Part 17 (1/2)

But a Med s.h.i.+p man would also have known that it was simply one of those scrupulous precautions a Med s.h.i.+p man takes when using cultures from store.

Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back and offered no explanation. She said;

”I'll fix lunch.” She hesitated. ”You brought some food from the first Weald s.h.i.+p. Do you want it?”

He shook his head.

”I'm squeamish,” he admitted. ”The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault.

Before my time, but still--I'll stick to rations until everybody eats.”

He watched her un.o.btrusively as the day went on. Presently he considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily. He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of probability increased one's chance of winning.

By midnight, s.h.i.+p-time, she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly.

Calhoun was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med s.h.i.+p should arrive off Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the other cabin.

Calhoun wrote up the log. He added the notes that Maril had made for him, of Murgatroyd's pulse and blood-pressure after the injection of the same culture that produced fever and thirstiness in himself and later--without contact with him or the culture--in Maril. He put a professional comment at the end.

”The culture seems to have retained its normal characteristics during long storage in the spore state. It revived and reproduced rapidly. I injected .5 cc under my skin and in less than one hour my temperature was 30.8C. An hour later it was 30.9C. This was its peak. It immediately returned to normal. The only other observable symptom was slightly increased thirst. Blood-pressure and pulse remained normal. The other person in the Med s.h.i.+p displayed the same symptoms, in prompt and complete repet.i.tion, without physical contact.”

He went to sleep, with Murgatroyd curled up in his cubbyhole.

The Med s.h.i.+p broke out of overdrive at 1300 hours, s.h.i.+p time. Calhoun made contact with the grid and was promptly lowered to the ground.

It was almost two hours later--1500 hours s.h.i.+p-time--when the people of Dara were informed by broadcast that Calhoun was publicly to be executed; immediately.

CHAPTER 7

From the viewpoint of Darians, the decision of Calhoun's guilt and the decision to execute him were reasonable enough. Maril protested fiercely, and her testimony agreed with Calhoun's in every respect, but from a blueskin viewpoint their own statements were d.a.m.ning.

Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to s.p.a.ce. They were the only semi-skilled s.p.a.ce-pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.

Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there he had instructed them in modern guidance-methods for s.h.i.+ps of s.p.a.ce. So far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more competent pilots; more capable of driving a s.h.i.+p to Orede, for example, to raid the enormous cattle-herds there. And he'd had them drive the Med s.h.i.+p to Weald, against which there could be no objection.

But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots off separately--so he and Maril claimed--in huge s.h.i.+ps crammed with grain.

But those s.h.i.+ps were not to be believed in, anyhow. n.o.body on Dara could imagine stores of food bought up and stored away because it was useless; to keep up prices. n.o.body believed in s.h.i.+ploads of grain to be had for the taking. They did know that the only four partially experienced s.p.a.ce-pilots on Dara had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent out of the s.h.i.+p after they'd been drugged. Had they been trained, and had they been helped or even permitted to sow the seeds of plague on Weald, and had they come back prepared to pa.s.s on training to other men to handle other s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps now feverishly being built in hidden places on Dara,--why--then Dara might have a chance of survival. But a s.p.a.ce-battle with only partly trained pilots would be hazardous at best.

With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So Calhoun, by his own story, appeared to have doomed every living being on Dara to ma.s.sacre from the bombs of Weald.

It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing in such fairy-tale objects as s.h.i.+ps loaded down with grain. Calhoun had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some s.h.i.+ps and could build or buy others faster than Dara could hope to construct them.

Equally important, Weald had a plenitude of experienced s.p.a.cemen to man some s.h.i.+ps fully and train the crews of others. If it had become desperately busy fighting plague, then a fleet to exterminate life on Dara would be delayed. Dara might have gained time at least to build s.h.i.+ps which could ram their enemies and destroy them that way.

But Calhoun had made it impossible. If he told the truth and Weald already had a fleet of huge s.h.i.+ps which only needed to be emptied of grain and filled with guns and men--why--Dara was doomed. But if he did not tell the truth it was equally doomed by his actions. So Calhoun would be killed.

His execution was to take place in the open s.p.a.ce of the landing-grid, with vision-cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin planet.

Half-starved men, with grisly blue blotches on their skins, marched him to the center of the largest level s.p.a.ce on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions.