I.

“... No man can be fully efficient if he expects praise or

appreciation for what he does. The uncertainty of this reward, as

experienced, leads to modification of one’s actions to increase its

probability.... If a man permits himself the purpose of securing

admiration, he tends to make that purpose primary and the doing of

his proper work secondary. This costs human lives....”

_Manual, Interstellar Medical Service._ Pp. 17-18.

The little Med ship seemed absolutely motionless when the hour-off

warning whirred. Then it continued to seem motionless. The

background-noise tapes went on, making the small, unrelated sounds that

exist unnoticed in all the places where human beings dwell, but which

have to be provided in a ship in overdrive so a man don’t go ship-happy

from the dead stillness. The hour-off warning was notice of a change in

the shape of things.

Calhoun put aside his book--the manual of the Med Service--and yawned.

He got up from his bunk to tidy ship. Murgatroyd, the _tormal_, opened

his eyes and regarded him drowsily, without uncoiling his furry tail

from about his nose.

“I wish,” said Calhoun critically, “that I could act with your

realistic appraisal of facts, Murgatroyd! This is a case of no

importance whatever, and you treat it as such, while I fume whenever

I think of its futility. We are a token mission, Murgatroyd,--a

politeness of the Med Service, which has to respond to hysterical

summonses as well as sensible ones. Our time is thrown away!”

Murgatroyd blinked somnolently. Calhoun grinned wryly at him. The

Med ship was a fifty-ton space-vessel--very small indeed, in these

days--with a crew consisting exclusively of Calhoun and Murgatroyd

the _tormal_. It was one of those little ships the Med Service tries

to have call at every colonized planet at least once in four or five

years. The idea is to make sure that all new developments in public

health and individual medicine will spread as widely and as fast as can

be managed. There were larger Med craft to handle dangerous situations

and emergencies of novel form. But all Med ships were expected to

handle everything possible, if only because space travel consumed such

quantities of time.

This particular journey, for example: An emergency message had come

to Sector Headquarters from the planetary government of Phaedra II.

Carried on a commercial vessel in overdrive at many times the speed

of light, it had taken three months to reach Headquarters. And the

emergency in which it asked aid was absurd. There was, said the

message, a state of war between Phaedra II and Canis III. Military

action against Canis III would begin very shortly. Med Service aid for

injured and ill would be needed. It was therefore requested at once.

The bare idea of war, naturally, was ridiculous. There could not be war

between planets. Worlds communicated with each other by spaceships, to

be sure, but the Lawlor interplanetary drive would not work save in

unstressed space, and of course overdrive was equally inoperable in a

planet’s gravitational field. So a ship setting out for the stars had

to be lifted not less than five planetary diameters from the ground

before it could turn on any drive of its own. Similarly, it had to be

lowered an equal distance to a landing after its drive became unusable.

Space travel was practical only because there were landing-grids--those

huge structures of steel which used the power of a planet’s ionosphere

to generate the force-fields for the docking and launching of ships of

space. Hence landing-grids were necessary for landings. And no world

would land a hostile ship upon its surface. But a landing-grid could

launch bombs or missiles as well as ships, and hence could defend its

planet, absolutely. So there could be no attacks and there could be

defense, so wars could not be fought.

“The whole thing’s nonsense,” said Calhoun. “We’ll get there, and we’ve

been three months on the way and the situation is six months old and

either it’s all been compromised or it’s long forgotten and nobody will

like being reminded of it. And we’ve wasted our time and talents on a

thankless job that doesn’t exist, and couldn’t! The universe has fallen

on evil days, Murgatroyd! And we are the victims!”

Murgatroyd leisurely uncurled his tail from about his nose. When

Calhoun talked at such length, it meant sociability. Murgatroyd got

up, and stretched, and said, “_Chee!_” He waited. If Calhoun really

meant to go in for conversation, Murgatroyd would join in. He adored

pretending that he was a human. He and his kind imitated human actions

as parrots imitated human speech. Murgatroyd frisked a little, to show

his readiness for talk.

“_Chee-chee-chee!_” he said conversationally.

“I notice that we agree,” said Calhoun. “Let’s clean up.”

He began those small items of housekeeping which one neglects when

nothing can happen for a long time ahead. Books back in place. Files

restored to order. The special-data reels Calhoun had been required to

study. Calhoun made all neat and orderly against landing and possible

visitors.

* * * * *

Presently the breakout clock indicated twenty-five minutes more

in overdrive. Calhoun yawned again. As an interstellar service

organization, the Med Service sometimes had to do rather foolish

things. Governments run by politicians required them. Yet Med Service

representatives always had to be well-informed on problems which

appeared. During this journey Calhoun had been ordered to read up on

the ancient insanity once called the art of war. He didn’t like what

he’d learned about the doings of his ancestors. He reflected that it

was lucky that such things couldn’t happen anymore. He yawned again.

He was strapped in the control-chair a good ten minutes before the ship

was due to return to a normal state of things. He allowed himself the

luxury of still another yawn. He waited.

The warning tape whirred a second time. A voice said, “_When the

gong sounds, breakout will be five seconds off._” There was a heavy,

rhythmic tick-tocking. It went on and on. Then the gong and a voice

said: “_Five--four--three--t--_”

It did not complete the count. There was a tearing, rending noise and

the spitting of an arc. There was the smell of ozone. The Med ship

bucked like a plunging horse. It came out of overdrive two seconds

ahead of time. The automatic, emergency-rockets roared and it plunged

this way and changed course violently and plunged that, and seemed to

fight desperately against something that frustrated every maneuver

it tried. Calhoun’s hair stood on end until he realized that the

external-field indicator showed a terrific artificial force-field

gripping the ship. He cut off the rockets as their jerkings tried to

tear him out of his chair.

There was stillness. Calhoun rasped into the spacephone:

“What’s going on? This is Med Ship _Esclipus Twenty_! This is a neutral

vessel!” The term “neutral vessel” was new in Calhoun’s vocabulary.

He’d learned it while studying the manners and customs of war in

overdrive. “Cut off those force-fields!”

Murgatroyd shrilled indignantly. Some erratic movement of the ship had

flung him into Calhoun’s bunk, where he’d held fast to a blanket with

all four paws. Then another wild jerking threw him and the blanket

together into a corner, where he fought to get clear, chattering

bitterly the while.

“We’re noncombatants!” snapped Calhoun--another new term.

A voice growled out of the spacephone speaker.

“_Set up for light-beam communication_,” it said heavily. “_In the

meantime keep silence._”

Calhoun snorted. But a Med ship was not an armed vessel. There were no

armed vessels nowadays. Not in the normal course of events. But vessels

of some sort had been on the watch for a ship coming to this particular

place.

He thought of the word “blockade”--another part of his education in the

outmoded art of war. Canis III was blockaded.

He searched for the ship that had him fast. Nothing. He stepped up the

magnification of his vision-screens. Again nothing. The sun Canis

flamed ahead and below, and there were suspiciously bright stars which

by their coloring were probably planets. But the Med ship was still

well beyond the habitable part of a sol-class sun’s solar system.

Calhoun pulled a photocell out of its socket and waited. A new and very

bright light winked into being. It wavered. He stuck the photocell to

the screen, covering the brightness. He plugged in its cord to an audio

amplifier. A dull humming sounded. Not quite as clearly as a spacephone

voice, but clear enough, a voice said:

“_If you are Med Ship_ Esclipus Twenty, _answer by light-beam, quoting

your orders_.”

Calhoun was already stabbing another button, and somewhere a

signal-lamp was extruding itself from its recess in the hull. He said

irritably:

“I’ll show my orders, but I do not put on performances of dramatic

readings! This is the devil of a business! I came here on request, to

be a ministering angel or a lady with a lamp, or something equally

improbable. I did not come to be snatched out of overdrive, even if you

have a war on. This is a Med ship!”

The slightly blurred voice said as heavily as before:

“_This is a war, yes. We expected you. We wish you to take our final

warning to Canis III. Follow us to our base and you will be briefed._”

Calhoun said tartly:

“Suppose you tow me! When you dragged me out of overdrive you played

the devil with my power!”

Murgatroyd said, “_Chee?_” and tried to stand on his hind legs to look

at the screen. Calhoun brushed him away. When acknowledgment came from

the unseen other ship, and the curious cushiony drag of the towing

began to be felt, he cut off the microphone to the light-beam. Then he

said severely to Murgatroyd:

“What I said was not quite true, Murgatroyd. But there is a war on.

To be a neutral I have to appear impressively helpless. That is what

neutrality means.”

But he was far from easy in his mind. Wars between worlds were flatly

impossible. The facts of space travel made them unthinkable.

Yet there seemed to be a war. Something was happening, anyhow, which

was contrary to all the facts of life in modern times. And Calhoun was

involved in it. It demanded that he immediately change all his opinions

and all his ideas of what he might have to do. The Med Service could

not take sides in a war, of course. It had no right to help one side or

the other. Its unalterable function was to prevent the needless death

of human beings. So it could not help one combatant to victory. On the

other hand it could not merely stand by, tending the wounded, and by

alleviating individual catastrophes allow their number to mount.

“This,” said Calhoun, “is the devil!”

“_Chee!_” said Murgatroyd.

The Med ship was being towed. Calhoun had asked for it and it was being

done. There should have been no way to tow him short of a physical

linkage between ships. There were force-fields which could perform that

function--landing-grids used them constantly--but ships did not mount

them--not ordinary ships, anyhow. That fact bothered Calhoun.

“Somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble,” he said, scowling, “as if wars

were going back into fashion and somebody was getting set to fight

them. Who’s got us, anyhow?”

The request for Med Service aid had come from Phaedra II. But the

military action--if any--had been stated to be due on Canis III. The

flaming nearby sun and its family of planets was the Canis solar

system. The odds were, therefore, that he’d been snatched out of

overdrive by the Phaedrian fleet. He’d been expected. They’d ordered

him not to use the spacephone. The local forces wouldn’t care if the

planet overheard. The invaders might. Unless there were two space

fleets in emptiness, jockeying for position for a battle in the void.

But that was preposterous. There could be no battles in unstressed

space where any ship could flick into overdrive flight in the fraction

of a second!

“Murgatroyd,” said Calhoun querulously, “this is all wrong! I can’t

make head or tail of anything! And I’ve got a feeling that there is

something considerably more wrong than I can figure out! At a guess,

it’s probably a Phaedrian vessel that’s hooked on to us. They didn’t

seem surprised when I said who I was. But--”

He checked his instrument board. He examined the screens. There were

planets of the yellow sun, which now was nearly dead ahead. Calhoun saw

an almost infinitely thin crescent, and knew that it was the sunward

world toward which he was being towed. Actually, he didn’t need a tow.

He’d asked for it for no particular reason except to put whoever had

stopped him in the wrong. To injure a Med ship would be improper even

in war--especially in war.

His eyes went back to the external-field dial. There was a force-field

gripping the ship. It was of the type used by landing-grids--a type

impractical for use on shipboard. A grid to generate such a force-field

had to have one foot of diameter for roughly every ten miles of range.

A ship to have the range of his captor would have to be as big as a

planetary landing-grid. And no planetary landing-grid could handle it.

Then Calhoun’s eyes popped open and his jaw dropped.

“Murgatroyd!” he said, appalled. “Confound them, it’s true! They’ve

found a way to fight!”

Wars had not been fought for many hundreds of years, and there was no

need for them now. Calhoun had only lately been studying the records

of warfare in all its aspects and consequences, and as a medical man

he felt outraged. Organized slaughter did not seem a sane process for

arriving at political conclusions. The whole galactic culture was

based upon the happy conviction that wars could never happen again. If

it was possible, they probably would. Calhoun knew humanity well enough

to be sure of that.

“_Chee?_” said Murgatroyd inquiringly.

“You’re lucky to be a _tormal_!” Calhoun told him. “You never have to

feel ashamed of your kind.”

The background information he had about warfare in general made him

feel skeptical in advance about the information he would presently be

given. It would be what used to be called propaganda, given him under

the name of briefing. It would agree with him that wars in general were

horrible, but it would most plausibly point out--with deep regret--that

this particular war, fought by this particular side, was both admirable

and justified.

“Which,” said Calhoun darkly, “I wouldn’t believe even if it were true!”