Maril greeted him with great reserve. They breakfasted.
"I've been thinking," said Maril evenly. "I think I can get you a hearing for—whatever ideas you may have to help Dara."
"Kind of you," murmured Calhoun. "May I ask whose influence you'll exert?"
"There's a man," said Maril reservedly, "who—thinks a great deal of me. I don't know his present official position, but he was certain to become prominent. I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your attitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help you, I'm sure."
"Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan."
She started.
"How did you know?"
"Intuition," said Calhoun drily. "All right. I'll count on him."
But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day and all the next. The girl remained quiet.
On the ship-day after, the time for breakfast approached. And while the ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look forward with confidence to the future. But when contact and—in a fashion—conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer, prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated! Weald's political leaders could not oppose hysterical demands for action against blueskins, after a deathship arrived with no signs whatever of blueskins as responsible for its cargo of corpses. It was certain that a starving Dara would tend to desperate and fatal measures against hereditary enemies.
Calhoun sat down at the control-board and watched the clock.
"I've got things lined up," he told Maril wrily, "if only they work out. If I can make somebody on Dara listen and follow my advice and if Weald doesn't get ideas and isn't doing what I suspect it is, maybe something can be done."
"I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely.
Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the ship-clock. There was no sensation attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end. It was now time for the end. He might find that absolutely anything had happened while he made plans which would immediately be seen to be hopeless. Weald could have sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of desperation that ...
As it turned out, Dara was desperate. The Med Ship came out nearly a light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved. Calhoun went into a short hop toward it. Then Dara was on the other side of the blazing yellow star. It took time to reach it. He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for coördinates so his ship could be brought to ground. There was confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward without incident.
Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each other, until the ship actually touched ground.
Then he opened the exit-port, and faced armed men in the darkness, with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained on the Med Ship itself.
"Come out!" rasped a voice. "If you try anything you get blasted! Your ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!"
CHAPTER 5
It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were cadaverous. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their cheeks were hollow. They were emaciated. And there were the splotches of pigment of which Calhoun had heard. The leader of the truculent group was blue, except for two fingers which in the glaring illumination seemed whiter than white.
"Out!" said that man savagely. "We're taking over your stock of food. You'll get your share of it, like everybody else, but—out!"
Maril spoke over Calhoun's shoulder. She uttered a cryptic sentence or two. It should have amounted to identification, but there was skepticism in the the armed party.
"Oh, you're one of us, eh?" said the guard-leader sardonically. "You'll have a chance to prove that! Come out of there!"
Calhoun spoke abruptly;
"This is a Med Ship," he said. "There are medicines and bacterial cultures, inside it. They shouldn't be meddled with. Here on Dara you've had enough of plagues!"
The man with the blue hand said as sardonically as before;
"I said the government was taking over your ship! It won't be looted. But you're not taking a full cargo of food away! In fact, it's not likely you're leaving!"
"I want to speak to someone in authority," snapped Calhoun. "We've just come from Weald." He felt bristling hatred all about him as he named Weald. "There's tumult there. They're talking about dropping fusion bombs here. It's important that I talk to somebody with the authority to take a few sensible precautions!"
He descended to the ground. There was a panicky "Chee! Chee!" from behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling apprehensively to his neck.
"What's that?"
"A tormal," said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship tormal and he stays with me!"
The man with the blue hand said harshly;
"There's somebody waiting to ask you questions. Here!"
A ground-car came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid enclosure. The ground-car ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.
"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"
The ground-car was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of the grid. It rolled out under them and there was paved highway. It picked up speed.
There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed lights. This was night-time, and the men at the landing-grid had set a pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair. The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds, and the ground-car needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other depressing things could be seen. Untidiness. Buildings not kept up to perfection. Evidences of apathy. The road hadn't been cleaned lately. There was litter here and there.
Even the fact that there were no stars added to the feeling of wretchedness and gloom and—ultimately—of hunger.
Maril spoke nervously to the driver.
"The famine isn't any better?"
He moved his head in negation, but did not speak.
"I left—two years ago," said Maril. "It was just beginning then. Rationing hadn't started then—."
The driver said evenly;
"There's rationing now!"
The car went on and on. A vast open space appeared ahead. Lights about its perimeter seemed few and pale.
"E-everything seems—worse. Even the lights."
"Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow crops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either."
Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips.
"I—was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent and then make my way to Weald. I—mailed reports of what I found out back to Trent. Somebody got them back to here whenever—it was possible."