mal_
and a man can get along indefinitely, like a man and a dog. It is a
highly unequal friendship, but it seems to be satisfactory to both.

Calhoun was very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been
operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct the
results of incompetence in directing Med Service in the twelfth sector.
But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for
somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs to
be done.

The condition shown by the landing-grid suspicions was a case in point.
Blueskins were people who inherited a splotchy skin-pigmentation from
other people who'd survived a plague. Weald plainly maintained a
one-planet quarantine against them. But a quarantine is normally an
emergency measure. The Med Service should have taken over, wiped out the
need for a quarantine, and then lifted it. It hadn't been done.

Calhoun fumed to himself.

* * * * *

The world of Weald Three grew brighter and brighter and became a disk.
The disk had ice-caps and a reasonable proportion of land and water
surface. The Med Ship decelerated, and voices notified observation from
the surface, and the little craft came to a stop some five planetary
diameters out from solidity. The landing-field force-field locked on to
it, and its descent began.

The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which
appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the
singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still
lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly a
mile. It could let down interstellar liners from emptiness and lift them
out to emptiness again, with great convenience and economy for everyone.

It landed the Med Ship in its center, and there were officials to greet
Calhoun, and he knew in advance the routine part of his visit. There
would be an interview with the planet's chief executive, by whatever
title he was called. There would be a banquet. Murgatroyd would be
petted by everybody. There would be painful efforts to impress Calhoun
with the splendid conduct of public health matters on Weald. He would be
told much scandal. He might find one man, somewhere, who passionately
labored to advance the welfare of his fellow humans by finding out how
to keep them well, or failing that how to make them well when they got
sick. And in two days, or three