e was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald
spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular
because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,
where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to react
explosively when the word _blueskin_ was uttered in their hearing, and
its adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness entered
their minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formed
and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.

The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was
safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship
he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been
doomed but for Calhoun.

The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship he
might have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of the
plague still existed, and _if_ the men in the ship had caught it (but
they certainly hadn't died of it), and _if_ there had been blueskins
on Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and _if_
blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the moment
pure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Weald
if he were allowed to return.

Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to its
airlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. The
combination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,
after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, and
air from the ship let into the lock.

If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,
and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outside
by a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd fling
after it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.

Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'd
persuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.

There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had been
unpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzy
those people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated as
a pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not only
the ship from Orede but other incidents which they interpreted as
crimes against Weald.

They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn
out fusion-bomb ma