Part 14 (1/2)

He collapsed.

Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her throat. ”What have you done to them? Are they dead?”

”No,” said Calhoun, ”just drugged. They'll wake up presently.”

Maril said in a tense and desperate whisper;

”You're--betraying us! You're going to take us to Weald.”

”No,” said Calhoun. ”We'll only orbit around it. First, though, I want to get rid of those d.a.m.ned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the way.

I killed them with supersonics a couple of days ago, while a fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable Cepheids of known period.”

He put the four boxes carefully in the waste-disposal unit. He operated it. The boxes and their contents streamed out to s.p.a.ce in the form of metallic and other vapors. Calhoun sat at the control-desk.

”I'm a Med Service man,” he said detachedly. ”I couldn't cooperate in the spread of plague, anyhow, though a useful epidemic might be another matter. But the important thing right now is not keeping Weald busy with troubles to increase their hatred of Dara. It's getting some food for Dara. And driblets won't help. What's needed is in thousands of tons,--or tens of thousands.” Then he said; ”Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd! Hold fast!”

The universe vanished. The customary unpleasant sensations accompanied the change. Murgatroyd burped.

CHAPTER 6

A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the suns.h.i.+ne. It had ice-caps at its poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas which was so effective in climate control. The Med s.h.i.+p floated free, and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to man.

There was relative silence inside the s.h.i.+p. Maril watched Calhoun in a sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept, still bound hand and foot upon the control-room floor. Murgatroyd regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry forehead wrinkled helplessly.

”They can't have landed what I'm looking for!” protested Calhoun as his search had no result. ”They can't. It would be too sensible for them to have done it!”

Murgatroyd said ”_Chee!_” in a subdued voice.

”But where the devil did they put them?” demanded Calhoun. ”A polar orbit would be ridiculous! They--” Then he grunted in disgust. ”Oh! Of course! Now, where's the landing-grid?”

He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian landing-grid--mapped in the Sector Directory--against the look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the s.h.i.+p's solar-system drive.

”I wish,” he complained to Maril, ”I wish I could think straight the first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in s.p.a.ce, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit and at what distance will you put it?”

Maril did not answer.

”Obviously,” said Calhoun, ”you'll put it as far as possible from the landing-pattern of s.h.i.+ps coming in to the s.p.a.ce-port. You'll put it on the opposite side of the planet. And you'll want it to stay out of the way, where anybody can know it is at any time of the day or night without having to calculate anything. So you'll put it out in orbit so it will revolve around Weald in exactly one day, neither more or less, and you'll put it above the equator. And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the landing-grid and directly over the equator.”

He scribbled for a moment.

”Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few hundred, and--here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!”

He grumbled to himself. He waited while the solar-system drive pushed the Med s.h.i.+p a quarter of the way around the bright planet below. The sunset line vanished and the planet's disk became a complete circle.

Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating satisfaction.

Again presently he abandoned instrument-control and peered directly out of a port, handling the solar-system drive with great care. Murgatroyd said depressedly;