hips that went various
roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be
done there to--" He stopped. "When did you find out positively that
there wasn't any plague any more?"

She began to grow pale.

"I'm not a mind reader," said Calhoun. "But it adds up. You're from
Dara. You've been on Weald. It's practically certain that there are
other ... agents, if you like that word better, on Weald. And there
hasn't been a plague on Weald so you people aren't carriers of it. But
you knew it in advance, I think. How'd you learn? Did a ship in some
sort of trouble land there, on Dara?"

"Y--yes," said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the people
didn't catch--they didn't die. They lived--"

She stopped short.

"It's not fair to trap me!" she cried passionately. "It's not fair!"

"I'll stop," said Calhoun.

He turned to the control board. The Med Ship was only planetary
diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining
stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous
shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy
color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and
forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and
squinted at it.

"The mine," he observed, "was found by members of a hunting party,
killing wild cattle for sport."

Even a small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and
a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find
by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for
sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So
if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate
zone.

Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine
would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be
near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle
would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate.

Forested areas could be ruled out. And there would be a landing-grid.
Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It
could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high.
But its shadow would be distinctive.

Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a
temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the
mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which
cast a long, lac