t."

Maril turned her head, listening. There were footsteps on the tarmac
outside the ship. Both doors of the airlock were open. Four men came
in. They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as most
Darians, but there was a reason for that. Their leader introduced
himself and the others. They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had
built to try to bring food from Orede. They were not, said their
self-appointed leader, good enough. They'd overshot their
destination. They came out of overdrive too far off line. They needed
instruction.

Calhoun nodded, and observed that he'd been asking for them. They
were, of course, blueskins. On one the only visible disfigurement was
a patch of blue upon his wrist. On another the appearance of a blue
birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple. A
third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a
dull blue. The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.

"We've got orders," said their leader, steadily, "to come on board and
learn from you how to handle this ship. It's better than the one we've
got."

"I asked for you," repeated Calhoun. "I've an idea I'll explain as we
go along.... Those boxes?"

Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock. One of the four
very carefully brought them inside.

"They're rations," said a second young man. "We don't go anywhere
without rations, except Orede."

"Orede, yes. I think we were shooting at each other there," said
Calhoun pleasantly. "Weren't we?"

"Yes," said the young man.

He was neither cordial nor antagonistic. He was impassive. Calhoun
shrugged.

"Then we can take off immediately. Here's the communicator and there's
the button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted."

The young man seated himself at the control board. Very
professionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift by
landing-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He
went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him.

"Hold it!"

He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at the
control board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the
doors.

The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found
occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a
training voyage of his own suggestion. Therefore, when the blueskin
pilot would have flung the Med Ship into undirected overdri