were likely your fellow had died
on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or saccho, and do you take
cream?"

She trembled a little, but she took the cup.

"I--don't understand--."

"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether he
spoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go around
trying to keep people from getting killed. It's our profession. We
practise it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you
make such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
Especially since we're going there anyhow."

"You--don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.

"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
more believable presently. When did you eat last?"

"Yesterday--."

"Better have something now. We'll talk more later." Calhoun showed her
how to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from
storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at
dialed-for intervals.

* * * * *

Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory, looking
up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had no reason to
inform himself about it before. Now he read with every appearance of
absorption.

The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable interest.
But she looked acutely uncomfortable.

Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the microfilm reels
which contained more information. He was specifically after the Med
Service history of all the planets in this sector. He went through the
filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara. But
Sector Twelve had not been well-run. There was no adequate account of a
plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an
inhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit, and
was over before another Med Ship came by. But there should have been
painstaking investigation, even after the fact. There should have been a
collection of infective material and a reasonably complete
identification and study of the infective agent. It hadn't been made.
There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it slipped by.
But Calhoun--whose career was not to be spent in this sector--resolved
on a blistering report about this negligence and its consequences.

He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man has
resources of study and