ship lifted from Weald. He'd
curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small space-craft until
Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was not
enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.

He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely;

"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"

* * * * *

He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiralling fall to nothingness. Then
there was silence. The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a
preposterous number of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely
solid, absolutely firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as
if it were buried deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration.
There is no sign of anything but solidity and--if one looks out a
port--there is only utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make
one's eardrums crack.

But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and there
were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave. The
reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and meaningless
hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all of which were
just above the threshold of the inaudible.

Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical affair.
There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a civilization can
be destroyed more surely and more terribly than by any imaginable war or
plague-germ. A plague kills off those who are susceptible to it, leaving
immunes to build up a world again. But immunes are the first to be
killed when a mass neurosis sweeps a population.

Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another. And
when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo-boat which could not
furnish them with air to breathe, and took off and went into overdrive
before the air could fail.... Orede called for no less of worry.

"I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."

"Coffee" was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized immediately