he
went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly with difficulty,
yet reproachfully;

"'Thought y'were our frien'!"

He collapsed.

Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
throat. "What have you done to them? Are they dead?"

"No," said Calhoun, "just drugged. 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 want
to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the way.
I killed them with supersonics a couple of days ago, while a fine
argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable Cepheids
of known period."

He put the four boxes carefully in the waste-disposal unit. He operated
it. The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of
metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control-desk.

"I'm a Med Service man," he said detachedly. "I couldn't cooperate in
the spread of plague, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be another
matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald busy with
troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some food for
Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is in thousands of
tons,--or tens of thousands." Then he said; "Overdrive coming,
Murgatroyd! Hold fast!"

The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied
the change. Murgatroyd burped.

CHAPTER 6

A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright
half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had ice-caps at its
poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had that
carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas which was
so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free, and Calhoun
fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to man.

There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a
sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept,
still bound hand and foot upon the control-room floor. Murgatroyd
regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry
forehead wrinkled helplessly.

"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as his
search had no result. "They can't. It would be too sensible for them to
have done i