From the viewpoint of Darians, the decision of Calhoun's guilt and the
decision to execute him were reasonable enough. Maril protested
fiercely, and her testimony agreed with Calhoun's in every respect, but
from a blueskin viewpoint their own statements were damning.
Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only
semi-skilled space-pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there
he had instructed them in modern guidance-methods for ships of space. So
far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more competent
pilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for example, to raid
the enormous cattle-herds there. And he'd had them drive the Med Ship to
Weald, against which there could be no objection.
But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them
drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd been
ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots off
separately--so he and Maril claimed--in huge ships crammed with grain.
But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow. Nobody on Dara could
imagine 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 for
the taking. They did know that the only four partially experienced
space-pilots on Dara had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent
out of the ship after they'd been drugged. Had they been trained, and
had they been helped or even permitted to sow the seeds of plague on
Weald, and had they come back prepared to pass on training to other men
to handle other space-ships now feverishly being built in hidden places
on Dara,--why--then Dara might have a chance of survival. But a
space-battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous at best.
With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So Calhoun, by his
own story, appeared to have doomed every living being on Dara to
massacre from the bombs of Weald.
It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing
in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun had
shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships and
could build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct them.
Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced spacemen to man
some ships fully and train the crews of others. If it had become
desperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life on
Dara would be delayed. Dara might have gained time at least to build
ships which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way.
But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Weald
already had a fleet of huge ships which only needed to be emptied of
grain and filled with guns and men--why--Dara was doomed. But if he did
not tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So Calhoun
would be killed.
His execution was to take place in the open space of the landing-grid,
with vision-cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin planet.
Half-starved men, with grisly blue blotches on their skins, marched him
to the center of the largest level space on the planet which was not
desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions.
Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would
have liked to see him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but
no conceivable death would be satisfying.
So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered to
him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the landing-grid
floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire upon him at the
same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be destroyed. He
would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon him.
* * * * *
His death was remarkably close. Nothing remained but the order to fire,
when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything. One of
the grain-ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its pilot was
triumphantly calling for landing-coordinates. The grid office relayed
his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to get it on the
communication system of the whole planet.
"_Calling ground_," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
student pilots Calhoun had trained. "_Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
captured ship requests coordinates for landing! Purpose of landing, to
deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!_"
At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to be
used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on its
second voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when it
threatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in the
sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the center of
the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where he was to
have been executed.
The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then did
Calhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the grid's
metal-lace wall.
The big ship touched ground, and its exit-port revolved and opened, and
the student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handsful of
grain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd,
then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoice
when Calhoun's living body exploded into flame.
They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the Med
Ship, nevertheless. He was surrounded by now-ecstatically admiring
citizens 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 the
following day.
Then Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the second
time. His tone and manner were very dry.
"Now," he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators to train. I
think it likely that we can raid the Wealdian grain-fleet one 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 be
sensible about this situation! After all, four shiploads of grain won't
break the famine! They'll help a lot, but they're only the beginning of
what's needed for a planetary population!"
"How much grain can we hope for?" demanded a man with a blue mark
covering all his chin.
Calhoun told him.
"How long before Weald can have a fleet overhead, dropping fusion
bombs?" demanded another, grimly.
Calhoun named a time. But then he said;
"I think we can keep them from dropping bombs if we can get the
grain-fleet and some capable astrogators."
"What do you have in mind?"
He told them. It was not possible to tell the whole story of what he
considered sensible behavior. An emotional program can be presented and
accepted immediately. A plan of action which is actually intelligent,
considering all elements of a situation, has to be accepted piecemeal.
Even so, the military men growled.
"We've plenty of heavy elements," said one, with one eye and half his
forehead colored blue. "If we'd used our brains, we'd have more bombs
than Weald can hope for! We could turn that whole planet into a smoking
cinder!"
"Which," said Calhoun acidly, "would give you some satisfaction but not
an ounce of food! And food's more important than satisfaction. Now, I'm
going to take off for Weald again. I'll want somebody to build an
emergency device for my ship, and I'll want the four pilots I've trained
and twenty more candidates. And I'd like to have some decent rations!
When the last trip brought back two million bushels of grain, you can
spare adequate food for twenty men for a few days!"
* * * * *
It took some time to get the special device constructed, but the Med
Ship lifted in two days more. The device for which it had waited was
simply a preventive of the disaster overtaking the ship from the mine on
Orede. It was essentially a tank of liquid oxygen, packed in the space
from which stores had been taken away. When the ship's air-supply was
pumped past it, first moisture and then CO2 froze out. Then the air
flowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the CO2 with more
useful breathing material. Then the moisture was restored to the air as
it warmed again. For so long as the oxygen lasted, fresh air for any
number of men could be kept purified and breathable. The Med Ship's
normal equipment could take care of no more than ten. But with this it
could journey to Weald with almost any complement on board.
Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protested
shrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closing
lock-door.
"_Chee!_" he said indignantly. "_Chee! Chee!_"
"No," said Calhoun, "we'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see her
later."
He nodded to one of the first four student pilots, and he crisply made
contact with the landing-grid office. He very efficiently supervised as
the grid took the ship up. The other three of the four first-trained men
explained every move to sub-classes assigned to each. Calhoun moved
about, listening and making certain that the instruction was up to
standard.
He felt queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution in
space. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside himself
crowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each other's
way. They trampled on each other. There was always somebody eating, and
always somebody sleeping, and there was no need whatever for the
background tape to keep the ship from being intolerably quiet. But the
air-system worked well enough, except once when the reheater unit quit
and the air inside the ship went down below freezing before the trouble
could be found and corrected.
The journey to Weald, this time, took seven days because of the training
program in effect. Calhoun bit his nails over the delay. But it was
necessary for each of the students to make his own line-ups on Weald's
sun, and compute distances, and for each of them to practise
maneuverings that would presently be called for. Calhoun hoped
desperately that preparations for active warfare--or massacre--did not
move fast on Weald. He believed, however, that in the absence of direct
news from Dara, Wealdian officials would take the normal course of
politicos. They had proclaimed the deathship from Orede an attack from
Dara. Therefore they would specialize on defensive measures before
plumping for offense. They'd get patrol-ships out to spot invasion ships
long before they worked on a fleet to destroy the blueskins. It would
meet the public demand for defense.
Calhoun was right. The Med Ship made its final approach to Weald under
Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his previous
journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly accurate,
because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading beyond two
decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough from the
Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its planets with
electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could aim for Weald
itself,--allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent motion of its
image because of the limited speed of light. He tried the briefest of
overdrive hops, and came out within the solar system and well inside any
watching patrol.
That was pure fortune. It continued. He'd broken through the screen of
guard-ships in undetectable overdrive. He was within half an hour's
solar-system drive of the grain-fleet. There was no alarm, at first. Of
course radars spotted the Med Ship as an object, but nobody paid
attention. It was not headed for Weald. It was probably assumed to be a
guard-boat itself. Such mistakes do happen. 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, each
escorting a less-accustomed neophyte and all fastened firmly together
with space-ropes. They warmed the interiors of four ships and went on to
others. Presently there were eight ships making ready for an
interstellar journey, each with a scared but resolute new pilot
familiarizing himself with its controls. There were sixteen ships.
Twenty. Twenty-three.
* * * * *
A guard-ship came humming out from Weald. It would be armed, of course.
It came droning, droning up the forty-odd thousand miles from the
planet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell them what
was happening. The guard-ship would overhear. He could not trust untried
young men to act rationally if they were unwarned and the guard-ship
arrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of them.
Then he was inspired. He called Murgatroyd, placed him before the
communicator, and set it at voice-only transmission. This was familiar
enough, to Murgatroyd. He'd often seen Calhoun use a communicator.
"_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd. "_Chee-chee!_"
A startled voice came out of the speaker.
"_What's that?_"
"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd zestfully.
The communicator was talking to him. Murgatroyd adored three things in
order. One was Calhoun. The second was coffee. The third was pretending
to converse like a human being. The speaker said explosively;
"_You there, identify yourself!_"
"_Chee-chee-chee-chee!_" observed Murgatroyd. He wriggled with pleasure
and added, reasonably enough, "_Chee!_"
The communicator bawled;
"_Calling ground! Calling ground! Listen to this! Something that ain't
human's talking at me on a communicator! Listen in an' tell me what to
do!_"
Murgatroyd interposed with another shrill;
"_Chee!_"
Then Calhoun pulled the Med Ship slowly away from the clump of
still-lifeless grain-ships. It was highly improbable that the guard-boat
would carry an electron telescope. Most likely it would have only an
echo-radar, and so could determine only that an object of some sort
moved of its own accord in space. Calhoun let the Med Ship accelerate.
That would be final evidence. The grain-ships were between Weald and its
sun. Even electron telescopes on the ground--and electron-telescopes
were ultimately optical telescopes with electronic amplification--even
electron telescopes on the ground could not get a good image of the ship
through sunlit atmosphere.
"_Chee?_" asked Murgatroyd solicitously. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"
"_Is it blueskins?_" shakily demanded the voice from the guard-boat.
"_Ground! Ground! Is it blueskins?_"
A heavy, authoritative voice came in with much greater volume.
"_That's no human voice_," it said harshly. "_Approach its ship and send
back an image. Don't fire first unless it heads for ground._"
The guard-ship swerved and headed for the Med Ship. It was still a very
long way off.
"_Chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd encouragingly.
Calhoun changed the Med Ship's course. The guard-ship changed course
too. Calhoun let it draw nearer,--but only a little. He led it away from
the fleet of grain-ships.
He swung his electron telescope on them. He saw a space-suited figure
outside one,--safely roped, however. It was easy to guess that someone
had meant to return to the Med Ship for orders or to make a report, and
found the Med Ship gone. He'd go back inside and turn on a communicator.
"_Chee!_" said Murgatroyd.
The heavy voice boomed;
"_You there! This is a human-occupied world! If you come in peace, cut
your drive and let our guard-ship approach!_"
Murgatroyd replied in an interested but doubtful tone. The booming voice
bellowed. Another voice of higher authority took over. Murgatroyd was
entranced that so many people wanted to talk to him. He made what for
him was practically an oration. The last voice spoke persuasively and
suavely.
"_Chee-chee-chee-chee_," said Murgatroyd.
One of the grain-ships flickered and ceased to be. It had gone into
overdrive. Another. And another. Suddenly they began to flick out of
sight by twos and threes.
"_Chee_," said Murgatroyd with a note of finality.
The last grain-ship vanished.
"Calling guard-ship," said Calhoun drily. "This is Med ship Aesclipus
Twenty. I called here a couple of weeks ago. You've been talking to my
_tormal_, Murgatroyd."
A pause. A blank pause. Then profanity of deep and savage intemperance.
"I've been on Dara," said Calhoun.
Dead silence fell.
"There's a famine there," said Calhoun deliberately. "So the grain-ships
you've had in orbit have been taken away by men from Dara--blueskins if
you like--to feed themselves and their families. They've been dying of
hunger and they don't like it."
There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suave
voice said waspishly;
"_Well? The Med Service will hear of your interference!_"
"Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself. I have a message for you.
Dara is ready to pay for every ounce of grain and for the ships it was
stored in. They'll pay in heavy metals,--iridium, uranium,--that sort of
thing."
The suave voice fairly curdled.
"_As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground
here!_"
"Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium melts
at 1150 deg. centigrade, and tungsten at 3370 deg. and iridium at 2350
deg. You could load such things and melt them down in space and then tow
them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful
materials!"
The suave voice 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's
perfectly practical for Wealdians to land on Dara, take whatever
property they think wise,--to pay for damage done by blueskins, of
course--and get back to Wealdian ships with absolutely no danger of
carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the recording's clear."
* * * * *
He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be
outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do
whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not use
the word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of
bringing back infection. He gave exact details. Then he said;
"My radar says you've four ships converging on me to blast me out of
space. I sign off."
The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that improbably
stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and in which
physical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the speed of
light in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet. It was too
high. For another, a ship could travel very many times 186000 miles per
second in overdrive.
The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and Murgatroyd
on board. There was companionable silence,--there were only the small
threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice, but which
it would have been intolerable to have stop.
Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had
twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the ship,
with never so much as one yard of space between himself and someone
else. One need not be snobbish to wish to be alone sometimes!
Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully.
"I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may
remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of
grain reaching them. Maybe--just possibly--they'll listen to me and act
sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not with
ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with bombs!"
Driving direct, without pausing for practisings, the Med Ship could
arrive at Dara in little more than five days. Calhoun looked forward to
relaxation. As a beginning he made ready to give himself an adequate
meal for the first time since first landing on Dara. Then, presently, he
sat down wrily to a double meal of Darian famine-rations, which were far
from appetizing. But there wasn't anything else on board.
* * * * *
He had some pleasure later, though, envisioning what went elsewhere. On
Weald, obviously, there would be purest panic. The vanishing of the
grain fleet wouldn't be charged against twenty-four men. A Darian fleet
would be suspected, and with the suspicion terror, and with terror a
governmental crisis. Then there'd be a frantic seizure of any craft that
could take to space, and the agitated improvisation of a space-fleet.
But besides that, biological-warfare technicians would examine Calhoun's
instructions for equipment by which armed men could be landed on a
plague-stricken planet and then safely taken off again. Military and
governmental officials would come to the eminently sane conclusion that
while Calhoun could not well take active measures against blueskins, as
a sane and proper citizen of the galaxy he would be on the side of law
and order and propriety and justice,--in short, of Weald. So they
ordered sample anti-contagion suits made according to Calhoun's
directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.
On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed back to it, grain was distributed
lavishly, and everybody on the planet had their cereal ration almost
doubled. It was still not a comfortable ration, but the relief was
great. There was considerable gratitude felt for Calhoun, which as usual
included a lively anticipation of further favors to come. Maril was
interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to discuss him, and she
did his reputation no harm. That was not all that happened on Dara ...
There was something else. Very curious thing, too. There was a curious
spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease. It
lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran a
temperature which peaked at 30.9 deg. centigrade, and drank more water
than usual. Then his temperature went back to normal and he forgot all
about it. There have always been such trivial epidemics. They are rarely
recorded, because few people think to go to a doctor. That was the case
here.
Calhoun looked ahead a little, too. Presently the fleet of grain-ships
would arrive and unload and lift again for Orede, and this time they
would make an infinity of slaughter among wild cattle-herds, and bring
back incredible quantities of fresh-slaughtered frozen beef. Almost
everybody would get to taste meat again, which would be most gratifying.
Then, the industries of Dara would labor at government-required tasks.
An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into
bombs--a concession by Calhoun--and plastic factories make an
astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy
metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there
would be some guns and minor items....
Perhaps somebody could have found out any of these items in advance, but
it was unlikely that anybody did. Nobody but Calhoun, however, would
ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that that was the
way things would work out. He could see a promising total result. In
fact, in the Med ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of his
journey he thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of
all those happenings when they were put together.
* * * * *
He landed on Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted her
with enthusiasm.
"Something unusual has happened," said Maril, very much subdued. "I told
you that--sometimes blueskin markings fade out on children, and then
neither they nor their children ever have blueskin markings again."
"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember."
"And you were reminded of a group of viruses on Tralee. You said they
only took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but then
they could be passed on from mother to child. Until--sometimes--they
died out."
Calhoun blinked.
"Yes...."
"Korvan," said Maril very carefully, "Has worked out an idea that that's
what happens to the blueskin markings on--us Darians. He thinks that
people almost dead of the plague could get the--virus, and if they
recovered from the plague pass the virus on and--be blueskins."
"Interesting," said Calhoun, noncommittally.
"And when we went to Weald," said Maril very carefully indeed, "you were
working with some culture-material. You wrote quite a lot about it in
the ship's log. You gave yourself an injection. Remember? And
Murgatroyd? You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd's?" She
moistened her lips. "You said that if infection passed between us,
something would be very infectious indeed?"
"What are you driving at?"
Maril continued slowly. "Th--thousands of people are having their
pigment-spots fade away. Not only children but grownups. And--Korvan has
found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they felt
feverish and very thirsty--and then felt all right again. You tried out
something that made you feverish and thirsty. I had it too, in the ship.
Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that--is
obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are
always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence of
one that's making 'blueskin' no longer a word with any meaning."
"Remarkable!" said Calhoun.
"Did you--do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic
that--wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?"
Calhoun said in feigned astonishment;
"How can you think such a thing, Maril?"
"Because I was there," said Maril. She said somehow desperately; "I know
you did it! But the question is--are you going to tell? When people find
they're not blueskins any longer--when there's no such thing as a
blueskin any longer--will you tell them why?"
"Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan--."
"He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself. He's
found the proof. He's--very proud. I'd have to tell him the truth if you
were going to tell. And he'd be ashamed and--angry."
Calhoun considered, staring at her.
"How it happened doesn't matter," he said at last. "The idea of anybody
doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too. It shouldn't get about.
So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover what's happened
to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened, but not why."
She read his face carefully.
"You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it
was that way."
She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded
and went away.
An hour later the Wealdian space-fleet was reported, massed in space and
driving for Dara.