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"So the grain ships you've had in orbit have been taken away by men from Dara blueskins if you like to feed themselves and their families. They've been dying of hunger and they don't like it." There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suave voice said waspishly, "Well? The Med Service will hear of your interference!" "Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself.
"If you decide on this adventure," said Rosalie, "I believe I can be of much assistance to you." "That'll help," asserted Cap'n Bill. "And we've one good friend among the Blueskins," said Button-Bright. "Does the book say that?" inquired Trot with interest. "Yes, I've been reading it." "Then Sizzle'll be the new Boolooroo," said the girl, "an' p'raps we won't have to fight, after all."
Some of them soon got ahead of the old sailorman and came to the rope ladder which Trot had left dangling from the stone bench, where it hung down inside the City. The Blue soldiers promptly mounted this ladder and so gained the wall, heading off the fugitive. When Cap'n Bill came up, panting and all out of breath, the Blueskins seized him and held him fast.
"But there's all sorts o' fairies, I've heard. Some is good, an' some is bad, an' if all the Blueskins are like their Boolooroo, they can't be called fust-class." "Don't let me hear any more impudence, prisoners!" called the Boolooroo sternly. "You are already condemned to severe punishment, and if I have any further trouble with you, you are liable to be patched."
But criminal incompetence and its consequences was what Calhoun had been loaned to Sector Twelve to help remedy. He was not at ease, though. No ship arrived from Orede to bear out his account of an attempt to get that lonely world evacuated before Weald discovered it had blueskins on it.
He continued to busy himself with those activities which make Med Ship life consistent with retained sanity. Next day she asked without preliminary, "Don't you believe the blueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Weald and spread plague there?" "No," said Calhoun. "Why?" "It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her.
They used panic-gas on a herd of cattle and it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like the four-footed lunatics they are! And the blueskins used panic-gas on the settlement itself as the cattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.
Then stillness, and solidity, and the blackness outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in overdrive again. After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily, "I don't know what you plan now " "I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know. But this thing's been mishandled!
For a moment the prisoners could not imagine what had happened to them, but presently half a dozen Blueskins, resembling in shape and costume their ruler but less magnificently dressed, stepped in front of them and bowed low to the Boolooroo. "Your orders, most Mighty, Flighty, Tight and Righty Monarch, have been obeyed," said the leader. "Very well, Captain.
It had been observed that the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious metals, but there was more to be taken. More ships came down, and more. Some of the first, heavily loaded, were lifted to emptiness again and the process of decontamination of their hulls began.
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