t blueskins. Sooner or later they'll
search here. Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've
ever been here! Get the hell away, fast! One more warning! There's talk
of fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your
traces, they'll be more scared still! So cover up your tracks
and--get--away--from--here!"

The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. But
it was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, and
it could be heard for miles.

But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time. Then
he shrugged and seated himself at the control-board.

"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they've
out-smarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"

[Illustration]

The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end all
noises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By the
time it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clear
space and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether. He busied himself with
those astrogational chores which began with orienting oneself to
galactic directions after leaving a planet which rotates at its own
individual speed. Then one computes the overdrive course to another
planet, from the respective coordinates of the world one is leaving and
the one one aims for. Then,--in this case at any rate--there was the
very finicky task of picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose
planets one was his destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine
precision.

"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"

Space reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation of
falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity, and
the blackness of the Pit outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in
overdrive again.

After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily.

"I don't know what you plan now--."

"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the
blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know. But
this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine, people shouldn't
do things out of desperation!"

"I know now that I was--very foolish--."

"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I run
into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and cleaned up
generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service obligation, it's a
current mess! Before I could begin to get at the basi