ctron microscope to do it, but he found a virus in the blue
patches which matched the type discovered on Tralee.

The Tralee viruses had effects which were passed on from mother to
child, and heredity had been charged with the observed results of
quasi-living viral particles. And then Calhoun very, very carefully
introduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in a
plastic cube. He watched what happened.

He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he yawned and
yawned and barely managed to stagger off to bed. The watching guard in
the Med Ship watched him in amazement.

That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloody
carcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning
Maril came back. There were shadows under her eyes and her expression
was of someone who has lost everything that had meaning in her life.

"I'm all right," she insisted, when Calhoun commented. "I've been
visiting my family. I've seen Korvan. I'm quite all right."

"You haven't eaten any better than I have," Calhoun observed.

"I couldn't!" admitted Maril. "My sisters, my little sisters so
thin.... There's rationing for everybody and it's all efficiently
arranged. They even had rations for me. But I couldn't eat! I gave
most of my food to my sisters and they--they squabbled over it!"

Calhoun said nothing. There was nothing to say. Then she said, in a no
less desolate tone, "Korvan said I was foolish to come back."

"He could be right," said Calhoun.

"But I had to!" protested Maril. "And now I--I've been eating all I
wanted to, in Weald and in the ship, and I'm ashamed because they're
half-starved and I'm not. And when you see what hunger does to
them.... It's terrible to be half-starved and not able to think of
anything but food!"

"I hope," said Calhoun, "to do something about that. If I can get hold
of an astrogator or two--"

"The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told him
shakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one load's not enough to
make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us on
Orede, we daren't go back for more meat."

She said abruptly, "There are some prisoners. They were miners. They
were crowded out of the ship. The Darians who'd stampeded the cattle
took them prisoners. They had to!"

"True," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't have been wise to leave Wealdians
around on Orede with their throats cut. Or living, either, to tell