IV

Calhoun was in very bad shape when the sports car came to the end of

the highway.

First, all the multiple roadways of the route that had brought him here

were joined by triple ribbons of road-surface from the north. For a

space there were twenty-four lanes available to traffic. They flowed

together, and then there were twelve. Here there was evidence of an

enormous traffic concentration at some time now past. Brush and small

trees were crushed and broken where cars had been forced to travel

off the hard-surface roadways and through undergrowth. The twelve

lanes dwindled to six, and the unpaved area on either side showed that

innumerable cars had been forced to travel off the highway altogether.

Then there were three lanes, and then two, and finally only a single

ribbon of pavement where no more than two cars could run side by side.

The devastation on either hand was astounding. All visible vegetation

for half a mile to right and left was crushed and tangled. And then the

narrow surfaced road ceased to be completely straight. It curved around

a hillock--and here the ground was no longer perfectly flat--and came

to an end.

And Calhoun saw all the ground-cars of the planet gathered and parked

together.

There were no buildings. There were no streets. There was nothing of

civilization but tens and scores of thousands of ground-cars. They were

extraordinary to look at, stopped at random, their fronts pointed in

all directions, their air-column tubes thrusting into the ground so

that there might be trouble getting them clear again.

Parked bumper to bumper in closely placed lines, in theory twenty-five

thousand cars could be parked on a square mile of ground. But there

were very many times that number of cars here, and some places were

unsuitable for parking, and there were lanes placed at random and

there'd been no special effort to put the maximum number of cars in

the smallest place. So the surface transportation system of the planet

Maya spread out over some fifty sprawling square miles. Here, cars were

crowded closely. There, there was much room between them. But it seemed

that as far as one could see in the twilight there were glistening

vehicles gathered confusedly, so there was nothing else to be seen but

an occasional large tree rising from among them.

Calhoun came to the end of the surfaced road. He'd waited for the

pellets he'd taken and given to Allison to have the effect they'd had

on Murgatroyd. That had come about. He'd driven on. But the strength of

the inductor field had increased to the intolerable. When he stopped

the sports car he showed the effects of what he'd been through.

Figures on foot converged upon him instantly. There were eager calls.

"It's stopped? You got through? We can go back?"

Calhoun shook his head. It was just past sunset and many brilliant

colorings showed in the western sky, but they couldn't put color into

Calhoun's face. His cheeks were grayish and his eyes were deep-sunk,

and he looked like someone in the last stages of exhaustion. He said

heavily:

"It's still there. We came through. I'm Med Service. Have you got a

government here? I need to talk to somebody who can give orders."

* * * * *

If he'd asked two days earlier there would have been no answer, because

the fugitives were only waiting for a disaster to come to an end. One

day earlier, he might have found men with authority busily trying to

arrange for drinking water for something like two millions of people,

in the entire absence of wells or pumps or ways of making either.

And if he'd been a day later, it is rather likely that he'd have

found savage disorder. But he arrived at sundown three days after the

flight from the cities. There was no food to speak of, and water was

drastically short, and the fugitives were only beginning to suspect

that they would never be able to leave this place--and that they might

die here.

Men left the growing crowd about the sports car to find individuals

who could give orders. Calhoun stayed in the car, resting from the

unbearable strain he'd undergone. The ground-inductor cattle fence

had been ten miles deep. One mile was not bad. Only Murgatroyd had

noticed it. After two miles Calhoun and Allison suffered; but the

medication strengthened them to take it. But there'd been a long, long

way in the center of the induction-field in which existence was pure

torment. Calhoun's muscles defied him for part of every two-second

cycle, and his heart and lungs seemed constantly about to give up even

the pretense of working. In that part of the cattle-fence field, he'd

hardly dared drive faster than a crawl, in order to keep control of

the car when his own body was uncontrollable. But presently the field

strength lessened and ultimately ended.

Now Murgatroyd looked cordially at the figures who clustered about

the car. He'd hardly suffered at all. He'd had half as much of the

medication as Calhoun himself, and his body weight was only a tenth

of Calhoun's. He'd made out all right. Now he looked expectantly at

what became a jammed mass of crowding men about the vehicle that had

come through the invisible barrier across the highway. They hoped

desperately for news to produce hope. But Murgatroyd waited zestfully

for somebody to welcome him and offer him cakes and sweets, and

undoubtedly presently a cup of coffee.

But nobody did.

It was a long time before there was a stirring at the edge of the

crowd. Night had fully fallen then, and for miles and miles in all

directions lights in the ground cars of Maya's inhabitants glowed

brightly. They drew upon broadcast power, naturally, for their motors

and their lights. Off to one side someone shouted. Calhoun turned on

his headlights for a guide. More shoutings. A knot of men struggled to

get through the crowd. With difficulty, presently, they reached the car.

"They say you got through," panted a tall man, "but you can't get back.

They say--"

Calhoun roused himself. Allison, beside him, stirred. The tall man

panted again:

"I'm the planetary president. What can we do?"

"First, listen," said Calhoun tiredly.

He'd had a little rest. Not much, but some. The actual work he'd done

in driving three hundred-odd miles from Maya City was trivial. But

the continuous, and lately violent, spasms of his heart and breathing

muscles had been exhausting. He heard Murgatroyd say ingratiatingly,

"_Chee-chee-chee-chee_," and put his hand on the little animal to quiet

him.

"The thing you ran away from," said Calhoun with effort, "is a type of

ground-induction field using broadcast power from the grid. It's used

on Texia to confine cattle to their pastures and to move them where

they're wanted to be. But it was designed for cattle. It's a cattle

fence. It could kill humans."

* * * * *

He went on, his voice gaining strength and steadiness as he spoke. He

explained, precisely, how a ground-induction field was projected in a

line at a right angle to its source. It could be moved by adjustments

of the apparatus by which it was projected.

"But--but if it uses broadcast power," the planetary president said

urgently, "then if the power broadcast is cut off it has to stop!

If you got through it coming here, tell us how to get through going

back and we'll cut off the power broadcast ourselves! We've got to

do something immediately. The whole planet's here. There's no food!

There's no water! Something has to be done before we begin to die!"

"But," said Calhoun, "if you cut off the power you'll die anyway!

You've got a couple of million people here, and you're a hundred miles

from food. Without power you couldn't get to food or bring it here. Cut

the power and you're still stranded here. Without power you'll die as

soon as with it."

There was a sound from the listening men around. It was partly a growl

and partly a groan.

"I've just found this out," said Calhoun. "I didn't know until the last

ten miles exactly what the situation was, and I had to come here to be

sure. Now I need some people to help me. It won't be pleasant. I may

have enough medication to get a dozen people back through. It'll be

safer if I take only six. Get a doctor to pick me six men. Good heart

action. Sound lungs. Two should be electronics engineers. The others

should be good shots. If you get them ready, I'll give them the same

stuff that got us through. It's desensitizing medication, but it will

do only so much. And try and find some weapons for them."

Voices murmured all around. Men hastily explained to other men what

Calhoun had said. The creeping disaster before which they'd all

fled,--it was not a natural catastrophe, but an artificial one! Men

had made it! They'd been herded here and their wives and children were

hungry because of something men had done!

A low-pitched, buzzing, humming sound came from the crowd about the

sports car. For the moment, nobody asked what could be the motive for

men to do what had been done. Pure fury filled the mob. Calhoun leaned

closer to Allison.

"I wouldn't get out of the car if I were you," he said in a low tone.

"I certainly wouldn't try to buy any real property at a low price!"

Allison shivered. There was a vast, vast stirring as the explanation

passed from man to man. Figures moved away in the darkness. Lighted

car windows winked as they moved through the obscurity. The population

of Maya was spread out over very many square miles of what had been

wilderness, and there was no elaborate communication system by which

information could be spread quickly. But long before dawn there'd be

nobody who didn't know that they'd fled from a man-made danger and were

held here like cattle, behind a cattle fence, apparently abandoned to

die.

* * * * *

Allison's teeth chattered. He was a business man and up to now he'd

thought as one. He'd made decisions in offices, with attorneys and

secretaries and clerks to make the decisions practical and safe,

without any concern for any consequences other than financial ones.

He saw possible consequences to himself, here and now. He'd landed on

Maya because he considered the matter too important to trust to anybody

else. Even riding with Calhoun on the way here, he'd only been elated

and astonished at the success of the intended coup. He'd raised his

aim. For a while he'd believed that he'd end as the sole proprietor

of the colony on Maya, with every plant growing for his profit, and

every factory earning money for him, and every inhabitant his employee.

It had been the most grandiose possible dream. The details and the

maneuvers needed to complete it flowed into his mind.

But now his teeth chattered. At ten words from Calhoun he would

literally be torn to pieces by the raging men about him. His attache

case with millions of credits in cash--it would be proof of whatever

Calhoun chose to say. Allison knew terror down to the bottom of his

soul. But he dared not move from Calhoun's side, even though a single

sentence in the calmest of voices would destroy him, and he'd never

faced actual, understood, physical danger before.

Presently men came, one by one, to take orders from Calhoun. They were

able-bodied and grim-faced men. Two were electronics engineers, as he'd

specified. One was a policeman. There were two mechanics and a doctor

who was also amateur tennis champion of the planet. Calhoun doled

out to them the pellets that reduced the sensitiveness of muscles to

externally applied stimuli. He gave instructions. They'd go as far into

the cattle fence as they could reasonably endure. Then they'd swallow

the pellets and let them act. Then they'd go on. His stock of pellets

was limited. He could give three to each man.

Murgatroyd squirmed disappointedly as this briefing went on. Obviously,

he wasn't to make a social success here. He was annoyed, and he needed

more space. Calhoun tossed Allison's attache case behind the seats.

Allison was too terrified to protest. It still did not increase the

space left on the front seat between Calhoun and Allison.

Four humming ground cars lifted eight inches off the ground and hovered

there on columns of rushing air. Calhoun took the lead. His headlights

moved down the single-lane road to which two joining twelve-lane

highways had shrunk. Behind him, other headlights moved into line.

Calhoun's car moved away into the darkness. The others followed.

Brilliant stars shone overhead. A cluster of thousands of suns, a

hundred light-years away, made a center of illumination that gave

Maya's night the quality of a vivid if diffused moonlight. The cars

went on. Presently Calhoun felt the twitchings of minor muscular

spasms. He was riding into the field which had been first devised for

purposes remote from the herding of cattle or humans, but applied to

the first use on the planet Texia, and now applied to the second here.

The road became two, and then four, and then eight lanes wide. Then

four lanes swirled off to one side, and the remaining four presently

doubled, and then widened again, and it was the twelve-lane turnpike

that had brought Calhoun here from Maya City.

* * * * *

But the rhythmic interference with his body grew stronger. Allison had

spoken not one single word while Calhoun conferred with the people of

Maya beyond the highway. His teeth chattered as they started back. He

didn't attempt to speak during the beginning of the ride through the

cattle-fence field. His teeth chattered, and stopped, and chattered

again, and at long last he panted despairingly:

"Are you going to let the thing kill me?"

Calhoun stopped. The cars behind him stopped. He gave Allison two

pellets and took two himself. With Murgatroyd insistently accompanying

him, he went along the cars which trailed him. He made sure the six men

he'd asked for took their pellets and that they had an adequate effect.

He went back to the sports car.

Allison whimpered a little when he and Murgatroyd got back in.

"I thought," said Calhoun conversationally, "that you might try to take

off by yourself, just now. It would solve a problem for me. Of course

it wouldn't solve any for you. But I don't think your problems have any

solution, now."

He started the car up again. It moved forward. The other cars trailed

dutifully. They went on through the starlit night. Calhoun noted that

the effect of the cattle fence was less than it had been before. The

first desensitizing pellets had not wholly lost their effect when he

added to it. But he kept his speed low until he was certain the other

drivers had endured the anguish of passing through the cattle-fence

field.

Presently he was confident that the cattle field was past. He sent his

car up to eighty miles an hour. The other cars followed faithfully. To

a hundred. They did not drop behind. The car hummed through the night

at top speed--a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty miles an hour.

The three other cars' headlights faithfully kept pace with him.

Allison, said desperately, "Look! I--don't understand what's happened.

You talk as if I'd planned all this. I--did have advance notice of a--a

research project here. But it shouldn't have held the people there for

days! Something went wrong! I only believed that people would want to

leave Maya. I'd only planned to buy as much acreage as I could, and

control of as many factories as possible. That's all! It was business!

Only business!"

Calhoun did not answer. Allison might be telling the truth. Some

businessmen would think it only intelligent to frighten people into

selling their holdings below true value. Something of the sort happened

every day in stock exchanges. But the people of Maya could have died!

For that matter, they still might. They couldn't return to their homes

and food so long as broadcast power kept the cattle-fence in existence.

But they could not return to their homes and food supplies if the power

broadcast was cut off, either.

Over all the night surface of the world of Maya there was light only

on one highway at one spot, and a multitude of smaller, lesser lights

where the people of Maya waited to find out whether they would live or

die.

V

Calhoun considered coldly. They were beyond what had been the

farthest small city on the multiple highway. They would go on past

now-starlit fields of plants native to Maya, passing many places where

trucks loaded with the plants climbed up to the roadway and headed

for the factories which made use of them. The fields ran for scores

of miles along the highway's length. They reached out beyond the

horizon,--perhaps scores of miles in that direction, too. There were

thousands upon thousands of square miles devoted to the growing of the

dark-green vegetation which supplied the raw materials for Maya's space

exports. Some hundred-odd miles ahead, the small town of Tenochitlan

lay huddled in the light of the distant star-cluster. Beyond that, more

highway and Maya City. Beyond that--

Calhoun reasoned that the projector to make the induction cattle fence

would be beyond Maya City, somewhere in the mountains the photograph

in the spaceport building showed. A large highway went into those

mountains for a limited distance only.

A ground-inductor projector field always formed at a right angle to

the projector which was its source. It could be adjusted--the process

was analogous to focusing--to come into actual being at any distance

desired, and the distance could be changed. To drive the people of

Maya City eastward, the projector of a cattle fence--about which

they would know nothing; it would be totally strange and completely

mysterious--the projector of the cattle fence would need to be west of

the people to be driven. Logically, it would belong in the mountains.

Practically, it would be concealed. Drawing on broadcast power to do

its work, there would be no large power source needed to give it the

six million kilowatts it required. It should be quite easy to hide

beyond any quick or easy discovery. Hunting it out might require weeks

of searching.

But the people beyond the end of the highway couldn't wait. They had

no food, and holes scrabbled down to ground-water by men digging with

their bare hands simply would not be adequate. The cattle fence had

to be cut off immediately--while the broadcast of power had to be

continued.

Calhoun made an abrupt grunting noise. Phrasing the thing that needed

to be done was practically a blueprint of how to do it. Simple! He'd

need the two electronics engineers, of course. But that would be the

trick....

He drove on at a hundred thirty miles an hour with his lips set wrily.

The three other cars came behind him. Murgatroyd watched the way ahead.

Mile after mile, half-minute after half-minute, the headlights cast

brilliantly blinding beams before the cars. Murgatroyd grew bored. He

said, "_Chee!_" in a discontented fashion and tried to curl up between

Allison and Calhoun. There wasn't room. He crawled over the seat-back.

He moved about, back there. There were rustling sounds. He settled

down. Presently there was silence. Undoubtedly he had draped his furry

tail across his nose and gone soundly off to sleep.

Allison spoke suddenly. He'd had time to think, but he had no practice

in various ways of thinking.

"How much money have you got?" he asked.

"Not much," said Calhoun. "Why?"

"I--haven't done anything illegal," said Allison, with an unconvincing

air of confidence, "but I could be put to some inconvenience if you

were to accuse me before others of what you've accused me personally.

You seem to think that I planned a criminal act. That the action I know

of--the research project I'd heard of--that it became--that it got out

of hand is likely. But I am entirely in the clear. I did nothing in

which I did not have the advice of counsel. I am legally unassailable.

My lawyers--"

* * * * *

"That's none of my business," Calhoun told him. "I'm a medical man.

I landed here in the middle of what seemed to be a serious public

health situation. I went to see what had happened. I've found out. I

still haven't the answer,--not the whole answer anyway. But the human

population of Maya is in a state of some privation, not to say danger.

I hope to end it. But I've nothing to do with anybody's guilt or

innocence of crime or criminal intent or anything else."

Allison swallowed. Then he said with smooth confidence:

"But you could cause me inconvenience. I would appreciate it if you

would--would--"

"Cover up what you've done?" asked Calhoun.

"No! I've done nothing wrong. But you could simply use discretion. I

landed by parachute to complete some business deals I'd arranged months

ago. I will go through with them. I will leave on the next ship.

That's perfectly open and above board. Strictly business. But you could

make a--an unpleasing public image of me. Yet I have done nothing any

other business man wouldn't do! I did happen to know of a research

project--"

"I think," said Calhoun without heat, "that you sent men here with a

cattle-fence device from Texia to frighten the people on Maya. They

wouldn't know what was going on. They'd be scared; they'd want to get

away. So you'd be able to buy up practically all the colony for the

equivalent of peanuts. I can't prove that," he conceded, "but that's my

opinion. But you want me not to state it. Is that right?"

"Exactly!" said Allison. He'd been shaken to the core, but he managed

the tone and the air of a dignified man of business discussing an

unpleasant subject with fine candor. "I assure you you are mistaken.

You agree that you can't prove your suspicions. If you can't prove

them, you shouldn't state them. That is simple ethics. You agree to

that!"

Calhoun looked at him curiously.

"Are you waiting for me to tell you my price?"

"I'm waiting," said Allison reprovingly, "for you to agree not to cause

me embarrassment. I won't be ungrateful. After all, I'm a person of

some influence. I could do a great deal to your benefit. I'd be glad--"

"Are you working around to guess at a price I'll take?" asked Calhoun

with the same air of curiosity.

He seemed much more curious than indignant, and much more amused

than curious. Allison sweated suddenly. Calhoun didn't appear to be

bribable. But Allison knew desperation.

"If you want to put it that way--yes," he said harshly. "You can name

your own figure. I mean it!"

"I won't say a word about you," said Calhoun. "I won't need to. The

characters who're operating your cattle fence will do all the talking

that's necessary. Things all fit together,--except for one item.

They've been dropping into place all the while we've been driving down

this road."

"I said you can name your own figure!" Allison's voice was shrill. "I

mean it! Any figure! Any!"

Calhoun shrugged.

"What would a Med Ship man do with money? Forget it!"

He drove on. The highway turnoff to Tenochitlan appeared. Calhoun went

steadily past it. The other connection with the road through the town

appeared. He left it behind.

Allison's teeth chattered again.

The buildings of Maya City began to appear, some twenty minutes later.

Calhoun slowed and the other cars closed up. He opened a window and

called:

"We want to go to the landing-grid first. Somebody lead the way!"

A car went past and guided the rest assuredly to a ramp down from the

now-elevated road, and through utterly dark streets, of which some were

narrow and winding, and came out abruptly where the landing-grid rose

skyward. At the bottom its massive girders looked huge and cyclopean in

the starlight, but the higher courses looked like silver lace against

the stars.

* * * * *

They went to the control building. Calhoun got out. Murgatroyd hopped

out after him, dust clinging to his fur. He shook himself, and a

ten-thousand-credit interstellar credit certificate fell to the ground.

Murgatroyd had made a soft place for sleeping out of the contents of

Allison's attache case. It was assuredly the most expensive if not the

most comfortable sleeping cushion a _tormal_ ever had. Allison sat

still as if numbed. He did not even pick up the certificate.

"I need you two electronics men," said Calhoun. Then he said

apologetically to the others, "I only figured out something on the way

here. I'd believed we might have to take some drastic action, come

daybreak. But now I doubt it. I do suggest, though, that you turn off

the car headlights and get set to do some shooting if anybody turns up.

I don't know whether they will or not."

He led the way inside. He turned on lights. He went to the place where

dials showed the amount of power actually being used of the enormous

amount available. Those dials now showed an extremely small power

drain, considering that the cities of a planet depended on the grid.

But the cities were dark and empty of people. The demand needle wavered

back and forth, rhythmically. Every two seconds the demand for power

went up by six million kilowatts, approximately. The demand lasted for

half a second, and stopped. For a second and a half the power in use

was reduced by six million kilowatts. During this period only automatic

pumps and ventilators and freezing equipment drew on the broadcast

power for energy. Then the six-million-kilowatt demand came again for

half a second.

"The cattle fence," said Calhoun, "works for half a second out of every

two seconds. It's intermittent or it would simply paralyze animals

that wandered into it. Or people. Being intermittent, it drives them

out instead. There'll be tools and parts for equipment here, in case

something needs repair. I want you to make something new."

The two electronics technicians asked questions.

"We need," said Calhoun, "an interruptor that will cut off the power

broadcast for the half-second the ground-induction field is supposed

to be on. Then it should turn on the broadcast power for the second

and a half the cattle fence is supposed to be off. That will stop the

cattle-fence effect, and I think a ground car should be able to work

with power that's available for three half-seconds out of four."

The electronics men blinked at him. Then they grinned and set to work.

Calhoun went exploring. He found a lunch box in a desk with three very

stale sandwiches in it. He offered them around.

It appeared that nobody wanted to eat while their families--at the end

of the highway--were still hungry.

The electronics men called on the two mechanics to help build

something. They explained absorbedly to Calhoun that they were making

a cutoff which would adjust to any sudden six-million-kilowatt demand,

no matter what time interval was involved. A change in the tempo of the

cattle-fence cycle wouldn't bring it back on.

"That's fine!" said Calhoun. "I wouldn't have thought of that!"

He bit into a stale sandwich and went outside. Allison sat limply,

despairingly, in his seat in the car.

"The cattle fence is going off," said Calhoun without triumph. "The

people of the city will probably begin to get here around sunrise."

"I--I did nothing legally wrong!" said Allison, dry-throated. "Nothing!

They'd have to prove that I knew what the--consequences of the research

project would be. That couldn't be proved! It couldn't! So I've done

nothing legally wrong...."

Calhoun went inside, observing that the doctor who was also tennis

champion, and the policeman who'd come to help him, were keeping keen

eyes on the city and the foundations of the grid and all other places

from which trouble might come.

There was a fine atmosphere of achievement in the power-control

room. The power itself did not pass through these instruments, but

relays here controlled buried massive conductors which supplied the

world with power. And one of the relays had been modified. When the

cattle-fence projector closed its circuit, the power went off. When

the ground-inductor went off, the power went on. There was no longer

a barrier across the highways leading to the east. It was more than

probable that ground cars could run on current supplied for one and a

half seconds out of every two. They might run jerkily, but they would

run.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, the amount of power drawn from the broadcast began

to rise smoothly and gradually. It could mean only that cars were

beginning to move.

Forty-five minutes later still, Calhoun heard stirrings outside. He

went out. The two men on guard gazed off into the city. Something moved

there. It was a ground-car, running slowly and without lights. Calhoun

said undisturbedly:

"Whoever was running the cattle fence found out their gadget wasn't

working. Their lights flickered, too. They came to see what was the

matter at the landing-grid. But they've seen the lighted windows. Got

your blasters handy?"

But the unlighted car turned and raced away. Calhoun only shrugged.

"They haven't a prayer," he said. "We'll take over their apparatus

as soon as it's light. It'll be too big to destroy, and there'll be

fingerprints and such to identify them as the men who ran it. And

they're not natives. When the police start to look for the strangers

who were living where the cattle-fence projector was set up.... They

can go into the jungles where there's nothing to eat, or they can give

themselves up."

He moved toward the door of the control building once more. Allison

said desperately:

"They'll have hidden their equipment. You'll never be able to find it!"

Calhoun shook his head in the starlight.

"Anything that can fly can spot it in minutes. Even on the ground

one can walk almost straight to it. You see, something happened they

didn't count on. That's why they've left it turned on at full power.

The earlier, teasing uses of the cattle fence were low-power. Annoying,

to start with, and uncomfortable the second time, and maybe somewhat

painful the third. But the last time it was full power."

He shrugged. He didn't feel like a long oration. But it was obvious.

Something had killed the plants of a certain genus of which small

species were weeds that destroyed Earth-type grasses. The ground-cover

plants--and the larger ones, like the one Calhoun had seen decaying

in a florist's shop which had had to be grown in a cage--the

ground-cover plants had motile stems and leaves and blossoms. They

were cannibals. They could move their stems to reach, and their

leaves to enclose, and their flowers to devour other plants, even

perhaps small animals. The point, though, was that they had some

limited power of motion. Earth-style sensitive vines and flycatcher

plants had primitive muscular tissues. The local ground-cover plants

had them too. And the cattle-fence field made those tissues contract

spasmodically. Powerfully. Violently. Repeatedly. Until they died of

exhaustion. The full-power cattle-fence field had exterminated Mayan

ground-cover plants all the way to the end of the east-bound highway.

And inevitably--and very conveniently--also up to the exact spot where

the cattle-fence field had begun to be projected. There would be an

arrow-shaped narrowing of the wiped-out ground-cover plants where the

cattle-field had been projected. It would narrow to a point which

pointed precisely to the cattle-fence projector.

"Your friends," said Calhoun, "will probably give themselves up and ask

for mercy. There's not much else they can do."

Then he said:

"They might even get it. D'you know, there's an interesting side effect

of the cattle fence. It kills the plants that have kept Earth-type

grasses from growing here. Wheat can be grown here now, whenever and

as much as the people please. It should make this a pretty prosperous

planet, not having to import all its bread."

* * * * *

The ground cars of the inhabitants of Maya City did begin to arrive at

sunrise. Within an hour after daybreak, very savagely intent persons

found the projector and turned it off.

By noon there was still some anger on the faces of the people of Maya,

but there'd been little or no damage, and life took up its normal

course again. Murgatroyd appreciated the fact that things went back to

normal. For him it was normal to be welcomed and petted when the Med

Ship _Esclipus Twenty_ touched ground. It was normal for him to move

zestfully in admiring human society, and to drink coffee with great

gusto.

And while Murgatroyd moved in human society, enjoying himself hugely,

Calhoun went about his business. Which, of course, was conferences with

planetary health officials, politely receiving such information as they

thought important, and tactfully telling them about the most recent

developments in medical science.

What else was a Med Ship man for?