other worlds, they'll be considered different. If theylook repulsive, they'll be thought of as evil. .. . Tell me about thosepatches. They're different-sized and different-shaped and they appear indifferent 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. Somepeople don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches ontheir skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow upthey're just like--the people of Weald or any other world. And theirchildren 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-maker. 

"When you left Dara, " he said, "You were carried a long, long way, tosome planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where thename meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else andforgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not ablueskin?"

"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters, andKorvan--. "

Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the namethat she had mentioned. 

"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them, " hesaid absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once! There'sa virus--a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans are immuneto them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical condition for themto take hold and produce whatever effects they do. But once they'reestablished they're passed on from mother to child. .. . And when they dieout it's during childhood, too!"

He poured coffee for the two of them. As usual, Murgatroyd swung down tothe 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 patchesappeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered--whenthey recovered?"

 * * * * *

Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professionalconsiderations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely asource of information. 

"So I'm told, " said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliatingquestions 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, andthey're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on Wealdif I'd been known as--what I am! And there's Korvan, who arranged for meto be sent away as a spy and advised me to do just what yousaid, --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 yourwish. All right. There'll be no more questions, I promise. "

She turned and moved toward the door to the sleeping-cabin. Calhounlooked after her. 

"Maril, " he called out to her. 

"What?"

"Why were you crying?"

"You wouldn't understand, " she said evenly. 

Calhoun shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He was aprofessional man. In his profession he was not incompetent. But there isno profession in which a really competent man tries to understand women. Calhoun annoyedly had to let fate or chance or disaster take care ofMaril's personal problems. He had larger matters to cope with. 

But he had something to work on, now. He hunted busily in the referencetapes. He came up with an explicit collection of information on exactlythe subject he needed. He left the control-room to go down into thestorage areas of the Med Ship's hull. He found an ultra-frigid storagebox, whose contents were kept at the temperature of liquid air. Hedonned thick gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a tinyblock of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was embedded. Itfrosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage-box was closedagain the block was covered with a thick and opaque coating of frozenmoisture. 

He went back to the control-room and pulled down the panel which madeavailable a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological laboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raise it very, verygradually to a specific temperature and hold it there. It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity of thesame culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with greatexactitude. 

"This, " he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I canrest. "

Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med Ship. The girl Maril may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in achair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable ofsleeping-places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curledover his nose. There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissablemurmurings now and again. They kept the feeling of life alive in theship. But for such infinitesimal stirrings of sound--carefully recordedfor this exact purpose--the feel of the ship would have been that of atomb. 

But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the tapedsounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but neverthelessestablishing an atmosphere of their own. 

 * * * * *

Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read theinstruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the block--nolonger frosted--in the culture-microscope and saw its enclosed, infinitesimal particles of life in the process of multiplying on thefood that had been frozen with them when they were reduced to the sporecondition. He beamed. He replaced the block in the incubation oven andfaced the day cheerfully. 

Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted. 

"I've been thinking, " said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you ahearing for--whatever ideas you may have to help Dara. "

"Kind of you, " murmured Calhoun. "May I ask whose influence you'llexert?"

"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 becomeprominent. 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'msure. "

"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan. "

She started. 

"How did you know?"

"Intuition, " said Calhoun drily. "All right. I'll count on him. "

But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-dayand all the next. The girl remained quiet. 

On the ship-day after, the time for breakfast approached. And while theship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look forwardwith confidence to the future. But when contact and--in afashion--conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer, prospectsseemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but there were somany ways in which they could be frustrated! Weald's political leaderscould not oppose hysterical demands for action against blueskins, aftera deathship arrived with no signs whatever of blueskins as responsiblefor its cargo of corpses. It was certain that a starving Dara would tendto desperate and fatal measures against hereditary enemies. 

Calhoun sat down at the control-board and watched the clock. 

"I've got things lined up, " he told Maril wrily, "if only they work out. _If_ I can make somebody on Dara listen and follow my advice and _if_Weald doesn't get ideas and isn't doing what I suspect it is, maybesomething can be done. "

"I'm sure you'll do your best, " said Maril politely. 

Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the ship-clock. There was nosensation attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and theend. It was now time for the end. He might find that absolutely anythinghad happened while he made plans which would immediately be seen to behopeless. Weald could have sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in sucha state of desperation that . .. 

As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly alight-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhounwent into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of theblazing yellow star. It took time to reach it. He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for coördinates so his shipcould be brought to ground. There was confusion, as if the request wereso unusual that the answers were not ready. The grid, too, was on theplanet's night side. Presently the ship was locked onto by the grid'sforce-fields. It went downward without incident. 

Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within eachother, until the ship actually touched ground. 

Then he opened the exit-port, and faced armed men in the darkness, withblast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained on theMed Ship itself. 

"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Yourship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"

CHAPTER 5

It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men werecadaverous. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon theground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung looselyupon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their cheeks werehollow. They were emaciated. And there were the splotches of pigment ofwhich Calhoun had heard. The leader of the truculent group was blue, except for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiterthan 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--out!"

Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence ortwo. It should have amounted to identification, but there was skepticismin the the armed party. 

"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard-leader sardonically. "You'llhave a chance to prove that! Come out of there!"

Calhoun spoke abruptly;

"This is a Med Ship, " he said. "There are medicines and bacterialcultures, inside it. They shouldn't be meddled with. Here on Dara you'vehad 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 notlikely you're leaving!"

"I want to speak to someone in authority, " snapped Calhoun. "We've justcome from Weald. " He felt bristling hatred all about him as he namedWeald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping fusionbombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the authority totake a few sensible precautions!"

He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "_Chee! Chee!_" frombehind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and clingapprehensively to his neck. 

"What's that?"

"A _tormal, _" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will knowsomething about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and he'san important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and he stayswith me!"

The man with the blue hand said harshly;

"There's somebody waiting to ask you questions. Here!"

A ground-car came rolling out from the side of the landing-gridenclosure. The ground-car ran on wheels, and wheels were not much usedon 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 youwant. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"

The ground-car was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three fromthe Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior andit went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of thegrid. It rolled out under them and there was paved highway. It picked upspeed. 

There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed lights. This was night-time, and the men at the landing-grid had set a patternof hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not seem asign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair. Thehighway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds, andthe ground-car needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a pavedsurface that needed repair. By those moving lights other depressingthings could be seen. Untidiness. Buildings not kept up to perfection. Evidences of apathy. The road hadn't been cleaned lately. There waslitter here and there. 

Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling ofwretchedness 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. 

"I left--two years ago, " said Maril. "It was just beginning then. Rationing hadn't started then--. "

The driver said evenly;

"There's rationing now!"

 * * * * *

The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights aboutits perimeter seemed few and pale. 

"E-everything seems--worse. Even the lights. "

"Using all the power, " said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow cropswhere 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 andthen make my way to Weald. I--mailed reports of what I found out back toTrent. 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 makeup. Or maybe he just quit being oneof us. What's the difference? No use!"

Calhoun found himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. He washopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accept hostilityfrom those about them as a device of fate for their destruction. Theyshouldn't . .. 

Maril said quickly to him;

"You understand? Dara's a heavy-metals planet. There aren't many lightelements in our soil. Potassium is scarce. So our ground isn't veryfertile. Before the Plague we traded heavy metals and manufactures forimports of food and potash. But since the Plague we've had no off-planetcommerce. We've been--quarantined. "

"I gathered as much, " said Calhoun. "It was up to Med Service to seethat that didn't happen. It's up to Med Service now to see that itstops. "

"Too late now for anything, " said the driver, "whatever Med Service maybe! They're talking about cutting down our population so there'll befood enough for some to live. There are two questions about it: who's tobe kept alive and why. "

The ground-car aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on thefar 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 hemight 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 beeaten. And they can. You can fill your belly and not feel hungry, butit's like eating hay. You starve just the same. He's still working. Headof a government division. "

The ground-car passed through a gate. It stopped before a lighted door. The armed men hanging to its outside dropped off. They watched Calhounclosely as he stepped out with Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder. 

Minutes later they faced a hastily-summoned group of officials of theDarian government. For a ship to land on Dara was so remarkable an eventthat it called practically for a cabinet meeting. And Calhoun noted thatthey were no better fed than the guards at the space-port. 

They regarded Calhoun and Maril with oddly burning eyes. It was, ofcourse, because the two of them showed no signs of hunger. Theyobviously had not been on short rations. 

"My name is Calhoun, " said Calhoun briskly. "I've the usual Med Servicecredentials. Now . .. "

He did not wait to be questioned. He told them of the appalling state ofthings in the Twelfth Sector of the Med Service, so that men had beenborrowed from other sectors to remedy the intolerable, and he was one ofthem. He told of his arrival at Weald and what had happened there, fromthe 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 newsaffecting them, as they had not heard it before. 

He went on to tell of his stop at Orede and his purpose, and hisencounter with the men he found there. When he finished there wassilence. He broke it. 

"Now, " he said, "Maril's an agent of yours. She can add to what I'vetold you. I'm Med Service. I have a job to do here to repair what wasn'tdone before. I should make a planetary health inspection and makerecommendations for the improvement of the state of things. I'll be gladif you'll arrange for me to talk to your health officials. Things lookbad, and something should be done. "

Someone laughed without mirth. 

"What will you recommend for long-continued undernourishment?" he askedderisively. "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 talkto any space-pilots you've got. Get your astrogators together and Ithink they'll approve my idea. "

The silence was totally skeptical. 

"Orede . .. "

"Not Orede, " said Calhoun. "Weald will be hunting that planet over forDarians. 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 yourwarning. They should bring meat. "

His mouth worked peculiarly, and Calhoun knew that it was at the thoughtof food. 

"Which, " said another man sharply, "goes to the hospitals! I haven'ttasted 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. Puta 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 thisMaril--"

"I--can be identified, " said Maril. "I was sent to gather informationand sent it in secret writing to one of us on Trent. I have a familyhere. They'll know me! And I--there was someone who was working onfoods, and I believe he--made it possible to use--all sorts ofvegetation for food. He will identify me. "

Someone laughed harshly. 

"Oh, yes!" said a man with a blue forehead. "He's a valuable man! Withinthe year he's come up with a way to make his weeds taste like any foodone chooses. If we decide to cut our population, we'll simply give thepeople to be eliminated all they want to eat of his products. They'llnot be hungry. They'll be quite happy. But they'll die for lack ofnourishment. He's volunteered to prove it painless by going through ithimself!"

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 saidbluntly;

"Don't look for them to be glad to see you. And you'd better not showyourself 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 theMinister of Health at hand--he looked most harried of all the officialsgathered to question Calhoun--and proposed that he get a look at thehospital 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 asmany hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage. Itwas much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly naggedat 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 normallybe the leaders of opinion felt shame because they were obsessed bythoughts of food. It was best when people slept. 

Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak. What he found moved himto savage anger. There were too many sick children. In every caseundernourishment contributed to their sickness. And there was not enoughfood to make them well. Doctors and nurses denied themselves food tospare it for their patients. 

Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the MedShip while the guard in the ship looked on. He demonstrated theprocesses of synthesis and autocatalysis that enabled such small samplesto be multiplied indefinitely. He was annoyed by a clamorous appetite. There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical techniquesbeing taught to cure non-nutritional disease, when everybody washalf-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved ofMurgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function. 

He was, of course, a Med Service _tormal_, and _tormals_ were creaturesof talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals, but the remarkablefact 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. LetMurgatroyd be infected with however localized, however specialized aninimical organism, and presently some highly valuable defensivesubstance could be isolated from his blood and he'd remain in his usualexuberant good health. When the antibody was analyzed by thosetechniques of microanalysis the Service had developed, --why--that wasthat. The antibody could be synthesized and one could attack anyepidemic with confidence. 

The tragedy for Dara was, of course, that no Med Ship had come there, three generations ago, when the Dara plague raged. Worse, after theplague Weald was able to exert pressure which only a criminallyincompetent Med Service director would have permitted. But criminalincompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned toSector Twelve to help remedy. 

He was not at ease, though. No ship arrived from Orede to bear out hisaccount of an attempt to get that lonely world evacuated before Wealddiscovered it had blueskins on it. Maril had vanished, to visit orreturn to her family, or perhaps to consult with the mysterious Korvanwho'd arranged for her to leave Dara to be a spy, and had advised hersimply to make a new life somewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and outcast world. Calhoun had learned of two achievementsthe same Korvan had made for his world. Neither was remarkablyconstructive. He'd offered to prove the value of the second by dying ofit. Which might make him a very admirable character, or he could have apassion for martyrdom, --which is much more common than most peoplethink. In two days Calhoun was irritable enough from unaccustomed hungerto suspect the worst of him. 

And there was Weald to worry about. Weald was hysterically resolved toend what it considered the blueskin menace for once and for all. Therewere parallels to such unreasoning frenzy even in the ancient history ofEarth. A word still remained in the dictionaries referring to it. Genocide. 

 * * * * *

Meanwhile Calhoun worked doggedly; in the hospitals while the patientswere awake and in the Med Ship--under guard--afterward. He had hungercramps now, but he tested a plastic cube with a thriving biologicalculture in it. He worked at increasing his store of it. He'd snippedsamples of pigmented skin from dead patients in the hospitals, andexamined the pigmented areas, and very, very painstakingly verified atheory. It took an electron microscope to do it, but he found a virus inthe blue patches which matched the type discovered on Tralee. The Traleeviruses had effects which were passed on from mother to child, andheredity had been charged with the observed results of quasi-livingviral particles. And then Calhoun very, very carefully introduced into avirus culture the material he had been growing in a plastic cube. Hewatched what happened. 

He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he barelymanaged to stagger off to bed. 

That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloodycarcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning Marilcame back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expression was ofsomeone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life. 

"I'm all right, " she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've beenvisiting 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--sothin. .. . There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficientlyarranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I--gave mostof my food to my sisters and they--squabbled over it!"

Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said in a noless desolate tone;

"Korvan said I was foolish to come back. "

"He could be right, " said Calhoun. 

"But I had to!" protested Maril. "Because I--I've been eating all Iwanted to, on Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they'rehalf-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 butfood!"

"I hope, " said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get holdof an astrogator or two. "

"The--ship that was on Orede came in during the night, " Maril told himshakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one ship-load's not enoughto make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us onOrede, we daren't go back for more meat. "

She said abruptly;

"There are some prisoners. They were miners. They were crowded out ofthe 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 Wealdiansaround on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tell abouta rumor of blueskins. Even if their throats will be cut now. Is that theprogram?"

Maril shivered. 

"No . .. They'll be put on short rations like everybody else. And peoplewill watch them. The Wealdians expect to die of plague any minutebecause they've been with Darians. So people look at them and laugh. But it's not funny. "

"It's natural, " said Calhoun, "but perhaps lacking in charity. Lookhere! How about those astrogators? I need them for a job I have inmind. "

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 watchedCalhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed hismysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He wasbored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control-board, though, hewas uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the wayinto the other cabin and slid the door shut. 

"The astrogators are coming, " she said swiftly. "They'll bring someboxes with them. They'll ask you to instruct them so they can handle ourship better. They lost themselves coming back from Orede, no, theydidn't lose themselves, but they lost time--enough time almost to makean extra trip for meat. They need to be experts. I'm to come along, sothey can be sure that what you teach them is what you've been doingright along. "

Calhoun said;

"Well?"

"They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would dosomething monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stop itby more monstrousness sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there areenough. So they want to use your ship--it's faster in overdrive and soon. And they'll go to Weald--in this ship--and--they say they'll giveWeald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"

Calhoun said drily;

"This pays me off for being too sympathetic with blueskins! But if I'dbeen hungry for a couple of years, and was despised to boot by thepeople who kept me hungry, I suppose I might react the same way. No, " hesaid curtly as she opened her lips to speak again. "Don't tell me thetrick. Considering everything, there's only one trick it could be. But Idoubt profoundly that it would work. All right. "

He slid the door back and returned to the control-room. Maril followedhim. He said detachedly;

"I've been working on a problem outside of the food one. It isn't thetime to talk about it right now, but I think I've solved it. "

Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmacoutside 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 theothers. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had built to try tobring food from Orede. They were not good enough, said theirself-appointed leader. They overshot their destination. They came out ofoverdrive too far off line. They needed instructions. 

Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. 

"We've got orders, " said their leader, steadily, "to come on board andlearn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we'vegot. "

"I asked for you, " repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we goalong. Those boxes?"

Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the fourvery carefully brought them inside. 

"They're rations, " said a second young man. "We don't go anywherewithout rations--except Orede. "

"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there, " said Calhounpleasantly. "Weren't we?"

"Yes, " said the young man. 

He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhounshrugged. 

"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there'sthe 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, whichroutine has not changed in two hundred years. He went briskly aheaduntil the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him. 

"Hold it!"

He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at thecontrol-board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged thedoors. 

 * * * * *

The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he foundoccasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably atraining voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore when the blueskin pilotwould have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoun grewstern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald. The young menglanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. He made the actingpilot look up the intrinsic business of its sun and measure its apparentbrightness from just off Dara. He made him estimate the change inbrightness to be expected after so many hours in overdrive, if one brokeout to measure. 

The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour of dutywith rather more of respect for Calhoun than he'd had at the beginning. The second was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilledhim in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparentbrightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated withangular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearerheavens. It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out onDara, and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and otherfine points of space-piloting. They'd done enough, in a few trips toOrede, to realize that they needed to know more. Calhoun showed them. 

Calhoun did not try to make things easy for them. He was hungry andeasily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and tophrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in commandof the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use Weald as adestination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship came out ofoverdrive pointing in an unknown direction and with a precessory motion. He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestial globecontaining hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course in overdrivetoward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute the distance toWeald from such data as he could get from observation, without referenceto any records. 

By this time the first man was chafing to take a second turn. Calhoungave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, ahighly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space. His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least onebreakout from overdrive in each watch. He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of being hungry, though there had been noreason for them to stint on food in Orede--in growing pride in what theycame to know. 

When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highlyqualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better spacementhan at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward Calhoun wasrespectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young, the combinationis impressive. 

Maril had served as passenger only. In theory she was to compareCalhoun's lessons with his practise when alone. But he did nothing onthis journey which--teaching considered--was different from the twointerstellar journeys Maril had made with him. She occupied thesleeping-cabin during two of the six watches of each ship-day. Sheoperated the food-readier, which was almost completely emptied of itsoriginal store of food;--confiscated by the government of Dara. Thatamount of food would make no difference to the planet, but it was wisefor everyone on Dara to be equally ill-fed. 

On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude ofminus five-tenths. [A] The electron telescope could detect its largerplanets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo. Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing outthe difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med Shipwere mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc. 

 [A] Earth's sun, from Earth, is of magnitude roughly minus thirty-six. 

"That does it, " Calhoun announced cheerfully. "That's the last orderI'll give you. You're graduate pilots from here on! Relax and have somecoffee. "

 * * * * *

"And now, " said Calhoun, "I suppose you'll tell me the truth about thoseboxes you brought on board. You said they were rations, but they haven'tbeen opened in six days. I have an idea what they mean, but you tellme. "

The four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause. 

"They could be, " said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped onWeald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has decidedto get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother with you. Is that right?"

The young men stirred uneasily. "Well--l--l, 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 littlewhile back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some day Darawould try that. They've made preparations to fight any imaginablecontagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody claims it'shappening. It wouldn't work. "

"But--"

"In fact, " said Calhoun, "I will not permit you to do anything of thekind. "

One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyesclosed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sankheavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptlywent to sleep. The third found his knees giving away. He paid elaborateattention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and hewent slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly with difficulty, yet reproachfully;

"'Thought y'were our frien'!"

He collapsed. 

Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them outcomfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to herthroat. "What have you done to them? Are they dead?"

"No, " said Calhoun, "just drugged. 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 wantto get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the way. I killed them with supersonics a couple of days ago, while a fineargument was going on about distance-measurements by variable Cepheidsof known period. "

He put the four boxes carefully in the waste-disposal unit. He operatedit. The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form ofmetallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control-desk. 

"I'm a Med Service man, " he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate inthe spread of plague, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be anothermatter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald busy withtroubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some food forDara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is in thousands oftons, --or tens of thousands. " Then he said; "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"

The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompaniedthe change. Murgatroyd burped. 

CHAPTER 6

A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly brighthalf-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had ice-caps at itspoles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had thatcarefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas which wasso effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free, and Calhounfretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to man. 

There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in asort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept, still bound hand and foot upon the control-room floor. Murgatroydregarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furryforehead wrinkled helplessly. 

"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as hissearch had no result. "They can't. It would be too sensible for them tohave done it!"

Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a subdued voice. 

"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polarorbit would be ridiculous! They--" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Ofcourse! Now, where's the landing-grid?"

He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdianlanding-grid--mapped in the Sector Directory--against the look ofcontinents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible outside. Hefound what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar-system drive. 

"I wish, " he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight thefirst time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out inspace, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit andat what distance will you put it?"

Maril did not answer. 

"Obviously, " said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from thelanding-pattern of ships coming in to the space-port. You'll put it onthe opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of theway, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or nightwithout having to calculate anything. So you'll put it out in orbit soit will revolve around Weald in exactly one day, neither more or less, and you'll put it above the equator. And then it will remain quitestationary above one spot on the planet, a hundred and eighty degreeslongitude 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 pushedthe Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. Thesunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle. Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted oncemore, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicatingsatisfaction. 

Again presently he abandoned instrument-control and peered directly outof a port, handling the solar-system drive with great care. Murgatroydsaid depressedly;

"_Chee!_"

"Stop worrying, " commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, andthere is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobodybumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do wantto bump, --gently. "

Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something darkappeared, --and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril, despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastlylarger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Shipmaneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. Afourth. There seemed to be dozens of them. 

They were space-ships, huge by comparison with Aesclipus Twenty. Theyfloated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not information. They were not at even distances from each other. They did notpoint in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like derelicts. 

Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there camethe gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance outthe vision-port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med Shipwas 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 move smoothly, " he commented. "We weren't challenged. So it'sextremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor oughtto begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now whether I'm ahero 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 over hisshoulders. 

"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogationlessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them dumpgerm-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 mannedand they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing but sky-ridingstorage bins!"

He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his armsinto the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air-tanks over hisshoulder and hooked them to the suit. 

"I'll be back, " he said. "I hope with good news. I've reason to behopeful, though, because these Wealdians are very practical men. Theyhave things all prepared and tidy. I suspect I'll find these ships withstores of air and fuel--maybe even food--so that if Weald should manageto make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'd only haveto bring out crews. "

 * * * * *

He lifted the space-helmet down from its rack and put it on. He testedit, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data fromthe lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above hiseye-level. He fastened a space-rope about himself, speaking through thehelmet's opened face-plate. 

"If our friends should wake up before I get back, " he added, "pleaserestrain them. I'd hate to be marooned. "

He went waddling into the airlock with the coil of space-rope over onevacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him A little laterMaril heard the outer lock open. Then soundlessness. 

Murgatroyd whimpered a little. Maril shivered. Calhoun had gone out ofthe ship to nothingness. He'd said that what he was looking for--andwhat he'd found--was forty-two thousand miles from Weald. One couldimagine falling forty-two thousand miles, where one couldn't imaginefalling a light-year. Calhoun was walking on the steel plates of agigantic space-ship which floated among dozens of its fellows, allseeming derelicts and seemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on thenearest because of magnetic-soled shoes. He trusted his life to them andto a flimsy space-rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship'sairlock. 

Time passed. A clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to thesecond which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Verysmall and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing uttersilence from hanging intolerably in the ship. They were traffic-sounds, recorded on a world no one knew how many light-years distant, and nobodyknew when. There were sounds as of voices, too faint to suggest words, but imparting a feel of life and activity to a soundless ship. 

Maril found herself listening tensely for something else. One of thefour bound blueskins snored, and stirred, and slept again. Murgatroydgazed about unhappily, and swung down to the control-room floor, andthen paused for lack of any place to go or thing to do. He sat down andbegan 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 ahuman being. 

"N-no, " she said unsteadily. "Not yet. "

More time passed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintestof clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in theairlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises. 

The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fogcame out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of thelock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenlyheavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two space-suits and acurious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside theface-plate, and said briskly;

"This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it, will you Maril?"

He began to work his way out of his vacuum-suit. 

"Item, " he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practicaltribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon as they'rewarmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat enough to keepa ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively near zeroKelvin. Here, point the heaters like this. "

He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where theirbeams played. But the metal space-suits glistened and steamed, --and thesteam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and utterlycold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, whichreëvaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and wasimmediately replaced. 

"Item, " said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suitsleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping friendswill be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble, providedonly that nobody comes out here to bother us before they leave. "

He shed the last of the space-suit, stepping out of its legs. 

"And, " he finished wrily, "I brought back an emergency supply ofship-provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enoughto feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's stillstarving. "

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. Itwas not a difficult task. The dosage, mixed in the coffee he had giventhem earlier, was a light one. Calhoun took the precaution of disarmingthem 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 beenunmanageable crop-surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government grimlyrations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been buying upsurplus grain to keep the price up. To save storage costs, it's loadedthe grain into out-of-date space-ships it once used to stand sentryover 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 ofthem. It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've broughtspace-suits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, andI've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling forvolunteers 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 madeit impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and now offeredsomething much better to make up for it. They raged. But half a millionbushels 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 aroundus. 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 offeredthem. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them and taughtthem until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd pinnedtheir ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy ships andunimaginable quantities of food with which to break the famine. .. . 

There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so farwarming up. Three more had to be entered, in space-suits, and each hadto have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it, andat least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up toreasonable temperature for use on the journey. Then the overdrive unithad to be inspected and set for the length of journey that a directoverdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun had to make sure againthat each of the four could identify Dara's sun under all circumstancesand aim for it with the requisite high precision, both before going intooverdrive and after breakout. When all that was accomplished, Calhounmight reasonably hope that they'd arrive. But it wasn't a certainty. 

Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the finetolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than theirteacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because theirmessages might be picked up on Weald. 

Of course for this action to be successful, it had to be performed withthe stealth of sneak-thieves. 

 * * * * *

What seemed a long time passed. Then one ship turned slowly upon someunseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A secondtwisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar-systemdrive to get clear of the rest. The fourth . .. 

One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara at manytimes the speed of light. Another. Two more. 

That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness. AndCalhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in such apathetically small number of days. If the four ships reached Dara, theirpilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with that estate overtheir bitter objection. But they would glory in it, if they reachedDara. 

Maril looked at him with very strange eyes. 

"Now what?" she asked. 

"We hang around, " said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Wealdto find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort ofsignal 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'llspoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more food--likeinterstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'll expect us totry it again. They might get set to fight. Or they might simply land therest of these ships. "

"If I'd realized what you were about, " said Maril, "I'd have joined inthe lessons. I could have piloted a ship. "

"You wouldn't have wanted to, " said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn'twant to be a heroine. "

"Why?"

"Korvan, " said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him. He'sbeen trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins. All he's accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly. He wouldn'tfeel 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 thereaction of Korvan--whom Calhoun had never met--or denied that he wasmore important to her than anything else. The last was what Calhounplainly 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 tobe done. It's much more important than being admired. "

"You could take another ship back, " she told him. "It would be worthmore to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realize thatyou'd planned everything. "

"Ah!" said Calhoun. "But you've no idea how much this ship matters toDara!"

He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his ears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave-lengths andwave-forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no mention ofthe oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft. There was nomention of the ships at all. But there was plenty of mention of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to seewhich political party could promise the most complete protection againstblueskins. 

After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung theMed Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around whichDara rolled. He said;

"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"

Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and theMed Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own. 

Calhoun yawned again. 

"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two, " he said wearily, "andI'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on Dara. It'sone way not to feel hungry. "

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 ablueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got todo 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'm about tocatch up on some sleep. "

Maril rose and went into the other cabin. He settled down into the chairand fell instantly asleep. 

 * * * * *

For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity orhappening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very faraway, light-years distant and light years apart, four shiploads of grainhurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each great shiphad a single semi-skilled blueskin for pilot and crew. Thousands ofmillions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to their stellar typesin a galaxy of which a very small proportion had been explored andcolonized by humanity. The human race was now to be counted inquadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but the tiny MedShip seemed the least significant of all possible created things. Itcould travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it was notyet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the human racearose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of the Med Shipconsumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone with no work todo or no resources in himself, or herself. 

On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhatdistastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him ina sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with hisfurry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose. 

Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter ofsix or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of along process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and againculturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculatedtime. 

"Better wait until tomorrow, " he observed, and put the bit of clearliquid in a temperature-controlled place of safe-keeping. 

"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"

"It's part of a job I have on hand, " said Calhoun. He considered. "Howabout some music?"

She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtapeinto it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she hadnever heard before. Again it was a device to counteract isolation andmonotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing itseffectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things. Calhoun deliberately went for weeks between uses of his recordings, sothat music was an event to be looked forward to and cherished. 

When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee withtranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers, Marilregarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed. 

"I think I understand now, " she said slowly, "why you don't act likeother people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you whatother people have to try to get in crazy ways, --making their work feedtheir vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But youcan put your whole mind on your work. "

He thought it over. 

"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind, " headmitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites. But naturally there are instincts--"

[Illustration]

She waited. He did not finish. 

"What do you do about instincts that work and music and such thingscan't satisfy?"

Calhoun grinned wrily;

"I'm stern with them. I have to be. "

He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for thenight. She did. 

 * * * * *

It was after breakfast-time of the next ship-day when he got out thesample of clear liquid he'd worked so long to produce. "We'll see how itworks, " he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case of a slip-up. It'sperfectly 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 sheshivered a little. 

"What will it do?"

"That remains to be seen. " He paused a moment. "You and I, " he said withsome dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catch somethingfrom me, it will be infective indeed!"

She gazed at him utterly without comprehension. 

He took his own temperature. He brought out the folios which were hisorders, covering each of the planets he should give a standard MedicalService inspection. Weald was there. Dara wasn't. But a Med Service manhas much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routine ofnormal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations, henecessarily has much more. Calhoun went over the folios. 

Two hours later he took his temperature again. He looked pleased. Hemade an entry in the ship's log. Two hours later yet he found himselfdrinking thirstily and looked more pleased still. He made another entryin the log and matter-of-factly drew a small quantity of blood from hisown vein and called to Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd submitted amiably to thevery trivial operation Calhoun carried out. Calhoun put away theequipment 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'sa 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!"

"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 forhimself. 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 hislittle paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had nopain-nerves. It itched. But he was perfectly content. Murgatroyd wouldalways be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun. 

Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and witha determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long enoughto get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to Murgatroyd'sheartbeat with it while Murgatroyd dozed. 

"Maril, " he said. "Write down something for me. The time, andninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four. "

She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later--still not stirring todisturb Murgatroyd--he had her write down another time and sequence offigures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour laterstill, 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 goin the other cabin for a moment?"

She went disturbedly into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a sample ofblood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroydsubmitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhounhad 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 hadMurgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would assuredly take care of twopatients. 

But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of thosescrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures fromstore. 

Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back and offered noexplanation. She said;

"I'll fix lunch. " She hesitated. "You brought some food from the firstWeald ship. Do you want it?"

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 consideredthat she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening meal ofsingularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily. He did notcomment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated game ofsolitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of probabilityincreased one's chance of winning. 

By midnight, ship-time, she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and hewas satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arriveoff Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into theother cabin. 

Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made forhim, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood-pressure after the injection of thesame culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself andlater--without contact with him or the culture--in Maril. He put aprofessional comment at the end. 

"The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics duringlong storage in the spore state. It revived and reproduced rapidly. Iinjected . 5 cc under my skin and in less than one hour my temperaturewas 30. 8°C. An hour later it was 30. 9°C. This was its peak. Itimmediately returned to normal. The only other observable symptom wasslightly increased thirst. Blood-pressure and pulse remained normal. Theother person in the Med Ship displayed the same symptoms, in prompt andcomplete repetition, without physical contact. "

He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole. 

The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship time. Calhounmade contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground. 

It was almost two hours later--1500 hours ship-time--when the people ofDara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was publicly to beexecuted; immediately. 

CHAPTER 7

From the viewpoint of Darians, the decision of Calhoun's guilt and thedecision to execute him were reasonable enough. Maril protestedfiercely, and her testimony agreed with Calhoun's in every respect, butfrom a blueskin viewpoint their own statements were damning. 

Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the onlysemi-skilled space-pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men. Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and therehe had instructed them in modern guidance-methods for ships of space. Sofar there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more competentpilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for example, to raidthe enormous cattle-herds there. And he'd had them drive the Med Ship toWeald, against which there could be no objection. 

But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving themdrugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd beenordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots offseparately--so he and Maril claimed--in huge ships crammed with grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow. Nobody on Dara couldimagine stores of food bought up and stored away because it was useless;to keep up prices. Nobody believed in shiploads of grain to be had forthe taking. They did know that the only four partially experiencedspace-pilots on Dara had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sentout of the ship after they'd been drugged. Had they been trained, andhad they been helped or even permitted to sow the seeds of plague onWeald, and had they come back prepared to pass on training to other mento handle other space-ships now feverishly being built in hidden placeson Dara, --why--then Dara might have a chance of survival. But aspace-battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous at best. With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So Calhoun, by hisown story, appeared to have doomed every living being on Dara tomassacre from the bombs of Weald. 

It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believingin such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun hadshattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships andcould build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct them. Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced spacemen to mansome ships fully and train the crews of others. If it had becomedesperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life onDara would be delayed. Dara might have gained time at least to buildships which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way. 

But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Wealdalready had a fleet of huge ships which only needed to be emptied ofgrain and filled with guns and men--why--Dara was doomed. But if he didnot tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So Calhounwould 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 himto the center of the largest level space on the planet which was notdesperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara wouldhave liked to see him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, butno conceivable death would be satisfying. 

So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered tohim. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the landing-gridfloor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire upon him at thesame instant. He would not only be killed; he would be destroyed. Hewould be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon him. 

 * * * * *

His death was remarkably close. Nothing remained but the order to fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything. One ofthe grain-ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its pilot wastriumphantly calling for landing-coördinates. The grid office relayedhis call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to get it on thecommunication system of the whole planet. 

"_Calling ground_, " boomed the triumphant voice of the first of thestudent pilots Calhoun had trained. "_Calling ground! Pilot Franz incaptured ship requests coördinates for landing! Purpose of landing, todeliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!_"

At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen onvision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to beused as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on itssecond voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when itthreatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in thesky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the center ofthe tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where he was tohave been executed. 

The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then didCalhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the grid'smetal-lace wall. 

The big ship touched ground, and its exit-port revolved and opened, andthe student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handsful ofgrain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd, then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoicewhen Calhoun's living body exploded into flame. 

They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the MedShip, nevertheless. He was surrounded by now-ecstatically admiringcitizens of Dara, only 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 on thefollowing day. 

Then Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the secondtime. His tone and manner were very dry. 

"Now, " he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators to train. Ithink it likely that we can raid the Wealdian grain-fleet one time more, 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 besensible about this situation! After all, four shiploads of grain won'tbreak the famine! They'll help a lot, but they're only the beginning ofwhat's needed for a planetary population!"

"How much grain can we hope for?" demanded a man with a blue markcovering all his chin. 

Calhoun told him. 

"How long before Weald can have a fleet overhead, dropping fusionbombs?" demanded another, grimly. 

Calhoun named a time. But then he said;

"I think we can keep them from dropping bombs if we can get thegrain-fleet and some capable astrogators. "

"What do you have in mind?"

He told them. It was not possible to tell the whole story of what heconsidered sensible behavior. An emotional program can be presented andaccepted 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, with one eye and half hisforehead colored blue. "If we'd used our brains, we'd have more bombsthan Weald can hope for! We could turn that whole planet into a smokingcinder!"

"Which, " said Calhoun acidly, "would give you some satisfaction but notan ounce of food! And food's more important than satisfaction. Now, I'mgoing to take off for Weald again. I'll want somebody to build anemergency device for my ship, and I'll want the four pilots I've trainedand twenty more candidates. And I'd like to have some decent rations!When the last trip brought back two million bushels of grain, you canspare adequate food for twenty men for a few days!"

 * * * * *

It took some time to get the special device constructed, but the MedShip lifted in two days more. The device for which it had waited wassimply a preventive of the disaster overtaking the ship from the mine onOrede. It was essentially a tank of liquid oxygen, packed in the spacefrom which stores had been taken away. When the ship's air-supply waspumped past it, first moisture and then CO2 froze out. Then the airflowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the CO2 with moreuseful breathing material. Then the moisture was restored to the air asit warmed again. For so long as the oxygen lasted, fresh air for anynumber of men could be kept purified and breathable. The Med Ship'snormal equipment could take care of no more than ten. But with this itcould journey to Weald with almost any complement on board. 

Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protestedshrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closinglock-door. 

"_Chee!_" he said indignantly. "_Chee! Chee!_"

"No, " said Calhoun, "we'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see herlater. "

He nodded to one of the first four student pilots, and he crisply madecontact with the landing-grid office. He very efficiently supervised asthe grid took the ship up. The other three of the four first-trained menexplained every move to sub-classes assigned to each. Calhoun movedabout, listening and making certain that the instruction was up tostandard. 

He felt queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution inspace. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside himselfcrowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each other'sway. They trampled on each other. There was always somebody eating, andalways somebody sleeping, and there was no need whatever for thebackground tape to keep the ship from being intolerably quiet. But theair-system worked well enough, except once when the reheater unit quitand the air inside the ship went down below freezing before the troublecould be found and corrected. 

The journey to Weald, this time, took seven days because of the trainingprogram in effect. Calhoun bit his nails over the delay. But it wasnecessary for each of the students to make his own line-ups on Weald'ssun, and compute distances, and for each of them to practisemaneuverings that would presently be called for. Calhoun hopeddesperately that preparations for active warfare--or massacre--did notmove fast on Weald. He believed, however, that in the absence of directnews from Dara, Wealdian officials would take the normal course ofpoliticos. They had proclaimed the deathship from Orede an attack fromDara. Therefore they would specialize on defensive measures beforeplumping for offense. They'd get patrol-ships out to spot invasion shipslong before they worked on a fleet to destroy the blueskins. It wouldmeet the public demand for defense. 

Calhoun was right. The Med Ship made its final approach to Weald underCalhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his previousjourney and he used them again. They would not be strictly accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading beyond twodecimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough from theWealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its planets withelectron telescope at maximum magnification. He could aim for Wealditself, --allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent motion of itsimage because of the limited speed of light. He tried the briefest ofoverdrive hops, and came out within the solar system and well inside anywatching patrol. 

That was pure fortune. It continued. He'd broken through the screen ofguard-ships in undetectable overdrive. He was within half an hour'ssolar-system drive of the grain-fleet. There was no alarm, at first. Ofcourse radars spotted the Med Ship as an object, but nobody paidattention. It was not headed for Weald. It was probably assumed to be aguard-boat itself. Such mistakes do happen. It reached the grain-fleet. 

Again from the storage-space from which supplies had been removed, Calhoun produced vacuum suits. The four first students went out, eachescorting a less-accustomed neophyte and all fastened firmly togetherwith space-ropes. They warmed the interiors of four ships and went on toothers. Presently there were eight ships making ready for aninterstellar journey, each with a scared but resolute new pilotfamiliarizing 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 theplanet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell them whatwas happening. The guard-ship would overhear. He could not trust untriedyoung men to act rationally if they were unwarned and the guard-shiparrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of them. 

Then he was inspired. He called Murgatroyd, placed him before thecommunicator, and set it at voice-only transmission. This was familiarenough, 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 inorder. One was Calhoun. The second was coffee. The third was pretendingto converse like a human being. The speaker said explosively;

"_You there, identify yourself!_"

"_Chee-chee-chee-chee!_" observed Murgatroyd. He wriggled with pleasureand added, reasonably enough, "_Chee!_"

The communicator bawled;

"_Calling ground! Calling ground! Listen to this! Something that ain'thuman's talking at me on a communicator! Listen in an' tell me what todo!_"

Murgatroyd interposed with another shrill;

"_Chee!_"

Then Calhoun pulled the Med Ship slowly away from the clump ofstill-lifeless grain-ships. It was highly improbable that the guard-boatwould carry an electron telescope. Most likely it would have only anecho-radar, and so could determine only that an object of some sortmoved of its own accord in space. Calhoun let the Med Ship accelerate. That would be final evidence. The grain-ships were between Weald and itssun. Even electron telescopes on the ground--and electron-telescopeswere ultimately optical telescopes with electronic amplification--evenelectron telescopes on the ground could not get a good image of the shipthrough 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 sendback 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 verylong way off. 

"_Chee-chee_, " said Murgatroyd encouragingly. 

Calhoun changed the Med Ship's course. The guard-ship changed coursetoo. Calhoun let it draw nearer, --but only a little. He led it away fromthe fleet of grain-ships. 

He swung his electron telescope on them. He saw a space-suited figureoutside one, --safely roped, however. It was easy to guess that someonehad meant to return to the Med Ship for orders or to make a report, andfound 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, cutyour drive and let our guard-ship approach!_"

Murgatroyd replied in an interested but doubtful tone. The booming voicebellowed. Another voice of higher authority took over. Murgatroyd wasentranced that so many people wanted to talk to him. He made what forhim was practically an oration. The last voice spoke persuasively andsuavely. 

"_Chee-chee-chee-chee_, " said Murgatroyd. 

One of the grain-ships flickered and ceased to be. It had gone intooverdrive. Another. And another. Suddenly they began to flick out ofsight by twos and threes. 

"_Chee_, " said Murgatroyd with a note of finality. 

The last grain-ship vanished. 

"Calling guard-ship, " said Calhoun drily. "This is Med ship AesclipusTwenty. 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-shipsyou've had in orbit have been taken away by men from Dara--blueskins ifyou like--to feed themselves and their families. They've been dying ofhunger and they don't like it. "

There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suavevoice 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 wasstored in. They'll pay in heavy metals, --iridium, uranium, --that sort ofthing. "

The suave voice fairly curdled. 

"_As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch groundhere!_"

"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium meltsat 1150° centigrade, and tungsten at 3370° and iridium at 2350°. Youcould load such things and melt them down in space and then tow themhome. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful materials!"

The suave voice said infuriatedly;

"_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'sperfectly practical for Wealdians to land on Dara, take whateverproperty they think wise, --to pay for damage done by blueskins, ofcourse--and get back to Wealdian ships with absolutely no danger ofcarrying contagion. If you'll make sure the recording's clear. "

 * * * * *

He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could beoutfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, dowhatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not usethe word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever ofbringing back infection. He gave exact details. Then he said;

"My radar says you've four ships converging on me to blast me out ofspace. I sign off. "

The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that improbablystressed area of extension which it formed about itself and in whichphysical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the speed oflight in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet. It was toohigh. For another, a ship could travel very many times 186000 miles persecond in overdrive. 

The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and Murgatroydon board. There was companionable silence, --there were only the smallthreshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice, but whichit would have been intolerable to have stop. 

Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd hadtwenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and someoneelse. 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 mayremember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels ofgrain reaching them. Maybe--just possibly--they'll listen to me and actsensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not withten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with bombs!"

Driving direct, without pausing for practisings, the Med Ship couldarrive at Dara in little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward torelaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an adequatemeal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then, presently, hesat down wrily to a double meal of Darian famine-rations, which were farfrom appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on board. 

 * * * * *

He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went elsewhere. OnWeald, obviously, there would be purest panic. The vanishing of thegrain fleet wouldn't be charged against twenty-four men. A Darian fleetwould be suspected, and with the suspicion terror, and with terror agovernmental crisis. Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft thatcould take to space, and the agitated improvisation of a space-fleet. 

But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine Calhoun'sinstructions for equipment by which armed men could be landed on aplague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again. Military andgovernmental officials would come to the eminently sane conclusion thatwhile Calhoun could not well take active measures against blueskins, asa sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would be on the side of lawand order and propriety and justice, --in short, of Weald. So theyordered sample anti-contagion suits made according to Calhoun'sdirections, and they had them tested. They worked admirably. 

On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed back to it, grain was distributedlavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal ration almostdoubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the relief wasgreat. There was considerable gratitude felt for Calhoun, which as usualincluded a lively anticipation of further favors to come. Maril wasinterviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to discuss him, and shedid his reputation no harm. That was not all that happened on Dara . .. 

There was something else. Very curious thing, too. There was a curiousspread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease. Itlasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran atemperature which peaked at 30. 9° centigrade, and drank more water thanusual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all aboutit. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are rarelyrecorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was the casehere. 

Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain-shipswould arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time theywould make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle-herds, and bringback incredible quantities of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almosteverybody 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 intobombs--a concession by Calhoun--and plastic factories make anastonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavymetals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and therewould be some guns and minor items. .. . 

Perhaps somebody could have found out any of these items in advance, butit was unlikely that anybody did. Nobody but Calhoun, however, wouldever have put them together and hoped very urgently that that was theway things would work out. He could see a promising total result. Infact, in the Med ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of hisjourney he thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum ofall those happenings when they were put together. 

 * * * * *

He landed on Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted herwith enthusiasm. 

"Something unusual has happened, " said Maril, very much subdued. "I toldyou that--sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and thenneither they nor their children ever have blueskin markings again. "

"Yes, " said Calhoun. "I remember. "

"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said theyonly took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but thenthey could be passed on from mother to child. Until--sometimes--theydied out. "

Calhoun blinked. 

"Yes. .. . "

"Korvan, " said Maril very carefully, "Has worked out an idea that that'swhat happens to the blueskin markings on--us Darians. He thinks thatpeople almost dead of the plague could get the--virus, and if theyrecovered 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 wereworking with some culture-material. You wrote quite a lot about it inthe ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? AndMurgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" Shemoistened her lips. "You said that if infection passed between us, something would be very infectious indeed?"

"What are you driving at?"

Maril continued slowly. "Th--thousands of people are having theirpigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And--Korvan hasfound out that it always seems to happen after a day when they feltfeverish and very thirsty--and then felt all right again. You tried outsomething that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too, in the ship. Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that--isobliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There arealways trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence ofone 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 epidemicthat--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 knowyou did it! But the question is--are you going to tell? When people findthey're not blueskins any longer--when there's no such thing as ablueskin 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'sfound the proof. He's--very proud. I'd have to tell him the truth if youwere 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 anybodydoing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't get about. So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover what's happenedto 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 itwas that way. "

She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she noddedand went away. 

An hour later the Wealdian space-fleet was reported, massed in space anddriving for Dara. 

CHAPTER 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 onlyand quite incapable of overdrive. They'd come from Weald in thecargo-holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. Thescouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet, ofall that they might see before they were shot down. They found thelanding-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship, Aesclipus Twenty. 

They searched here and there. They flitted to and fro, scanning widebands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways andindustrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. Itlooked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of formergrain-ships which Calhoun had said blueskins had seized and rushed away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them. 

Dara offered no opposition to the scout-ships. Nothing rose to space tooppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portionof the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign ofmilitary preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the mainfleet waited while they reported monotonously that they saw no sign ofthe stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by which theplanet could be defended. There could be no point in a pitched battle inemptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it might be dangerous. 

Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensivemovement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground, With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, therewas something like an embarrassed pause. The Wealdian ships were readyto bomb. They were less anxious to be vaporized by possiblesuicide-dashes of defending ships who might blow themselves up nearcontact with their enemies. 

But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a merethreat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material for totaldevastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or thousands, or eventens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the world of Dara withmushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make a continuous pall ofatomic-fusion products. And they could settle down and kill every livingthing not destroyed by the explosions themselves. Even the creatures ofthe deepest oceans would die of deadly, purposely-contrived falloutparticles. 

The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness. It found nocapacity for defense on Dara. It moved forward. 

But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara. It said thata ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space. TheDarian fleet now hurtled toward Weald. It was a fleet of thirty-sevengiant ships. They carried such-and-such bombs in such-and-suchquantities. Unless its orders were countermanded, it would deliver thosebombs on Weald--set to explode. If Weald bombed Dara, the orders couldnot be withdrawn. So Weald could bomb Dara. It could destroy all life onthe pariah planet. But Weald would die with it. 

The fleet ceased its advance. The situation was a stalemate with puredesperation on one side and pure frustration on the other. This was noway to end the war. Neither planet could trust the other, even forminutes. If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now waspossible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack atsome other moment. Ultimately one or the other must perish, and thesurvivor would be the one most skilled in treachery. 

But then the pariah planet made a new proposal. It would send amessenger-ship to stop its own fleet's bombardment if Weald would acceptpayment for the grain-ships and their cargoes. It would pay in ingots ofiridium and uranium and tungsten--and gold if Weald wished it--for alldamages Weald might claim. It would even pay indemnity for the miners ofOrede, who had died by accident but perhaps in some sense through itsfault. It would pay. .. . But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomicfire and the fleet of Weald would have no home planet to return to. 

 * * * * *

This proposal seemed both craven and foolish. It would allow the fleetof Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. Itseemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt forblueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender. 

The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierceresentment filled the pariah planet's people. There wasalmost--almost!--revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopelessand however fatal. But not all of Dara realized that a vital change hadcome about in the state of things on Dara. The enemy fleet had not ahint of it. And therefore--

In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies ofDara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasingarrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald cameheavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they had beenassured was theirs. The ship's outer hull would be sterilized before itreturned to Weald, of course. And there was adequate protection for thelanding-party. 

Men came out of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparentsag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested, and which were perfect protection against contagion. They could lootwith impunity, and all contamination would remain outside the suits. What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before itwas returned to Weald. It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realizethat blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed. There was only onebit of relevant information the space-fleet of Weald did not have. 

That information was that the people of Dara weren't blueskins anylonger. There'd been a trivial epidemic. 

The sag-suited men of Weald went zestfully about their business. Theytook over the landing-grid's operation, driving the Darian operatorsaway. For the first time in history the operators of a landing-grid woremakeup to look like they did have blue pigment in their skins. TheWealdian landing-party tested the grid's operation. They brought downanother giant ship. Then another. And another. 

Parties in the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were thehuge stock-piles of precious metals, brought in readiness to besurrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these intothe holds--to be sterilized later. Some went forthrightly after personalloot. 

They came upon very few Darians. Those they saw kept sullenly away fromthem. They entered shops and took what they fancied. They zestfullyremoved the treasure of banks. 

Triumphal and scornful reports went up to the hovering great ships. Theblueskins, said the reports were spiritless and cowardly. They permittedthemselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had been observedthat the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because theyfeared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins had abjectly producedall 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, werelifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of theirhulls began. There was jealousy among the ships in space for those uponthe ground. The first-landed ships had had their choice of loot. Therewere squabblings about priorities, now that the navy of Weald plainlyhad a license to steal. There was confusion among the members of thelanding-parties. Discipline disappeared. Men in plastic sag-suits rovedabout as individuals, seeking what they might loot. 

 * * * * *

There were armed and alerted landing-parties around the grid itself, ofcourse, but the capital city of Dara lay open. Men coming back with lootfound their ships already lifted off to make room for others. They werepushed into reëmbarking-parties of other ships. There were more and moremen to be found on ships where they did not belong, and more and morenot to be found where they did. By the time half the fleet had beenaground, there was no longer any pretense of holding a ship down untilall its crew returned. There were too many other ships' companiesclamoring 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 werestill empty, when the watchful government of Dara broadcast a newmessage to the invaders. It requested that the looting stop. No matterwhat payment Weald claimed, it had taken payment five times over. Nowwas time to stop. 

It was amusing. The space-admiral of Weald ordered his ships alerted foraction. The message-ship, ordering the Darian fleet away from Weald, had been sent off long since. No other ship could get away now! TheDarians 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 thetrouble began. It wasn't on the ground, at all. Everything was undersplendid control where a landing-force occupied the grid and all theground immediately about it. The space admiral had headquarters in thelanding-grid office. Reports came in, orders were issued, admirablycrisp salutes were exchanged among sag-suited men. .. . Everything was inperfect shape there. 

But there was panic among the ships in space. Communicators gave offhorrified, panic-stricken yells. There were screamings. Intelligiblecommunications ceased. Ships plunged crazily this way and that. Somevanished in overdrive. At least one plunged at full power into a Darianocean. 

The space-admiral found himself in command of fifteen ships only, out ofall his former force. The rest of the fleet went through a period ofhysterical madness. In some ships it lasted for minutes only. In othersit went on for half an hour or more. Then they hung overhead, but didnot reply to calls. 

Calhoun arrived at the space-port with Murgatroyd riding on hisshoulder. A bewildered officer in a sag-suit halted him. 

"I've come, " said Calhoun, "to speak to the admiral. My name is Calhounand I'm Med Service, and I think I met the Admiral at a banquet a fewweeks 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 toexplain it to the admiral. He needs to know what's happened, if he's totake appropriate measures. "

There were jitterings. Many men in sag-suits had still no idea thatanything had gone wrong. Some appeared, brightly carrying loot. Somehung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waitingtheir turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of theirsuits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic andhappy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich theywere going to be back on Weald. 

But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. Therewas strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdianadmiral. 

"I came to explain something, " said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situationhas changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure. "

The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which coveredhim almost like a gift-wrapped parcel. 

"Be quick!" he rasped. 

"First, " said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins. An epidemic ofsomething or other has made the blue patches on the skins of Dariansfade out. There have always been some who didn't have blue patches. Nownobody has them. "

"Nonsense!" rasped the admiral. "And what has that got to do with thissituation?"

"Why, everything, " said Calhoun mildly. "It means that Darians can passfor Wealdians whenever they please. That they are passing for Wealdians. That they've been mixing with your men, wearing sag-suits exactly likethe one you're wearing now. They've been going aboard your ships in theconfusion of returning looters. There's not a ship now aloft, that hasbeen aground today, that hasn't from one to fifteen Darians--no longerblueskins--on board. "

The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray. 

"You can't take your fleet back to Weald, " said Calhoun gently, "if youbelieve its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara plague. Youwouldn'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 alertedfor action, the Darians on each ship released panic-gas. They onlyneeded tiny, pocket-sized containers of the gas for the job. They hadthem. They only needed to use air-tanks from their sag-suits to protectthemselves against the gas. They kept them handy. On nearly all yourships aloft your crews are crazy from panic-gas. They'll stay that wayuntil the air is changed. Darians have barricaded themselves in thecontrol-rooms of most if not all your ships. You haven't got a fleet. Ifthe few ships that will obey your orders, drop one bomb, our fleet offWeald will drop fifty. I don't think you'd better order offensiveaction. Instead, I think you'd better have your fleet medical officerscome and learn some of the facts of life. There's no need for warbetween 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 fleetwere breathing Wealdian air from tanks. It would last so long only. Ifthey were taken on board the still obedient ships overhead, Darianswould unquestionably be mixed with them. There was no way to take offthe 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 knowwhat you devils plan, but--I don't know how to stop you. "

"All that's necessary, " said Calhoun warmly, "is an open mind. There's amisunderstanding to be cleared up, and some principles of planetaryhealth practises to be explained, and a certain amount of prejudice thathas to be thrown away. But nobody need die of changing their minds. TheInterstellar Medical service has proved that over and over!"

Murgatroyd, perched on his shoulder, felt that it was time to take partin the conversation. He said;

"_Chee-chee!_"

"Yes, " agreed Calhoun. "We do want to get the job done. We're behindschedule now. "

 * * * * *

It was not, of course, possible for Calhoun to leave immediately. He hadto preside at various meetings of the medical officers of the fleet withthe health officials of Dara. He had to make explanations, and correctmisapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological experiments aswould prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no longer a plague onDara, whatever had been the case three generations before. He had to sitby while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor named Korvanrather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentationwas a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it hadbeen wiped out by a very trivial epidemic of--such and such. Calhounregarded that young man with a detached interest. Maril thought himwonderful, even if she had to give him the material for his work. Calhoun shrugged and went on with his work. 

The return of loot. Mutual, full, and complete agreement that Darianswere no longer carriers of plague, if they had ever been. Unless Wealdconvinced other worlds of this, Weald itself would join Dara inisolation from neighboring worlds. A messenger ship to recall thetwenty-seven ships once floating in orbit about Weald. Most of themwould be used for some time, now, to bring beef from Orede. Some wouldhaul more grain from Weald. It would be paid for. There would be a needfor commercial missions to be exchanged between Weald and Dara. 

It was a full week before he could go to the little Med Ship and preparefor departure. Even then there were matters to be attended to. All thefood-supplies that had been removed could not be replaced. There werebiological samples to be replaced and some to be destroyed. .. . Theair-tanks. .. . 

Maril came to the Med Ship again when he was almost ready to leave. Shedid not seem comfortable. 

"I wish you could like Korvan, " she said regretfully. 

"I don't dislike him, " said Calhoun. "I think he will be a mostprominent 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 attractiveto you, which is something I couldn't manage. "

"You didn't try, " said Maril. "Just as I didn't try to be fascinating toyou. Why?"

Calhoun spread out his hands. But he looked at Maril with respect. Notevery woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelledto make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do withdesirability 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. "He looks forward to splendiddiscoveries. I'm sorry it's so important to him. "

Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said thoughtfully;

"There's something you could do. .. . It needs to be done. The Med Servicein this sector has been badly handled. There are a numberof--discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan wouldrelish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter. But theyshould be known. .. . "

Maril said wrily;

"I can guess what you mean. I never went into detail about how theblueskin markings disappeared, but a few hints--You've got books forme?"

Calhoun nodded. He brought them to her. 

"If we only fell in love with each other, Maril, we'd be a team! Toobad! 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 neverknow, and he'll be a great man. " Then she added defensively, "And notjust from these books! He'll make his own wonderful discoveries. "

"Of which, " said Calhoun, "the most remarkable is you. Good luckMaril!"

 * * * * *

Presently the Med Ship lifted. Calhoun aimed it for the next planet onthe list of those he was to visit. After this one more he'd return tosector headquarters with a biting report to make on the way things hadbeen handled before him. He said;

"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"

Then the stars went out and there was silence, and privacy, and a faint, faint, almost unhearable series of background sounds which kept the MedShip from being totally unendurable. 

Long, long days later the ship broke out of overdrive and Calhoun guidedit to a round and sunlit world. In due time he thumped thecommunicator-button. 

"Calling ground, " he said crisply. "Calling ground! Med Ship AesclipusTwenty reporting arrival and asking coördinates for landing. Purpose oflanding, planetary health inspection. Our mass is fifty standard tons. "

There was a pause while the beamed message went many, many thousands ofmiles. Then the speaker said;

"_Aesclipus Twenty, repeat your identification!_"

Murgatroyd said;

"_Chee-chee? Chee?_"

Calhoun sighed. 

"That's right, Murgatroyd! Here we go again!"

THE END