Calhoun puzzled over it. Nobody could have read the entire Sector
directory, even with unlimited leisure during travel between solar
systems. Calhoun hadn't tried. But now he went laboriously through
indices and cross-references while the ship continued to travel
onward.

He found no other reference to blueskins. He looked up Dara. It was
listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with
a landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a
flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently
added to the entry in some change of editions: "_Since plague, special
license from Med Service is required for landing._"

That was all. Absolutely all.

The communicator said suavely:

"Med Ship _Aesclipus Twenty_! Come in on vision, please!"

Calhoun went to the control board and threw on vision.

"Well, what now?" he demanded.

His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him.

"We have--ah--verified your statements," said the third voice from
Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"

"Of course," said Calhoun, frowning.

"Quite alone?" insisted the voice.

"Obviously!" said Calhoun.

"No other living creature?" insisted the voice again. "Of--oh!" said
Calhoun, annoyed. He called over his shoulder. "Murgatroyd! Come
here!"

Murgatroyd hopped to his lap and gazed interestedly at the screen. The
bland face changed remarkably. The voice changed even more.

"Very good!" it said. "Very, very good! Blueskins do not have
_tormals_! You are Med Service! By all means come in! Your coordinates
will be...."

Calhoun wrote them down. He clicked off the communicator again and
growled to Murgatroyd, "So I might have been a blueskin, eh? And
you're my passport, because only Med Ships have members of your tribe
aboard! What the hell's the matter, Murgatroyd? They act like they
think somebody's trying to get down on their planet with a load of
plague germs!"

He grumbled to himself for minutes. The life of a Med Ship man is not
exactly a sinecure, at best. It means long periods in empty space in
overdrive, which is absolute and deadly tedium. Then two or three days
aground, checking official documents and statistics, and asking
questions to see how many of the newest medical techniques have
reached this planet or that, and the supplying of information about
such as have not arrived.

Then the lifting out to space for long periods of tedium, to repeat
the p