This World Is Taboo

by Murray Leinster

  5

  It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men wereemaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon theground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hungloosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, theircheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotchesof pigment of which Calhoun had heard.

  The man nearest the Med Ship's port had a monstrous, irregulardull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon hisforehead. The man next to him had a blue throat. The next man againwas less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed asplashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.

  The leader of the truculent group--it might have been a firingsquad--made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, exceptfor two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter thanwhite.

  "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 ortwo. It should have amounted to identification but there wasskepticism 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 aremedicines and bacterial culture inside it. They shouldn't be meddledwith. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"

  The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before, "I said thegovernment was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you'renot taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you'releaving!"

  "And I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We'vejust come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as henamed Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about droppingfusion-bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with theauthority to take a few sensible precautions!"

  He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "_Chee! Chee!_" frombehind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and clingapprehensively to his neck.

  "What's that?"

  "A _tormal_" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will knowsomething about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, andhe's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and hestays with me!"

  The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting toask you questions. Here!"

  A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-gridenclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much usedon 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 youwant. 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 fromthe Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exteriorand it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders ofthe grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It pickedup speed.

  There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showedlights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set apattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did notseem 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 apaved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights otherdepressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up toperfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleanedlately, litter here and there.

  Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling ofwretchedness 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 splotchof blue pigment at the back of his neck. It extended upward into hishair.

  "I left two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then.Rationing hadn't started."

  The driver said evenly, "There's rationing now!"

  The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights aboutits perimeter seemed few and pale.

  "Everything seems worse. Even the lights."

  "Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to growcrops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either."

  Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips.

  "I was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent andthen make my way to Weald. I mailed reports of what I found out backto Trent. Somebody got them back to here whenever it was possible."

  The driver said, "Everybody knows the man on Trent disappeared. Maybehe got caught, maybe somebody saw him without make-up. Or maybe hejust quit being one of us. What's the difference? No use!"

  Calhoun found himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. Hewas hopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accepthostility from those about them as a device of fate for theirdestruction.

  Maril said quickly to Calhoun, "You understand? Dara's a heavy-metalsplanet. There aren't many light elements in our soil. Potassium isscarce. So our ground isn't very fertile. Before the Plague we tradedmetals and manufactured products for imports of food and potash. Butsince the Plague we've had no off-planet commerce. We've beenquarantined."

  "I gathered as much," said Calhoun. "It was up to Med Service to seethat that didn't happen. It's up to Med Service now to see that itstops."

  "Too late now for anything," said the driver. "Whatever Med Servicemay be! They're talking about cutting down our population so there'llbe food enough for some to live. There are two questions about it. Oneis who's to be kept alive, and the other is why."

  The groundcar aimed now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights onthe far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grewnearer. Maril said hesitantly, "There was someone, Korvan--" Calhoundidn't catch the rest of the name. Maril said hesitantly, "He wasworking on food plants. I thought he might accomplish something...."

  The driver said caustically, "Sure! Everybody's heard about him! Hecame up with a wonderful thing! He and his outfit worked out a way toprocess weeds so they can be eaten. And they can. You can fill yourbelly and not feel hungry, but it's like eating hay. You starve justthe same. He's still working. Head of a government division."

  The groundcar passed through a gate. It stopped before a lighted door.The armed men hanging to its outside dropped off. They watched Calhounclosely as he stepped out with Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder.

  Minutes later they faced a hastily summoned group of officials of theDarian government. For a ship to land on Dara was so remarkable anevent that it called practically for a cabinet meeting. And Calhounnoted that they were no better fed than the guards at the spaceport.

  They regarded Calhoun and Maril with oddly burning, eyes. It was, ofcourse, because the two of them showed no signs of hunger. Theyobviously had not been on short rations. Darians had this, now, toincrease a hatred which was inevitable anyhow, directed at all peoplesoff their own planet.

  "My name is Calhoun," said Calhoun briskly. "I've the usual MedService credentials. Now--"

  He did not wait to be questioned. He told them of the appalling stateof things in the Twelfth Sector of the Med Service, so that men hadbeen borrowed from other sectors to remedy the intolerable, and he wasone of them. He told of his arrival at Weald and what had happenedthere, from the excessively cautious insistence that he prove he wasnot a Darian, to the arrival of the death-ship from Orede.

  He was giving them the news affecting them, as they had not heard itbefore. He went on to tell of his stop at Orede and his purpose, andhis encounter with the men he found there. When he finished there wassilence. He broke it.

  "Now," he said, "Maril's an agent of yours. She can add to what I'vetold you. I'm Med Se
rvice. I have a job to do here to carry out whatwasn't done before. I should make a planetary health inspection andmake recommendations for the improvement of the state of things. I'llbe glad if you'll arrange for me to talk to your health officials.Things look bad, and something should be done."

  Someone laughed without mirth.

  "What will you recommend for long-continued undernourishment?" heasked derisively. "That's our health problem!"

  "I recommend food," said Calhoun.

  "Where'll you fill the prescription?"

  "I've the answer to that, too," said Calhoun curtly. "I'll want totalk to any space pilots you've got. Get your astrogators together andI think they'll approve my idea."

  The silence was totally skeptical.

  "Orede--"

  "Not Orede," said Calhoun. "Weald will be hunting that planet over forDarians. If they find any, they'll drop bombs here."

  "Our only space pilots," said a tall man, presently, "are on Oredenow. If you've told the truth, they'll probably head back because ofyour warning. They should bring meat."

  His mouth worked peculiarly, and Calhoun knew that it was at thethought of food.

  "Which," said another man sharply, "goes to the hospitals! I haven'ttasted meat in two years!"

  "Nobody has," growled another man still. "But here's this man Calhoun.I'm not convinced he can work magic, but we can find out if he lies.Put a guard on his ship. Otherwise let our health men give him hishead. They'll find out if he's from this Medical Service he tells of!and this Maril...."

  "I can be identified," said Maril. "I was sent to gather informationand send it in secret writing to one of us on Trent. I have a familyhere. They'll know me! And I--there was someone who was working onfoods, and I believe he made it possible to use ... all sorts ofvegetation for food. He will identify me."

  Someone laughed harshly.

  Maril swallowed.

  "I'd like to see him," she repeated. "And my family."

  Some of the blue-splotched men turned away. A broad-shouldered mansaid bluntly, "Don't look for them to be glad to see you. And you'dbetter not show yourself in public. You've been well fed. You'll behated for that."

  Maril began to cry. Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, "_Chee! Chee!_"

  Calhoun held him close. There was confusion. And Calhoun found theMinister of Health at hand. He looked most harried of all theofficials gathered to question Calhoun. He proposed that he get a lookat the hospital situation right away.

  It wasn't practical. With all the population on half rations or less,when night came people needed to sleep. Most people, indeed, slept asmany hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage. Itwas much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly naggedat by continued hunger.

  And there was the matter of simple decency. Continuous gnawing hungerhad an embittering effect upon everyone. Quarrelsomeness was a commonexperience. And people who would normally be the leaders of opinionfelt shame because they were obsessed by thoughts of food. It was bestwhen people slept.

  Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak. What he found movedhim to savage anger. There were too many sick children. In every caseundernourishment contributed to their sickness. And there was notenough food to make them well. Doctors and nurses denied themselvesfood to spare it for their patients. And most of that self-denial wasdoubtless voluntary, but it would not be discreet for anybody on Darato look conspicuously better fed than his fellows.

  Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the MedShip while the guard in the ship looked on. He demonstrated theprocesses of synthesis and auto-catalysis that enabled such smallsamples to be multiplied indefinitely. He was annoyed by a clamorousappetite. There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medicaltechniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybodywas half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved ofMurgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function.

  He was, of course, a Med Service _tormal_, and _tormals_ werecreatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in theDeneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals. But theremarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract anydisease. Not any.

  They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins,and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to whicha _tormal_ could not more or less immediately develop antibodyresistance. So that in interstellar medicine _tormals_ were priceless.

  Let Murgatroyd be infected with however localized, however specializedan inimical organism, and presently some highly valuable defensivesubstance could be isolated from his blood and he'd remain in hisusual exuberant good health.

  When the antibody was analyzed by those techniques of microanalysisthe Service had developed, that was that. The antibody could besynthesized and one could attack any epidemic with confidence.

  The tragedy for Dara was, of course, that no Med Ship had come to Darathree generations ago, when the Dara plague raged. Worse, after theplague Weald was able to exert pressure which only a criminallyincompetent Med Service director would have permitted. But criminalincompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned toSector Twelve to help remedy. He was not at ease, though. No shiparrived from Orede to bear out his account of an attempt to get thatlonely world evacuated before Weald discovered it had blueskins on it.Maril had vanished, to visit or return to her family, or perhaps toconsult with the mysterious Korvan who'd arranged for her to leaveDara to be a spy, and had advised her simply to make a new lifesomewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and out-casteworld.

  Calhoun had learned of two achievements the same Korvan had made forhis world. Neither was remarkably constructive. He'd offered to provethe value of the second by dying of it. Which might make him a veryadmirable character, or he could have a passion for martyrdom, whichis much more common than most people think. In two days Calhoun wasirritable enough from unaccustomed hunger to suspect the worst of him.

  Meanwhile Calhoun worked doggedly; in the hospitals while the patientswere awake and in the Med Ship, under guard, afterward. He had hungercramps now, but he tested a plastic cube with a thriving biologicalculture in it.

  He worked at increasing his store of it. He'd snipped samples ofpigmented skin from dead patients in the hospitals, and examined thepigmented areas, and very, very painstakingly verified a theory. Ittook an electron microscope to do it, but he found a virus in the bluepatches which matched the type discovered on Tralee.

  The Tralee viruses had effects which were passed on from mother tochild, and heredity had been charged with the observed results ofquasi-living viral particles. And then Calhoun very, very carefullyintroduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in aplastic cube. He watched what happened.

  He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he yawned andyawned and barely managed to stagger off to bed. The watching guard inthe Med Ship watched him in amazement.

  That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloodycarcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morningMaril came back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expressionwas of someone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life.

  "I'm all right," she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've beenvisiting my family. I've seen Korvan. I'm quite all right."

  "You haven't eaten any better than I have," Calhoun observed.

  "I couldn't!" admitted Maril. "My sisters, my little sisters sothin.... There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficientlyarranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I gavemost of my food to my sisters and they--they squabbled over it!"

  Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said, in a noless desolate tone, "Korvan said I was foolish to come back."

  "He could be right," said Calhoun.

  "But I had to!" protested Maril. "And now I--I've been eating all Iwanted to, in Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they'rehalf-starved a
nd I'm not. And when you see what hunger does tothem.... It's terrible to be half-starved and not able to think ofanything but food!"

  "I hope," said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get holdof an astrogator or two--"

  "The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told himshakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one load's not enough tomake a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us onOrede, we daren't go back for more meat."

  She said abruptly, "There are some prisoners. They were miners. Theywere crowded out of the ship. The Darians who'd stampeded the cattletook them prisoners. They had to!"

  "True," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't have been wise to leave Wealdiansaround on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tellabout a rumor of blueskins. Even if their throats will be cut now. Isthat the program?"

  Maril shivered.

  "No. They'll be put on short rations like everybody else. And peoplewill watch them. The Wealdians expect to die of plague any minutebecause they've been with Darians. So people look at them and laugh.But it's not very funny."

  "It's natural," said Calhoun, "but perhaps lacking in charity. Lookthere! How about those astrogators? I need them for a job I have inmind."

  Maril wrung her hands.

  "C--come here," she said in a low tone.

  There was an armed guard in the control room of the ship. He'd watchedCalhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed hismysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He wasbored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control board, though, hewas uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the wayinto the other cabin and slid the door shut.

  "The astrogators are coming," she said swiftly. "They'll bring someboxes with them. They'll ask you to instruct them so they can handleour ship better. They lost themselves coming back from Orede. No,they didn't lose themselves, but they lost time, enough time almost tomake an extra trip for meat. They need to be experts. I'm to comealong, so they can be sure that what you teach them is what you'vebeen doing right along."

  Calhoun said, "Well?"

  "They're crazy!" said Maril vehemently. "They knew Weald would dosomething monstrous sooner or later. But they're going to try to stopit by being more monstrous sooner! Not everybody agrees, but there areenough. So they want to use your ship--it's faster in overdrive and soon. And they'll go to Weald in this ship and--they say they'll giveWeald something to keep it busy without bothering us!"

  Calhoun said dryly, "This pays me off for being too sympathetic withblueskins! But if I'd been hungry for a couple of years, and wasdespised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I mightreact the same way. No," he said curtly as she opened her lips tospeak again, "don't tell me the trick. Considering everything, there'sonly 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 followedhim. He said detachedly, "I've been working on a problem outside ofthe food one. It isn't the time to talk about it right now, but Ithink I've solved it."

  Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmacoutside the ship. Both doors of the airlock were open. Four men camein. They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as mostDarians, but there was a reason for that. Their leader introducedhimself and the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara hadbuilt to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said theirself-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot theirdestination. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They neededinstruction.

  Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. Theywere, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement wasa patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a bluebirthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. Athird had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face adull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.

  "We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board andlearn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we'vegot."

  "I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as wego along.... Those boxes?"

  Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the fourvery carefully brought them inside.

  "They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywherewithout rations, except Orede."

  "Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," saidCalhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"

  "Yes," said the young man.

  He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhounshrugged.

  "Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there'sthe button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted."

  The young man seated himself at the control board. Veryprofessionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift bylanding-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. Hewent 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 thecontrol board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged thedoors.

  The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he foundoccasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably atraining voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskinpilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdrive, Calhoungrew stern. He insisted on a destination. He suggested Weald.

  The young men glanced at each other and accepted the suggestion. Hemade the acting pilot look up the intrinsic brightness of its sun andmeasure its apparent brightness from just off Dara. He made himestimate the change in brightness to be expected after so many hoursin overdrive, if one broke out to measure.

  The first blueskin student pilot ended a Calhoun-determined tour ofduty with more respect for Calhoun then he'd had at the beginning. Thesecond was anxious to show up better than the first. Calhoun drilledhim in the use of brightness-charts, by which the changes in apparentbrightness of stars between overdrive hops could be correlated withangular changes to give a three-dimensional picture of the nearerheavens.

  It was a highly necessary art which had not been worked out on Dara,and the prospective astrogators became absorbed in this and other finepoints 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 andeasily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and tophrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men incommand of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to useWeald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Shipcame out of overdrive pointing in an unknown direction and with aprecessory motion.

  He made the third of his students identify Weald in the celestialglobe containing hundreds of millions of stars, and get on course inoverdrive toward it. The fourth was suddenly required to compute thedistance 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. Calhoungave each of them a second gruelling lesson. He gave them, in fact, ahighly condensed but very sound course in the art of travel in space.His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at leastone breakout from overdrive in each watch.

  He built up enthusiasm in them. They ignored the discomfort of beinghungry--though there had been no reason for them to stint on food onOrede--in growing pride in what they came to know.

  When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highlyqualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly betterspacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude towardCalhoun 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 compareCalhoun's lessons with his practise when alone.
But he did nothing onthis journey which, teaching considered, was different from the twointerstellar journeys Maril had made with him.

  She occupied the sleeping cabin during two of the six watches of eachship-day. She operated the food-readier, which was almost completelyemptied of its original store of food, it having been confiscated bythe government of Dara. That amount of food would make no differenceto the planet, but it was wise for everyone on Dara to be equallyill-fed.

  On the sixth day out from Dara, the sun of Weald had a magnitude ofminus five-tenths. The electron telescope could detect its largerplanets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo.Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointingout the difference that could be made in breakout position if the MedShip were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc.

  "And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduateyou as pilots. Maril, four cups of coffee, please."

  Murgatroyd said "_Chee?_" The Med Ship was badly crowded with sixhumans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroydalone. The little _tormal_ had spent most of his time in hiscubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about onwhat had been a spacious ship before.

  "No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "You didn't do yourlessons. This is for the graduating class only."

  Murgatroyd came out of his miniature den. He found his little cup andoffered it insistently, saying, "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"

  "No!" said Calhoun firmly. He regarded his class of four young menwith their blueskin markings. "Drink it down!" he commanded. "That'sthe last order I'll give you. You're graduate pilots, now!"

  They drank the coffee with a flourish. There was not one who did notadmire 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 aboutthose boxes you brought on board. You said they were rations, butthey 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 onWeald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool hasdecided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to botherwith you. Is that right?"

  The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be madeinto fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't beprovided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'dnot been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward whichthe Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference toblueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. Thefour young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a shipin emptiness.

  "Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were orderedto do."

  "I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald alittle while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that someday Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight anyimaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebodyclaims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"

  "But--"

  "In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan'tdo anything of the kind."

  One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyesclosed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sankheavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptlywent to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborateattention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber andhe went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly andreproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"

  He collapsed.

  Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them outcomfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to herthroat. 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 wantto get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by theway. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while afine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variableCepheids 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 ofmetallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control desk.

  "I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate inthe spread of plagues, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might beanother matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Wealdbusy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting somefood for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is thousands oftons, or tens of thousands." Then he said, "Overdrive coming,Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"

  The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompaniedthe change. Murgatroyd burped.

  * * * * *