"Intuition," said Calhoun dryly. "All right. I'll count on him."
But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day
and all the next. The girl was very quiet. Murgatroyd tried to enter
into pretended conversation with her, but she was not able to match
his pretense.
On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached. While the
ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look
forward with confidence to the future. But when contact and, in a
fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer,
prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but
there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.
Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.
"I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out. If
I can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow my
advice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideas
it probably will get; and isn't doing what I suspect it is--why,
maybe something can be done."
"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock. There was no sensation
attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. It
was now time for the end. He might find most anything having happened.
His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could have
sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of
desperation....
As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly a
light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhoun
went into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of
the blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it.
He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for
coordinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There was
confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not
ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the
ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward.
Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each
other, until the ship actually touched ground.
Then he opened the exit port--and faced armed men in the darkness,
with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained
on the Med Ship itself.
"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Your
ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"
* * * * *
5
It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were
emaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the
ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung
loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their
cheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotches
of pigment of which Calhoun had heard.
The man nearest the Med Ship's port had a monstrous, irregular
dull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon his
forehead. The man next to him had a blue throat. The next man again
was less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed a
splashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.
The leader of the truculent group--it might have been a firing
squad--made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, except
for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter than
white.
"Out!" said that man savagely. "We're taking over your stock of food.
You'll get your share of it, like everybody else, but--"
Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence or
two. It should have amounted to identification but there was
skepticism in the armed party.
"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard leader sardonically.
"You'll have a chance to prove that. Come out of there!"
Calhoun spoke abruptly, "This is a Med Ship," he said. "There are
medicines and bacterial culture inside it. They shouldn't be meddled
with. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"
The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before, "I said the
government was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you're
not taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you're
leaving!"
"And I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We've
just come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as he
named Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping
fusion-bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the
authority to take a few sensible precautions!"
He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "_Chee! Chee!_" from
behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling
apprehensively to his neck.
"What's that?"
"A _tormal_" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know
something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and
he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and he
stays with me!"
The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to
ask you questions. Here!"
A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid
enclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used
on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.
"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you
want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"
The groundcar was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from
the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior
and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of
the grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It picked
up speed.
There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed
lights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set a
pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not
seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair.
The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds,
and the groundcar needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a
paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other
depressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up to
perfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleaned
lately, litter here and there.
Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling of
wretchedness and gloom and, ultimately, of hunger.
Maril spoke nervously to the driver.
"The famine isn't any better?"
He moved his head in negation, but did not speak. There was a splotch
of blue pigment at the back of his neck. It extended upward into his
hair.
"I left two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then.
Rationing hadn't started."