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He pointed to the airlock. Both doors were open. The young man at the control-board flushed vividly. One of the others closed and dogged the doors. The ship lifted. Calhoun watched with seeming negligence. But he found occasion for a dozen corrections of procedure. This was presumably a training voyage of his own suggestion.
He took a sort of forlorn pride in guessing that the thing was some sort of communication-device. There was a board with buttons on it. It might be a control-board, but it didn't look like it. There was a metal box with a transparent plastic front. One could see cryptic shapes of metal inside. Two bright-metal balls mounted on a side-wall.
That was all. Absolutely all. The communicator said suavely; "Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty! Come in on vision, please!" Calhoun went to the control-board and threw on vision. "Well, what now?" he demanded. His screen lighted. A bland face looked out at him. "We have ah verified your statements," said the third voice from Weald. "Just one more item. Are you alone in your ship?"
There was an armed guard in the control-room of the ship. He'd watched Calhoun a good part of the previous day as Calhoun performed his mysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He was bored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control-board, though, he was uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the way into the other cabin and slid the door shut.
We had a comfortably located camp in a wooded canyon, some hundred and thirty miles northeast of the city, with about 500 men, most of whom were bayonet-gunners, 350 girls as long-gunners and control-board operators, 91 control boards and about 250 five-foot, inertron-protected air balls, of which 200 were of the explosive variety.
The sharp click of a switch on the control-board sounded as the imams picked up the little, red-dripping bundles. Silently they threw these into the air and all three dropped back to earth again, just as they had risen. A growl burst, involuntarily, from the Olema's corded throat. The growl echoed through the massed horsemen.
Here's the communicator and there's the button. You might call the grid and arrange for us to be lifted." The young man seated himself at the control-board. Very professionally, he went through the routine of preparing to lift by landing-grid, which routine has not changed in two hundred years. He went briskly ahead until the order to lift. Then Calhoun stopped him. "Hold it!"
"Aesclipus Twenty, repeat your identification!" Calhoun went to the control-board. "Aesclipus Twenty," he said patiently, "is a Med Ship, sent by the Interstellar Medical Service to make a planetary health inspection on Weald. Check with your public health authorities. This is the first Med Ship visit in twelve standard years, I believe, which is inexcusable.
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.
"Y-yes," said the girl. "We wouldn't let it go again. But the people didn't catch they didn't die they lived ." She stopped short. "It's not fair to trap me!" she cried passionately, "It's not fair!" "I'll stop," said Calhoun. He turned to the control-board.
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