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Updated: May 5, 2025
There's not a ship now aloft, which has been aground today, which hasn't from one to fifteen Darians no longer blueskins on board." The admiral roared. Then his face turned gray. "You can't take your fleet back to Weald," said Calhoun gently, "if you believe its crews have been exposed to carriers of the Dara plague. You wouldn't be allowed to land, anyhow."
The chief executive said comfortably, "The idea's been proposed. It's good politics to urge it, but it would be foolish to carry it out. People vote against blueskins. Wipe them out, and where'd you be?" Calhoun ground his teeth quietly. There were more speeches. Then a messenger, white-faced, arrived with a written note for the chief executive. He read it and passed it to Calhoun.
There are always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence of one that's making blueskin no longer a word with any meaning." "Remarkable!" said Calhoun. "Did you do it?" asked Maril. "Did you start a harmless epidemic that wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?" Calhoun said in feigned astonishment, "How can you think such a thing, Maril?"
In all our history you are the first people from outside our borders who have ever stepped a foot in our land. We do not hate you, as you say the Blueskins do, nor are we savage or cruel, but we do not want you here, and I am really puzzled what to do with you." "Isn't there a law to cover this case?" asked Coralie. "If not," said the woman, "you must make a law. It is your duty."
But there was plenty of mention of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to see which political party could promise the most complete protection against blueskins. After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung the Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around which Dara rolled. He said; "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"
This servant was not so long-legged as Ghip-Ghisizzle, and his head was thicker and his nose flatter. But that pleased the Boolooroo all the more. He realized that when the great knife had sliced the prisoners in two and their halves were patched together, they would present a ridiculous sight and all the Blueskins would laugh at them and avoid them.
"Our hatred of Dara," he said, again ironically, "has produced one thing. Roughly halfway between here and Dara there's a two-planet solar system, Orede. There's a usable planet there. It was proposed to build an outpost of Weald there, against blueskins. Cattle were landed to run wild and multiply and make a reason for colonists to settle there.
He can't be brought back to Weald without bringing contagion." Calhoun raged at him. There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Weald spaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popular because Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily, where blueskins might be involved.
"Yes," said the Queen, "but how does that apply to these strangers?" "Why, being in the Pink Country, as they surely are, and not being Blueskins, they are by this Law entitled to protection, to a home and good living. The Law does not say 'Pinkies, it says any who are in the Pink Country."
"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating questions you want to ask?" He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully, "I'm stupid, Maril, but you're touchy. There's nothing personal " "There is to me!" she said fiercely. "I was born among blueskins, and they're of my blood, and they're hated and I'd have been killed on Weald if I'd been known as ... what I am!
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