e crazy from panic-gas. They'll stay that way
until the air is changed. Darians have barricaded themselves in the
control-rooms of most if not all your ships. You haven't got a fleet. If
the few ships that will obey your orders, drop one bomb, our fleet off
Weald will drop fifty. I don't think you'd better order offensive
action. Instead, I think you'd better have your fleet medical officers
come and learn some of the facts of life. There's no need for war
between Dara and Weald, but if you insist...."

The Admiral made a choking noise. He could have ordered Calhoun killed,
but there was a certain appalling fact. The men aground from the fleet
were breathing Wealdian air from tanks. It would last so long only. If
they were taken on board the still obedient ships overhead, Darians
would unquestionably be mixed with them. There was no way to take off
the parties now aground without exposing them to contact with Darians,
on the ground or in the ships. There was no way to sort out the Darians.

"I--I will give the orders," said the admiral thickly. "I--do not know
what you devils plan, but--I don't know how to stop you."

"All that's necessary," said Calhoun warmly, "is an open mind. There's a
misunderstanding to be cleared up, and some principles of planetary
health practises to be explained, and a certain amount of prejudice that
has to be thrown away. But nobody need die of changing their minds. The
Interstellar Medical service has proved that over and over!"

Murgatroyd, perched on his shoulder, felt that it was time to take part
in the conversation. He said;

"_Chee-chee!_"

"Yes," agreed Calhoun. "We do want to get the job done. We're behind
schedule now."

* * * * *

It was not, of course, possible for Calhoun to leave immediately. He had
to preside at various meetings of the medical officers of the fleet with
the health officials of Dara. He had to make explanations, and correct
misapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological experiments as
would prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no longer a plague on
Dara, whatever had been the case three generations before. He had to sit
by while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor named Korvan
rather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation
was a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had
been wiped out by a very trivial epidemic of--such and such. Calhoun
regarded