Calhoun looked up.
"Yes?"
"I don't know exactly how things stand."
"You are a stowaway," said Calhoun. "Legally, I have the right to put
you out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. When
you're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well out
here. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat.
When we land on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business you
have there. That's all."
She stared at him.
"But you don't believe what I've told you!"
"No," agreed Calhoun, but didn't add to the statement.
"But--I will tell you," she offered. "The police were after me. I had
to get away from Weald! I had to! I'd stolen--"
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "If you were a thief, you'd say anything in the world
except that you were a thief. You're not ready to tell the truth yet.
You don't have to, so why tell me anything? I suggest that you get
some sleep. Incidentally, there's no lock on the cabin door because
there's only supposed to be one person on this ship at a time. But you
can brace a chair to fasten it somehow or other. Good night."
She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but then
she went into the other cabin and closed herself in. There was the
sound of a chair being wedged against the door.
Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and then
climbed up into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. He
settled himself and was silent for moments. Then he said, "_Chee!_"
"I believe you're right," said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald,
or with the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one place
she'd dread worse than Orede, which would be Dara. But I doubt she'd
be afraid to land even on Dara."
Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carried
on a conversation, like humans.
"_Chee-chee!_" he said with conviction.
"Definitely," agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personal
advantage. Whatever she thinks she'd doing, it's more important to her
than her own life. Murgatroyd...."
"_Chee?_" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone.
"There are wild cattle on Orede," said Calhoun. "Herds and herds of
them. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots of
them. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have been
slaughtered on Orede lately?"
Murgatroyd yawned. He settled himself still more comfortably in
Calhoun's lap.
"_Chee_," he said drowsily.
He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highly
condensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate of
increase, with other data, among herds of _bovis domesticus_ in a wild
state, on planets where there are no natural enemies.
It wasn't unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of
Terran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran
life-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems--very
much to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard
vegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise
alien worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.
They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of
men to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo ship which couldn't
possibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was
in overdrive.
Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, he
had calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose on
a suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens
or even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably
elapsed.
The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound
from without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at
all that it was not buried in the heart of a planet instead of
flashing through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.
Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in
the control room. Murgatroyd regarded her with great interest. Calhoun
nodded politely and went back to what he'd been doing before she
appeared.
"Shall I have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.
"Murgatroyd and I have," he told her. "Why not?"
Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a very
good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but
who was busy with activities remote from stowaways.