"They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would do
something monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stop
it by being more monstrous sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there are
enough. So they want to use your ship--it's faster in overdrive and so
on. And they'll go to Weald in this ship and--they say they'll give
Weald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"
Calhoun said dryly, "This pays me off for being too sympathetic with
blueskins! But if I'd been hungry for a couple of years, and was
despised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I might
react the same way. No," he said curtly as she opened her lips to
speak again, "don't tell me the trick. Considering everything, there's
only one trick it could be. But I doubt profoundly that it would work.
All right."
He slid the door back and returned to the control room. Maril followed
him. He said detachedly, "I've been working on a problem outside of
the food one. It isn't the time to talk about it right now, but I
think I've solved it."
Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmac
outside 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 the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had
built to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said their
self-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot their
destination. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They needed
instruction.
Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. They
were, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement was
a patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a blue
birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. A
third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a
dull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.
"We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board and
learn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we've
got."
"I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we
go along.... Those boxes?"
Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the four
very carefully brought them inside.
"They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywhere
without rations, except Orede."
"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," said
Calhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"
"Yes," said the young man.
He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhoun
shrugged.
"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there's
the 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, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He
went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him.
"Hold it!"
He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at the
control board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the
doors.
The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found
occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a
training voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskin
pilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoun
grew stern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald.
The young men glanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. He
made the acting pilot look up the intrinsic brightness of its sun and
measure its apparent brightness from just off Dara. He made him
estimate the change in brightness to be expected after so many hours
in overdrive, if one broke out to measure.
The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour of
duty with more respect for Calhoun then he'd had at the beginning. The
second was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilled
him in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparent
brightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated with
angular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearer
heavens.
It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out on Dara,
and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and other fine
points of space-piloting. They'd done enough, in a few trips to Orede,
to realize that they needed to know more. Calhoun showed them.
Calhoun did not try to make things easy for them. He was hungry and
easily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and to
phrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in
command of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use
Weald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship
came out of overdrive pointing in an unknown direction and with a
precessory motion.
He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestial
globe containing hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course in
overdrive toward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute the
distance to Weald from such data as he could get from observation,
without reference to any records.
By this time the first man was chafing to take a second turn. Calhoun
gave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, a
highly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space.
His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least
one breakout from overdrive in each watch.
He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of being
hungry--though there had been no reason for them to stint on food on
Orede--in growing pride in what they came to know.
When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highly
qualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better
spacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward
Calhoun was respectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young,
the combination is impressive.
Maril had served as passenger only. In theory she was to compare
Calhoun's lessons with his practise when alone. But he did nothing on
this journey which, teaching considered, was different from the two
interstellar journeys Maril had made with him.
She occupied the sleeping cabin during two of the six watches of each
ship-day. She operated the food-readier, which was almost completely
emptied of its original store of food, it having been confiscated by
the government of Dara. That amount of food would make no difference
to the planet, but it was wise for everyone on Dara to be equally
ill-fed.
On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude of
minus five-tenths. The electron telescope could detect its larger
planets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo.
Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing
out the difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med
Ship were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc.
"And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduate
you as pilots. Maril, four cups of coffee, please."
Murgatroyd said "_Chee?_" The Med Ship was badly crowded with six
humans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroyd
alone. The little _tormal_ had spent most of his time in his
cubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about on
what had been a spacious ship before.
"No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "You didn't do your
lessons. This is for the graduating class only."
Murgatroyd came out of his miniature den. He found his little cup and
offered it insistently, saying, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
"No!" said Calhoun firmly. He regarded his class of four young men
with their blueskin markings. "Drink it down!" he commanded. "That's
the last order I'll give you. You're graduate pilots, now!"
They drank the coffee with a flourish. There was not one who did not
admire Calhoun for having made them admire themselves. They were,
actually, almost as much better pilots as they believed.
"And now," said Calhoun, "I suppose you'll tell me the truth about
those boxes you brought on board. You said they were rations, but
they haven't been opened in six days. I have an idea what they mean,
but you tell me."
The four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause.
"They could be," said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped on
Weald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has
decided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother
with you. Is that right?"
The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
in emptiness.
"Well, 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
little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"
"But--"
"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
do anything of the kind."
One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and
he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and
reproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"
He collapsed.
Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
throat. Murgatroyd looked agitated. He said anxiously, "_Chee? Chee?_"
"No," said Calhoun. "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 want
to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the
way. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while a
fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable
Cepheids of known period."
He put the four boxes carefully in the disposal unit. He operated it.
The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of
metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control desk.
"I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate in
the spread of plagues, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be
another matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald
busy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some
food for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is thousands of
tons, or tens of thousands." Then he said, "Overdrive coming,
Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"
The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied
the change. Murgatroyd burped.
* * * * *
6
A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright
half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had icecaps at its
poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had
that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas
which was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free,
and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to
man.
There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a
sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,
still bound hand and foot upon the control room floor. Murgatroyd
regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry
forehead wrinkled helplessly.
"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as
his search had no result. "They can't! It would be too sensible for
them to have done it!"
Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a subdued voice.
"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar
orbit would be ridiculous! They--" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of
course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian
landing-grid, which was mapped in the Sector Directory, against the
look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible
outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar system
drive.
"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the
first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in
space, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit
and at what distance will you put it?"
Maril did not answer.
"Obviously," said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from the
landing-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it on
the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the
way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night
without having to calculate anything.
"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in
exactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above the
equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on
the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude 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 pushed
the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The
sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.
Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once
more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating
satisfaction.
He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,
handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said
depressedly, "_Chee!_"
"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, and
there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody
bumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we do
want to bump, but gently."
Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something dark
appeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril,
despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly
larger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Ship
maneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. A
fourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.
They were spaceships, huge by comparison with _Aesclipus Twenty_. They
floated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not in
formation. They were not at even distances from each other. They did
not point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like
derelicts.
Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there
came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance
out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med
Ship was 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 moving smoothly," he commented. "We weren't challenged. So
it's extremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor
ought to begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now
whether I'm a hero or in sure-enough trouble!"