CHAPTER 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 ice-caps at itspoles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had thatcarefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas which wasso effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free, and Calhounfretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to man.
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 as hissearch had no result. "They can't. It would be too sensible for them tohave 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--mapped in the Sector Directory--against the look ofcontinents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible outside. Hefound what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar-system drive.
"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 orbit andat 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 space-port. 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 soit will revolve around Weald in exactly one day, neither more or less,and you'll put it above the equator. And then it will remain quitestationary above one spot on the planet, a hundred and eighty degreeslongitude away from the landing-grid and directly over the equator."
He scribbled for a moment.
"Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few hundred,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.
Again presently he abandoned instrument-control and peered directly outof a port, handling the solar-system drive with great care. Murgatroydsaid depressedly;
"_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 do wantto bump,--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 space-ships, 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 did notpoint in the same direction. They swung in emptiness like derelicts.
Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care. Presently there camethe gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance outthe vision-port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med Shipwas 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 move smoothly," he commented. "We weren't challenged. So it'sextremely unlikely that we were spotted. Our friends on the floor oughtto begin to come to shortly. And I'm going to find out now whether I'm ahero 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 over hisshoulders.
"Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogationlessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them dumpgerm-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see the point?These are space-ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They're not mannedand they're not controlled. In fact, they're nothing but sky-ridingstorage bins!"
He seemed to consider the explanation complete. He wriggled his armsinto the sleeves and gloves of the suit. He slung the air-tanks over hisshoulder 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 ships withstores of air and fuel--maybe even food--so that if Weald should manageto make a deal for the stuff stored out here in them, they'd only haveto 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 through thehelmet's opened face-plate.
"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 little laterMaril heard the outer lock open. Then soundlessness.
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 agigantic space-ship which floated among dozens of its fellows, allseeming derelicts and seemingly abandoned. He was able to walk on thenearest because of magnetic-soled shoes. He trusted his life to them andto a flimsy space-rope which trailed after him out the Med Ship'sairlock.
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, preventing uttersilence from hanging intolerably in the ship. They were traffic-sounds,recorded on a world no one knew how many light-years distant, and nobodyknew when. There were sounds as of voices, too faint to suggest words,but imparting a feel of life and activity to a soundless 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 thing to do. He sat down andbegan 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.
"N-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 space-suits and acurious assortm
ent of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside theface-plate, and said briskly;
"This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it, will you Maril?"
He began to work his way out of his vacuum-suit.
"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practicaltribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon as they'rewarmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat enough to keepa ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively near zeroKelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."
He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where theirbeams played. But the metal space-suits glistened and steamed,--and thesteam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and utterlycold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, whichreevaporated 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 sleeping friendswill be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble, providedonly that nobody comes out here to bother us before they leave."
He shed the last of the space-suit, stepping out of its legs.
"And," he finished wrily, "I brought back an emergency supply ofship-provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enoughto feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's stillstarving."
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. Itwas not a difficult task. The dosage, mixed in the coffee he had giventhem earlier, was a light one. Calhoun took the precaution of disarmingthem first, but presently four hot-eyed young men glared at him.
"I'm calling," said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently in his hand,"I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There've beenunmanageable crop-surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government grimlyrations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been buying upsurplus grain to keep the price up. To save storage costs, it's loadedthe grain into out-of-date space-ships it once used to stand sentryover Dara to keep it out of space when there was another famine there.Those ships have been put out in orbit, where we're hooked on to one ofthem. It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've broughtspace-suits 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's needed.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 now offeredsomething much better to make up for it. They raged. But half a millionbushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise die might 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 to Dara,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 and taughtthem until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd pinnedtheir ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy ships andunimaginable quantities of food with which to break the famine....
There was work to be done first, of course. Only one ship was so farwarming up. Three more had to be entered, in space-suits, and each hadto have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it, andat least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up toreasonable temperature for use on the journey. Then the overdrive unithad to be inspected and set for the length of journey that a directoverdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun had to make sure againthat each of the four could identify Dara's sun under all circumstancesand aim for it with the requisite high precision, both before going intooverdrive and after breakout. When all that was accomplished, Calhounmight reasonably hope that they'd arrive. 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 action to be successful, it had to be performed withthe stealth of sneak-thieves.
* * * * *
What seemed a long time passed. Then one ship turned slowly upon someunseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A secondtwisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar-systemdrive to get clear of the rest. The fourth ...
One ship vanished. It had gone into overdrive, heading for Dara at manytimes the speed of light. Another. Two more.
That was all. The remainder of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness. AndCalhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in such apathetically small number of days. If the four ships reached Dara, theirpilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with that estate overtheir bitter objection. But they would glory in it, if they reachedDara.
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 a thing.Nobody pays any attention. But if somebody comes out here--"
"What?"
"It'll be regrettable," said Calhoun. He was suddenly very tired. "It'llspoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more food--likeinterstellar mice. If they find out what we've done they'll expect us totry it again. They might get set to fight. Or they might simply land therest 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."
"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. He wouldn'tfeel comfortable with a girl who'd helped make starving unnecessary.He'd admire you politely, but he'd never marry you. And you 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 much 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 realize thatyou'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 his ears.He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave-lengths andwave-forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no mention ofthe oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft. There was nomention of the ships at all. But there was plenty of mention of Dara,and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to seewhich political party could promise the most complete protection againstblueskins.
After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung theMed Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around whichDara rolled. He said;
"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and theMed Ship became a sort of cosmo
s all its own.
Calhoun yawned again.
"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily, "andI'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on Dara. It'sone way not to feel hungry."
Maril said tensely;
"You're going back? After they took the ship from you?"
"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 as ablueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got todo 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'm about tocatch up on some sleep."
Maril rose and went into the other cabin. He settled down into the chairand fell instantly asleep.
* * * * *
For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity orhappening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very faraway, light-years distant and light years apart, four shiploads of grainhurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each great shiphad a single semi-skilled blueskin for pilot and crew. Thousands ofmillions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to their stellar typesin a galaxy of which a very small proportion had been explored andcolonized by humanity. The human race was now to be counted inquadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but the tiny MedShip seemed the least significant of all possible created things. Itcould travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it was notyet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the human racearose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of the Med Shipconsumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone with no work todo or no resources in himself, or herself.
On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhatdistastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him ina sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with hisfurry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.
Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter ofsix or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of along 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 safe-keeping.
"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 she hadnever heard before. Again it was a device to counteract isolation andmonotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing itseffectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.Calhoun deliberately went for weeks between uses of his recordings, sothat music was an event to be looked forward to and cherished.
When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee withtranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers, Marilregarded 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 try to get in crazy ways,--making their work feedtheir vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But youcan put 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 naturally there are instincts--"
She waited. He did not finish.
"What do you do about instincts that work and music and such thingscan't satisfy?"
Calhoun grinned wrily;
"I'm stern with them. I have to be."
He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for thenight. She did.
* * * * *
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 itworks," he observed. "Murgatroyd's handy in case of a slip-up. It'sperfectly safe so long as he's aboard and there are only 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 said withsome dryness, "make a perfect test for anything. If you catch somethingfrom me, it will be infective 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 Service manhas much freedom of action, even when only keeping up the routine ofnormal Med Service. When catching up on badly neglected operations, henecessarily 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 entryin the log and matter-of-factly drew a small quantity of blood from hisown vein and called to Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd submitted amiably to thevery trivial operation Calhoun carried out. Calhoun put away theequipment and saw Maril staring at him with a certain look of shock.
"It doesn't hurt him," Calhoun explained. "Right after he's born there'sa tiny spot on his flank that has the pain-nerves desensitized.Murgatroyd's all right. That's what he's for!"
"But he's--your friend!"
"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 do forhimself. 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. Murgatroyd wouldalways be contented when he was somewhere near Calhoun.
Another hour went by. Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and witha determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long enoughto get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to Murgatroyd'sheartbeat with it 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 stirring todisturb Murgatroyd--he had her write down another time and sequence offigures, 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 you goin the other cabin for a moment?"
She went disturbedly into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a sample ofblood 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 up thoroughly,and filtered it to clarity with all red and white corpuscles removed.Another Med Ship man would have considered that Calhoun had hadMurgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of antibody-containing serum,in case something got out of hand. It would assuredly take care of twopatients.
But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of thosescrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures fromstore.
Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back and offered noexplanation. She said;
"I'll fix lunch." She hesitated. "You brought some food from the
firstWeald ship. Do you want it?"
He shook his head.
"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault.Before my time, but still--I'll stick to rations until everybody eats."
* * * * *
He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he consideredthat she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening meal ofsingularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily. He did notcomment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated game ofsolitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of probabilityincreased one's chance of winning.
By midnight, ship-time, she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly.Calhoun was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and hewas satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arriveoff Dara 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 of thesame 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 duringlong storage in the spore state. It revived and reproduced rapidly. Iinjected .5 cc under my skin and in less than one hour my temperaturewas 30.8 deg.C. An hour later it was 30.9 deg.C. This was its peak. Itimmediately returned to normal. The only other observable symptom wasslightly increased thirst. Blood-pressure and pulse remained normal. Theother person in the Med Ship displayed the same symptoms, in prompt andcomplete repetition, without physical contact."
He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole.
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--1500 hours ship-time--when the people ofDara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was publicly to beexecuted; immediately.