ars went out and the universe reeled and the
Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signal
could come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be no
sound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.

Calhoun yawned again.

"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily,
"and I'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on
Dara. It's one way not to feel hungry. And one dreams such delicious
meals! But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara."

Maril said tensely, "You're going back? After they took the ship from
you?"

"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,
and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing as
a blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got
to do something to make sure there are no more famines."

She looked at him oddly.

"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."

"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I didn't get
much sleep on the way here, while running a seminar on astrogation. I
think I'll take a nap."

She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leave
him alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let a
Med Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,
turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantly
asleep.

For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very
far away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads of
grain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each
great ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.

Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to
their stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion had
been explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to be
counted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but
the tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible created
things.

It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it
was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the
human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of
the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone
with no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.

On