the silent vessel. It reported that
microphones detected no motion whatever inside.

"Let a volunteer go aboard," commanded the chief executive. "Let him
report what he finds."

A pause. Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer's name,
from far, far away. Calhoun listened, frowning darkly. This pompous
heroism wouldn't be noticed in the Med Service. It would be routine
behavior.

Suspenseful, second-by-second reports. The volunteer had rocketed
himself across the emptiness between the two again separated ships. He
had opened the airlock from outside. He'd gone in. He'd closed the
outer airlock door. He'd opened the inner. He reported--

The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and
incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer. The
ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and
Weald with cargos of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five
men. There was no cargo in her holds now, though.

Instead, there were men. They packed the ship. They filled the
corridors. They had crawled into every space where a man could find
room to push himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity.
And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off
with so preposterous a load of living creatures.

But they weren't living any longer. The air apparatus had been
designed for a crew of five. It would purify the air for possibly
twenty or more. But there were hundreds of men in hiding as well as in
plain view in the cargo ship from Orede. There were many, many times
more than her air apparatus and reserve tanks could possibly have
taken care of. They couldn't even have been fed during the journey
from Orede to Weald.

But they hadn't starved. Air-scarcity killed them before the ship came
out of overdrive.

A remarkable thing was that there was no written message in the ship's
log which referred to its takeoff. There was no memorandum of the
taking on of such an impossible number of passengers.

"The blueskins did it," said the chief executive of Weald. He was
pale. All about Calhoun men looked sick and shocked and terrified. "It
was the blueskins! We'll have to teach them a lesson!" Then he turned
to Calhoun. "The volunteer who went on that ship--he'll have to stay
there, won't he? He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing
contagion."

Calhoun raged at him.

* * * * *

2

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