6
A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly brighthalf-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had icecaps at itspoles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which hadthat carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areaswhich was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free,and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known toman.
There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in asort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,still bound hand and foot upon the control room floor. Murgatroydregarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furryforehead wrinkled helplessly.
"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun ashis search had no result. "They can't! It would be too sensible forthem to have done it!"
Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a subdued voice.
"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polarorbit would be ridiculous! They--" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Ofcourse! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdianlanding-grid, which was mapped in the Sector Directory, against thelook of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visibleoutside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar systemdrive.
"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight thefirst time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out inspace, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbitand at what distance will you put it?"
Maril did not answer.
"Obviously," said Calhoun, "you'll put it as far as possible from thelanding-pattern of ships coming in to the spaceport. You'll put it onthe opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of theway, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or nightwithout having to calculate anything.
"So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald inexactly one day, neither more nor less, and you'll put it above theequator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot onthe planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from thelanding-grid and directly over the equator."
He scribbled for a moment.
"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a fewhundred, and--here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!"
He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushedthe Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. Thesunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted oncemore, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicatingsatisfaction.
He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port,handling the solar system drive with great care. Murgatroyd saiddepressedly, "_Chee!_"
"Stop worrying," commanded Calhoun. "We haven't been challenged, andthere is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobodybumps into what we're looking for. It's a great help, because we dowant to bump, but gently."
Stars swung across the port out of which he looked. Something darkappeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings. Even Maril,despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastlylarger than the Med Ship, floating in space. She stared. The Med Shipmaneuvered very cautiously. She saw another large object. A third. Afourth. There seemed to be dozens of them.
They were spaceships, huge by comparison with _Aesclipus Twenty_. Theyfloated as the Med Ship did. They did not drive. They were not information. They were not at even distances from each other. They didnot point in the same direction. They swung in emptiness likederelicts.
Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently therecame the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearanceout the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The MedShip 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. Soit's extremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floorought to begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out nowwhether I'm a hero or in sure-enough trouble!"
Maril said drearily, "I don't know what you've done, except--"
Calhoun blinked at her, in the act of hauling the vacuum suit up hischest and over his shoulders.
"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogationlessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help themdump germ-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see thepoint? These are space ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They'renot manned and they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing butsky-riding storage bins!"
He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his armsinto the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air tanks overhis shoulder and hooked them to the suit.
"I'll be back," he said. "I hope with good news. I've reason to behopeful, though, because these Wealdians are very practical men. Theyhave things all prepared and tidy. I suspect I'll find these shipswith stores of air and fuel, maybe even food, so that if Weald shouldmanage to make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'donly have to bring out crews."
He lifted the space helmet down from its rack and put it on. He testedit, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data fromthe lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above hiseye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking throughthe helmet's opened faceplate.
"If our friends should wake up before I get back," he added, "pleaserestrain them. I'd hate to be marooned."
He went waddling into the airlock with the coil of space rope over onevacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him. A littlelater Maril heard the outer lock open. Then silence.
Murgatroyd whimpered a little. Maril shivered. Calhoun had gone out ofthe ship to nothingness. He'd said that what he was looking for, andwhat he'd found, was forty-two thousand miles from Weald. One couldimagine falling forty-two thousand miles, where one couldn't imaginefalling a light-year.
Calhoun was walking on the steel plates of a gigantic spaceship whichfloated among dozens of its fellows, all seeming derelicts andseemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on the nearest because ofmagnetic-soled shoes. He trusted his life to them and to a flimsyspace rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship's airlock.
Time passed. A clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to thesecond which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Verysmall and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventingutter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship.
Maril found herself listening tensely for something else. One of thefour bound blueskins snored, and stirred, and slept again. Murgatroydgazed about unhappily, and swung down to the control room floor, andthen paused for lack of any place to go or anything to do. He sat downand began half-heartedly to lick his whiskers. Maril stirred.
Murgatroyd looked at her hopefully.
"_Chee?_" he asked shrilly.
She shook her head. It became a habit to act as if Murgatroyd were ahuman being. "No," she said unsteadily. "Not yet."
More time passed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintestof clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in theairlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises.
The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fogcame out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of thelock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenlyheavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two spacesuits and acurious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside hisfaceplate, and said briskly, "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it,will you, Maril?"
He began to work his way out of his own vacuum-suit.
"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practicaltribe, t
he Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon asthey're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heatenough to keep a ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectivelynear zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."
He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared wheretheir beams played. But the metal spacesuits glistened and steamed,and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely andutterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, whichre-evaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and wasimmediately replaced.
"Item," said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suitsleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleepingfriends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble,provided only that nobody comes out here to bother us before theyleave."
He shed the last of the spacesuit, stepping out of its legs.
"And," he finished wryly, "I brought back an emergency supply of shipprovisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough tofeel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving."
Maril said, "But there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!"
He gaped at her.
"What do you think we're here for?"
He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness.It was not a difficult task. The dosage mixed in the coffee given themas a graduation ceremony--the ceremony which had consisted solely ofdrinking coffee and passing out--allowed for waking-up processes.Calhoun took the precaution of disarming them first, but presentlyfour hot-eyed young men glared at him.
"I'm calling," said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently in hishand, "I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There'vebeen unmanageable crop surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the governmentgrimly rations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has beenbuying surplus grain to keep the price up.
"To save storage costs, it's loaded the grain into out-of-datespaceships it once used to stand sentry over Dara to keep it out ofspace when there was another famine there. Those ships have been putout in orbit, where we're hooked on to one of them.
"It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've broughtspacesuits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, andI've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling forvolunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it'sneeded. Do I get any volunteers?"
He got four. Not immediately, because they were ashamed that he'd madeit impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and nowoffered something much better to make up for it. They raged. But halfa million bushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise diemight live.
Ultimately, truculently, first one and then another angrily agreed.
"Good!" said Calhoun. "Now, how many of you dare risk the trip alone?I've got one grain ship warming up. There are plenty of others aroundus. Every one of you can take a ship and half a million bushels toDara, if you have the nerve!"
The atmosphere changed. Suddenly they clamored for the task he offeredthem. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them andtaught them until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'dpinned their ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemyships and unimaginable quantities of food with which to break thefamine....
There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so farwarming up. Three more had to be entered, in spacesuits, and each hadto have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it,and at least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up toreasonable temperature for use on the journey.
Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length ofjourney that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhounhad to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sununder all circumstances and aim for it with the requisite highprecision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout. Whenall that was accomplished, Calhoun might reasonably hope that they'darrive. But it wasn't a certainty.
Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the finetolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than theirteacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because theirmessages might be picked up on Weald.
Of course, for this high heroic action to be successful, it had to beperformed with the stealth of sneak-thieves.
What seemed a long time passed. The one ship turned slowly upon someunseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. Asecond twisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solarsystem drive to get clear of the rest. The fourth--
One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara atmany times the speed of light. Another. Two more.
That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness.And Calhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given insuch a pathetically small number of days. If the four ships reachedDara, their pilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them withthat estate over their bitter objection. But they would glory init--if they reached Dara.
Maril looked at him with very strange eyes.
"Now what?" she asked.
"We hang around," said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Wealdto find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort ofsignal when a ship goes into overdrive. Usually it doesn't mean athing. Nobody pays any attention. But if somebody comes out here...."
"What?"
"It'll be regrettable," said Calhoun. He was suddenly very tired."It'll spoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some morefood, like interstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'llexpect us to try it again. They might get set to fight. Or they mightsimply land the rest of these ships."
"If I'd realized what you were about," said Maril, "I'd have joined inthe lessons. I could have piloted a ship."
"You wouldn't have wanted to," said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn'twant to be a heroine. No normal girl does."
"Why?"
"Korvan," said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him. He'sbeen trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins.All he's accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly. Hewouldn't feel comfortable with a girl who'd helped make starvingunnecessary. He'd admire you politely, but he'd never marry you. Andyou know it."
She shook her head, but it was not easy to tell whether she denied thereaction of Korvan, whom Calhoun had never met, or denied that he wasmore important to her than anything else. The last was what Calhounplainly implied.
"You don't seem to be trying to be a hero!" she protested.
"I'd enjoy it," admitted Calhoun, "but I have a job to do. It's got tobe done. It's more important than being admired."
"You could take another ship back," she told him. "It would be worthmore to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realizethat you'd planned everything."
"Ah," said Calhoun, "but you've no idea how much this ship matters toDara!"
He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over hisears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wavelengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was nomention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft.There was no mention of the ships at all. There was plenty of mentionof Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now goingon to see which political party could promise the most completeprotection against blueskins.
After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swungthe Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun aroundwhich Dara rolled. He said, "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and theMed Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signalcould come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be nosound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.
Calhoun yawned again.
"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily,"and I'm beginning to understa
nd why people sleep all they can, onDara. It's one way not to feel hungry. And one dreams such deliciousmeals! But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara."
Maril said tensely, "You're going back? After they took the ship fromyou?"
"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing asa blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've gotto do something to make sure there are no more famines."
She looked at him oddly.
"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."
"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I didn't getmuch sleep on the way here, while running a seminar on astrogation. Ithink I'll take a nap."
She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leavehim alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let aMed Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantlyasleep.
For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity orhappening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, veryfar away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads ofgrain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Eachgreat ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.
Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate totheir stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion hadbeen explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to becounted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, butthe tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible createdthings.
It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but itwas not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which thehuman race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying ofthe Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someonewith no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.
On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhatdistastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched himin a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, withhis furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.
Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matterof six or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion ofa long process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and againculturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculatedtime.
"Better wait until tomorrow," he observed, and put the bit of clearliquid in a temperature-controlled place of safekeeping.
"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"
"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "Howabout some music?"
She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtapeinto it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as shehad never heard before. It was another device to counteract isolationand monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing itseffectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.
Any indulgence frequently repeated would become a habit, in the sensethat it would give no special pleasure when indulged in, but wouldmake for stress if it were omitted. Calhoun deliberately went forweeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to belooked forward to and cherished.
When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee withtranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers,Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.
"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act likeother people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you whatother people have to get in crazy ways--making their work feed theirvanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you canput your whole mind on your work."
He thought it over.
"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," headmitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites.But there are instincts...."
She waited. He did not finish.
"What do you do about the instincts that work and music and suchthings can't satisfy?"
Calhoun grinned wryly, "I'm stern with them. I have to be."
He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin forthe night. She went.
It was after breakfast time of the next ship-day when he got out thesample of clear liquid he'd worked so long to produce.
"We'll see how it works," he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case ofa slip-up. It's perfectly safe so long as he's aboard and there areonly the two of us."
She watched as he injected half a cc. under his own skin. Then sheshivered a little.
"What will it do?"
"That remains to be seen." He paused a moment. "You and I," he saidwith some dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catchsomething from me, it will be infectious indeed!"
She gazed at him utterly without comprehension.
He took his own temperature. He brought out the folios which were hisorders, covering each of the planets he should give a standard MedicalService inspection. Weald was there. Dara wasn't. But a Med Serviceman has much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routineof normal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations,he necessarily has much more. Calhoun went over the folios.
Two hours later he took his temperature again. He looked pleased. Hemade an entry in the ship's log. Two hours later yet he found himselfdrinking thirstily and looked more pleased still.
He made another entry in the log and matter-of-factly drew a smallquantity of blood from his own vein and called to Murgatroyd.Murgatroyd submitted amiably to the very trivial operation Calhouncarried out. Calhoun put away the equipment and saw Maril staring athim with a certain look of shock.
"It doesn't hurt him," Calhoun explained. "Right after he's bornthere's a tiny spot on his flank that has the pain-nervesdesensitized. Murgatroyd's all right. That's what he's for!"
"But he's your friend!" said Maril.
Murgatroyd, despite his small size and furriness, had all the humanattributes an animal which lives with humans soon acquires. Calhounlooked at him with affection.
"He's my assistant. I don't ask anything of him that I can do myself.But we're both Med Service. And I do things for him that he can't dofor himself. For example, I make coffee for him."
Murgatroyd heard the familiar word. He said, "_Chee!_"
"Very well," agreed Calhoun. "We'll all have some."
He made coffee. Murgatroyd sipped at the cup especially made for hislittle paws. Once he scratched at the place on his flank which had nopain nerves. It itched. But he was perfectly content. Murgatroydwould always be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.
Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap andwith a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him longenough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened toMurgatroyd's heartbeat, while Murgatroyd dozed.
"Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, andninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four."
She obeyed, not comprehending. Half an hour later, still not stirringto disturb Murgatroyd, he had her write down another time and sequenceof figures, only slightly different from the first. Half an hour laterstill, 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 yougo in the other cabin for a moment?"
Disturbed, she went into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a small sampleof blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroydsubmitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhounhad diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it upthoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and whitecorpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered thatCalhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample ofantibody-containing serum,
in case something got out of hand. It wouldassuredly take care of two patients.
But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one ofthose scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using culturesfrom store.
Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back.
"It was nothing," he explained, "but you might have feltuncomfortable. We simply had a bit of Med Service routine that had tobe gone through. It's all right now."
He offered no further explanation. She said, "I'll fix lunch." Shehesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do youwant to--"
He shook his head.
"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Servicefault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations untileverybody eats."
He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently heconsidered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the eveningmeal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily.He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicatedgame of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use ofprobability increased one's chance of winning.
By midnight she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhounwas able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he wassatisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive offDara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into theother cabin.
Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made forhim, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood pressure after the injection ofthe same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself andlater, without contact with him or the culture, in Maril. He put aprofessional 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 deg. C. An hour later it was 30.9 deg. 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 taildraped carefully over his nose.
The Med Ship broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, ship-time. Calhounmade contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.
It was almost two hours later, at 1500 hours ship-time, when thepeople of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was to beexecuted immediately.
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