It was a full week before he could go to the little Med Ship and prepare for departure. Even then there were matters to be attended to. All the food-supplies that had been removed could not be replaced. There were biological samples to be replaced and some to be destroyed.
Maril came to the Med Ship again when he was almost ready to leave. She did not seem comfortable.
"I wanted you to meet Korvan," she said regretfully.
"I met him," said Calhoun. "I think he will be a most prominent citizen, in time. He has all the talents for it."
Maril smiled very faintly.
"But you don't admire him."
"I wouldn't say that," protested Calhoun. "After all, he is desirable to you, which is something I couldn't manage."
"You didn't try," said Maril. "Just as I didn't try to be fascinating to you. Why?"
Calhoun spread out his hands. But he looked at Maril with respect. Not every woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelled to make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do with desirability or charm or anything else.
"You're going to marry him," he said. "I hope you'll be very happy."
"He's the man I want," said Maril frankly. "And I doubt he'll ever look at another woman. He looks forward to splendid discoveries. I wish he didn't."
Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said thoughtfully, "There's something you could do. It needs to be done. The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter. But they should be known . . ."
Maril said, "I can guess what you mean. I dropped hints about the way the blueskin markings went away, yes. You've got books for me."
Calhoun nodded. He found them.
"If we had only fallen in love with each other, Maril, we'd be a team! Too bad! These are a wedding present you'll do well to hide."
She put her hands in his.
"I like you almost as much as I like Murgatroyd! Yes! Korvan will never know, and he'll be a great man." Then she added defensively, "But I don't think he'll only discover things from hints I drop him. He'll make wonderful discoveries."
"Of which," said Calhoun, "the most remarkable is you. Good luck, Maril!"
She went away smiling. But she wiped her eyes when she was out of the ship.
Presently the Med Ship lifted. Calhoun aimed it for the next planet on the list of those he was to visit. After this one more he'd return to sector headquarters with a biting report to make on the way things had been handled before him.
"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
Then the stars went out and there was silence, and privacy, and a faint, faint, almost unhearable series of background sounds which kept the Med Ship from being totally unendurable.
Long, long days later the ship broke out of overdrive and Calhoun guided it to a round and sunlit world. In due time he thumbed the communicator button.
"Calling ground," he said crisply. "Calling ground! Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty reporting arrival and asking coordinates for landing. Purpose of landing is planetary health inspection. Our mass is fifty standard tons."
There was a pause while the beamed message went many, many thousands of miles. Then the speaker said, "Aesclipus Twenty, repeat your identification!"
Calhoun repeated it patiently. Murgatroyd watched with bright eyes. Perhaps he hoped to be allowed to have another long conversation with somebody by communicator.
"You are warned," said the communicator sternly, "that any deceit or deception about your identity or purpose in landing will be severely punished. We take few chances, here! If you wish to land notwithstanding this warning—"
"I'm coming in," said Calhoun. "Give me the coordinates."
He wrote them down. His expression was slightly pained. The Med Ship drove on, in solar system drive. Murgatroyd said, "Chee-chee? Chee?"
Calhoun sighed.
"That's right, Murgatroyd. Here we go again!"
Editors' Afterword
To modern science fiction readers, the "dean of science fiction" is a reference to Robert Heinlein. But the phrase was actually first applied to Murray Leinster, and the unofficial title was one he carried for many years.
There were three reasons he enjoyed that accolade.
The first is simply his longevity as a writer. Leinster's first science fiction story, "The Runaway Skyscraper," was published in Argosy magazine in February of 1919. And he continued to publish science fiction stories for half a century thereafter.
The second reason is that Leinster, to a large degree, set the basic parameters for science fiction. He was the first writer—or, at least, the most important one—to establish such fundamental themes as "first contact" and "alternate history" and a number of other basic story lines in the genre.
In fact, in the stories which are collected in this volume, Med Ship, Leinster established the sub-genre of the "science fiction doctor story." That sub-genre, as with so many others which Leinster created, would be explored and expanded on by later writers. Alan Nourse's Star Surgeon and James White's very popular Sector General series are the direct lineal descendants of these stories—as is the current Stardoc series by S.L. Viehl.
The third reason he was called "the dean of science fiction writers," however, is the most important. Without it, the first two would be of only academic interest. Leinster was one of a handful of early science fiction writers who placed telling a story at the center of the stage, not "illustrating science in fiction." He, probably more than any other writer in the first decades of the twentieth century, transformed science fiction into a real genre of fiction. And that is why his work survives, and why we are re-issuing these volumes.
We began with his Med Ship stories, because those are probably the best known of his works to the modern audience. This edition, for the first time, contains all eight of the stories which Leinster wrote in that setting. In the next volume, Planets of Adventure, we will present more of the best stories which Leinster wrote. As the title suggests, these all have a common theme: adventures on other planets.
It seems a fitting title. By and large, it's fair to say that Leinster created that sub-genre also. Granted, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels were already coming into print when Leinster was still a teenager. But Barsoom, although it claims to be Mars, is not really a planet so much as the setting for a fantasy adventure. Leinster's planets—such as the planet on which Burl struggles against giant mutated insects in The Forgotten Planet, or the ones on which Colonial Survey Officer Bordman has his adventures—are those of a science fiction writer, not a fantasist.
In truth, it's hard to think of any branch of science fiction which Murray Leinster didn't pioneer. And write wonderfully entertaining stories in the process.
Think of him as "the dean of science fiction emeritus," if you wish. Or simply, as we do, as one of science fiction's all-time greatest story-tellers.
—Eric Flint
—Guy Gordon
THE END