mself still more comfortably in
Calhoun's lap.

"_Chee,_" he said drowsily.

He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highly
condensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate of
increase, with other data, among herds of _bivis domesticus_ in a wild
state, on planets where they have no natural enemies. It wasn't
unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types of Terran fauna
and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran life-forms
could play the devil with alien ecological systems, very much to
humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard vegetation
added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise alien
worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.

They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds of men
to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo-ship which couldn't
possibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship was in
overdrive.

Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, he
had calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose on a
suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tens or
even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probably elapsed.

The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no sound from
without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence at all that
it was not buried deep in the heart of a planet instead of flashing
through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.

* * * * *

Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared in the
control-room. "Shall I--have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.

"Why not?"

Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave the
impression that he would respond politely when spoken to, but that he
was busy with activities that kept him remote from stowaways.

About noon, ship-time, she asked;

"When will we get to Orede?"

Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.

"What--what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedy in
the ship?"

"I don't know," said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities on
Weald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins."

"Wh-what are blueskins?"

Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.

"When lying," he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretend
isn't, as by what you preten