the largest level space on the planet which was not
desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions.
Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would
have liked to see him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but
no conceivable death would be satisfying.

So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered to
him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the landing-grid
floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire upon him at the
same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be destroyed. He
would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon him.

* * * * *

His death was remarkably close. Nothing remained but the order to fire,
when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything. One of
the grain-ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its pilot was
triumphantly calling for landing-coordinates. The grid office relayed
his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to get it on the
communication system of the whole planet.

"_Calling ground_," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
student pilots Calhoun had trained. "_Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
captured ship requests coordinates for landing! Purpose of landing, to
deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!_"

At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to be
used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on its
second voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when it
threatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in the
sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the center of
the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where he was to
have been executed.

The landing-grid crew shifted the ship to one side, and only then did
Calhoun stroll in a leisurely fashion toward the Med Ship by the grid's
metal-lace wall.

The big ship touched ground, and its exit-port revolved and opened, and
the student pilot stood there grinning and heaving out handsful of
grain. There was a swarming, yelling, deliriously triumphant crowd,
then, where only minutes before there'd been a mob waiting to rejoice
when Calhoun's living body exploded into flame.

They no longer hated Calhoun, but he had to fight his way to the Med
Ship, nevertheless