"Very well," agreed Calhoun. "We'll all have some."
He made coffee. Murgatroyd sipped at the cup especially made for his
little paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had no
pain nerves. It itched. But he was perfectly content. Murgatroyd
would always be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.
Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and
with a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long
enough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to
Murgatroyd's heartbeat, while Murgatroyd dozed.
"Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, and
ninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four."
She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later, still not stirring
to disturb Murgatroyd, he had her write down another time and sequence
of figures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour later
still, a third set. But then he put Murgatroyd down, well satisfied.
He took his own temperature. He nodded.
"Murgatroyd and I have one more chore to do," he told her. "Would you
go in the other cabin for a moment?"
Disturbed, she went into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a small sample
of blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroyd
submitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhoun
had diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it up
thoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and white
corpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered that
Calhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of
antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would
assuredly take care of two patients.
But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of
those scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures
from store.
Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back.
"It was nothing," he explained, "but you might have felt
uncomfortable. We simply had a bit of Med Service routine that had to
be gone through. It's all right now."
He offered no further explanation. She said, "I'll fix lunch." She
hesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do you
want to--"
He shook his head.
"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service
fault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations until
everybody eats."
He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he
considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening
meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily.
He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated
game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of
probability increased one's chance of winning.
By midnight she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun
was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was
satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive off
Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the
other cabin.
Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made for
him, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood pressure after the injection of
the same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself and
later, without contact with him or the culture, in Maril. He put a
professional comment at the end:
_The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics
during long storage in the spore state. It received and reproduced
rapidly. I injected .5 cc. under my skin and in less than one hour
my temperature was 30.8° C. An hour later it was 30.9° C. This was
its peak. It immediately returned to normal. The only other
observable symptom was slightly increased thirst. Bloodpressure
and pulse remained normal. The other person in the Med Ship
displayed the same symptoms, in prompt and complete repetition,
without physical contact._
He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole, his tail
draped carefully over his nose.
The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship-time. Calhoun
made contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.
It was almost two hours later, at 1500 hours ship-time, when the
people of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was to be
executed immediately.
* * * * *
7
From the viewpoint of Darians, who were also blueskins, 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
semiskilled 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 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, 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, then 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 have seen 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 remaining 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 is
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 handfuls 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 ecstatically admiring
citizens of Dara. They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until
he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in
their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and
affection, 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 to
ground on the following day.
When 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 more
time, 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."
"How?"
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. "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! The last trip brought back two million bushels of
grain. You can certainly 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 CO_{2} froze out.
Then the air flowed over the liquefied oxygen at a rate to replace the
CO_{2} 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
airlock.
"_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, who crisply made
contact with the landing-grid office, and 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
reheating 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 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 ship 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 the 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.
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 toward. The guard ship would overhear. He could not
trust untried young men to act rationally if they were unaware 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!_"