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--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 spacesuited 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 dryly. "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--irridium, 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° centigrade, and tungsten at 3370° and irridium at
2350°. 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 was infuriated: "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
186,000 miles per second in overdrive.
The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and
Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence, with only the
small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice.
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 practising, the Med Ship could
arrive at Dara in a 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 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 on in the
normal, non-overdrive universe. Suns flared, and comets hurtled on
their way, and clouds formed and dropped down rain, and all sorts of
celestial and meteorological phenomena took place. 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 would come 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 anticontagion suits made according to
Calhoun's directions, and they had them tested. They worked admirably.
On Dara, while Calhoun journeyed placidly 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 all that
happened on Dara....
No. There was something else. A very curious thing, too. There was a
spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease.
They lasted only a few hours. A person felt slightly feverish, and ran
a temperature which peaked at 30.9° 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 would 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 predicted any of these items in advance,
but it was unlikely that anyone did. Nobody but Calhoun, however,
would ever have put them together and hoped very urgently that 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 got mixed together.
He got back to Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted
her with enthusiasm.
"Something strange 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 markings again."
"Yes," said Calhoun. "I remember that you told me."
"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 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?"
"This is a long discussion," said Calhoun. "Does it arrive at a
point?"
"It does," said Maril. "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 how the ideas
got into his head 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.
* * * * *
8
There were small scout ships which came on ahead of the main fleet.
They'd originally been guard boats, intended for solar system duty
only and quite incapable of overdrive. They'd come from Weald in the
cargo holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. The
scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet,
of all they might see before they were shot down. They found the
landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship,
_Aesclipus Twenty_.
They searched here and there. They flittered to and fro, scanning wide
bands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways and
industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. It
looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former
grain ships which Calhoun had said the blueskins had seized and rushed
away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.
Dara offered no opposition to the ships. Nothing rose to space to
oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion
of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of
military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main
fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no
sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by
which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a
pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it
might be dangerous.
Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensive
movement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground.
With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, there
was something like an embarrassed pause. The Wealdian ships were ready
to bomb. They were less anxious to be vaporized by possible suicide
dashes of defending ships which might blow themselves up near contact
with their enemies.
But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a
mere threat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material
for total devastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or
thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the
world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make
a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products. And they could settle
down and kill every living thing not destroyed by the explosions
themselves. Even the creatures of the deepest oceans would die of
deadly, purposely-contrived fallout particles.
The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness. It found no
capacity for defense on Dara. It moved forward.
But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara. It said
that a ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space.
The Darian fleet now hurtled toward Weald. It was a fleet of
thirty-seven giant ships. They carried such-and-such bombs in
such-and-such quantities. Unless its orders were countermanded, it
would deliver those bombs on Weald, set to explode. If Weald bombed
Dara, the orders could not be withdrawn. So Weald could bomb Dara. It
could destroy all life on the pariah planet. But Weald would die with
it.
The fleet ceased its advance. The situation was a stalemate with pure
desperation on one side and pure frustration on the other. This was no
way to end the war. Neither planet could trust the other, even for
minutes. If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now was
possible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack at
some other moment. Ultimately one or the other must perish, and the
survivor would be the one most skilled in treachery.
But then the pariah planet made a new proposal. It would send a
messenger ship to stop its own fleet's bombardment if Weald would
accept payment of the grain ships and their cargos. It would pay in
ingots of irridium and uranium and tungsten, and gold if Weald wished
it, for all damages Weald might claim.
It would even pay indemnity for the miners of Orede, who had died by
accident but perhaps in some sense through its fault. It would pay.
But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomic fire and the fleet of
Weald would have no home planet to return to.
This proposal seemed both craven and foolish. It would allow the fleet
of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It
seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for
blueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender.
The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierce
resentment filled the pariah planet's people. There was almost
revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopeless and however
fatal. But not all of Dara realized that a vital change had come about
in the state of things on Dara. The enemy fleet had not a hint of it.
In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of
Dara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasing
arrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald came
heavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched
gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they
had been assured was theirs. The ship's outer hull would be sterilized
before it returned to Weald, of course. And there was adequate
protection for the landing-party.
Men came out of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparent
sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested,
and which were perfect protection against contagion. They were double
garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible
envelope.
Men wearing such sag-suits could walk about on Dara. They could work
on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must
remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they
would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled
around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra
assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would
burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ever
having come within two layers of plastic of infection.
What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before it
was returned to Weald. Metals could be melted, if necessary. Gems
could be sterilized. It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realize
that blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed. There was only
one bit of irrelevant information the space fleet of Weald did not
have.
That information was that the people of Dara weren't blueskins any
longer. There'd been a trivial epidemic....
The sag-suited men of Weald went zestfully about their business. They
took over the landing-grid's operation, driving the Darian operators
away. For the first time in history the operators of a landing-grid
wore make-up to look like they did have blue pigment in their skins.
They didn't. The Wealdian landing-party tested the grid's operation.
They brought down another giant ship. Then another. And another.
Parties in the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were the
huge stockpiles of precious metals, brought in readiness to be
surrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these into
the holds of the ships of Weald. Some went forthrightly after personal
loot.
They came upon very few Darians. Those they saw kept sullenly away
from them. They entered shops and took what they fancied. They
zestfully removed the treasure of banks.
Triumphant and scornful reports went up to the hovering great ships.
The blueskins, said the reports, were spiritless and cowardly. They
permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had
been observed that the population was streaming out of the city,
fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins
had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, but
there was more to be taken.
More ships came down, and more. Some of the first, heavily loaded,
were lifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of
their hulls began. There was jealousy among the ships in space for
those upon the ground. The first-landed ships had had their choice of
loot. There were squabblings about priorities, now that the navy of
Weald plainly had a license to steal. There was confusion among the
members of the landing-parties. Discipline disappeared. Men in plastic
sag-suits roved about as individuals, seeking what they might loot.
There were armed and alerted landing-parties around the grid itself,
of course, but the capital city of Dara lay open. Men coming back with
loot found their ships already lifted off to make room for others.
They were pushed into re-embarking-parties of other ships. There were
more and more men to be found on ships where they did not belong, and
more and more not to be found where they did.
By the time half the fleet had been aground, there was no longer any
pretense of holding a ship down until all its crew returned. There
were too many other ships' companies clamoring for their turn to loot.
The rosters of many ships, indeed, bore no particular relationship to
the men actually on board.
There were less than fifteen ships whose to-be-fumigated holds were
still emptied, when the watchful government of Dara broadcast a new
message to the invaders. It requested that the looting stop. No matter
what payment Weald claimed, it had taken payment five times over. Now
was time to stop.
It was amusing. The space admiral of Weald ordered his ships alerted
for action. The message ship, ordering the Darian fleet away from
Weald, had been sent off long since. No other ship could get away now!
The Darians could take their choice: accept the consequences of
surrender, or the fleet would rise to throw down bombs.
Calhoun was asking politely to be taken to the Wealdian admiral when
the trouble began. It wasn't on the ground, at all. Everything was
under splendid control where a landing force occupied the grid and all
the ground immediately about it. The space admiral had headquarters in
the landing-grid office. Reports came in, orders were issued,
admirably crisp salutes were exchanged among sag-suited men.
Everything was in perfect shape there.
But there was panic among the ships in space. Communicators gave off
horrified, panic-stricken yells. There were screamings. Intelligible
communications ceased. Ships plunged crazily this way and that. Some
vanished in overdrive. At least one plunged at full power into a
Darian ocean.
The space admiral found himself in command of fifteen ships only out
of all his former force. The rest of the fleet went through a period
of hysterical madness. In some ships it lasted for minutes only. In
others it went on for half an hour or more. Then they hung overhead,
but did not reply to calls.
Calhoun arrived at the spaceport with Murgatroyd riding on his
shoulder. A bewildered officer in a sag-suit halted him.
"I've come," said Calhoun, "to speak to the admiral. My name is
Calhoun and I'm Med Service, and I think I met the admiral at a
banquet a few weeks ago. He'll remember me."
"You'll have to wait," protested the officer. "There's some trouble--"
"Yes," said Calhoun. "I know about it. I helped design it. I want to
explain it to the admiral. He needs to know what's happened, if he's
to take appropriate measures."
There were jitterings. Many men in sag-suits had still no idea that
anything had gone wrong. Some appeared, brightly carrying loot. Some
hung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waiting
their turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of
their suits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic
and happy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich
they were going to be back on Weald.
But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. There
was strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdian
admiral.
"I came to explain something," said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situation
has changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure."
The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which covered
him almost like a gift-wrapped parcel.
"Be quick!" he rasped.
"First," said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins. An epidemic of
something or other has made the blue patches on the skins of Darians
fade out. There have always been some who didn't have blue patches.
Now nobody has them."
"Nonsense!" rasped the admiral. "And what has that got to do with this
situation?"
"Why, everything," said Calhoun mildly. "It seems that Darians can
pass for Wealdians whenever they please. That they _are_ passing for
Wealdians. That they've been mixing with your men, wearing sag-suits
exactly like the one you're wearing now. They've been going aboard
your ships in the confusion of returning looters. There's not a ship
now aloft, which has been aground today, which hasn't from one to
fifteen Darians--no longer blueskins--on board."
The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray.
"You can't take your fleet back to Weald," said Calhoun gently, "if
you believe its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara
plague. You wouldn't be allowed to land, anyhow."