de friends, awkwardly on the
girl's part, very pleasantly on Murgatroyd's. But only moments ago there
had been bitter emotion in the air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyhole
to escape it. He was distressed. Now that there was silence again, he
peered out unhappily.

"_Chee?_" he queried plaintively. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"

Calhoun said matter-of-factly;

"It's all right, Murgatroyd. If we aren't blasted as we try to land, we
should be able to make friends with everybody and get something
accomplished."

The statement was hopelessly inaccurate.

CHAPTER 3

There was no answer from the ground when breakout came and Calhoun drove
the Med Ship to a favorable position for a call. He patiently repeated,
over and over again, that Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty notified its arrival
and requested coordinates for landing. There should have been a crisp
description of the direction from the planet's center at which, a
certain time so many hours or minutes later, the force-fields of the
grid would find it convenient to lock onto and lower the Med Ship. But
the communicator remained silent.

"There is a landing-grid," said Calhoun, frowning, "and if they're using
it to load fresh meat for Dara, from the herds I'm told about, it should
be manned. But they don't seem to intend to answer. Maybe they think
that if they pretend I'm not here I'll go away."

He reflected, and his frown deepened.

"If I didn't know what I do know, I might. So if I land on
emergency-rockets the blueskins down below may decide that I come from
Weald. And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before I
could land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship from
Weald would conceivably land without impassioned assurance that it was
safe. It would drop bombs." He turned to the girl. "How many Darians
down below?"

She shook her head.

"You don't know," said Calhoun, "or won't tell, yet. But they ought to
be told about the arrival of that ship at Weald, and what Weald thinks
about it! My guess is that you came to tell them. It isn't likely that
Dara gets news direct from Weald. Where were you put ashore from Dara,
when you set out to be a spy?"

Her lips parted to speak. But she compressed them tightly. She shook her
head again.

"It must have been plenty far away," said Calhoun restlessly. "Your
people would have built a ship, and made fine forged papers for it, and
they'd travel so far from this part of space that when t