terials while a space fleet was made ready for an
anti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusion
bombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, no
fish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of the
blueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.

One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed that
no other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar Medical
Service. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it by
broadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which a
planet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.

He did.

So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'd
curtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship had
come. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft until
Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully
cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was
not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.

He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,
"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"

He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,
while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of
dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Then
there was silence.

The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a preposterous number
of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely solid, absolutely
firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as if it were buried
deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no sign
of anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is only
utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make one's eardrums
crack.

But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel and
there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.
The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and
meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all
of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.

Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious
Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go
unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical
affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a
civilization can be destroyed more surely an