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And if Weald thinks it finds proof that blueskins are in space again and caused the death of Wealdians it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombs on Dara to wipe it out!" Maril said fiercely; "They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker than starvation, at least!" Calhoun looked at her more exasperatedly than before. "It is a crop failure again?" he demanded.
By midnight, ship-time, she'd learned the game and played it absorbedly. Calhoun was able to scrutinize her without appearing to do so, and he was satisfied again. When he mentioned that the Med Ship should arrive off Dara in eight hours more, she put the cards away and went into the other cabin. Calhoun wrote up the log.
Two hours after the first ship, a second landed. Dara went wild again. Four hours later still, the third arrived. The fourth came down on the following day. Then Calhoun faced the executive and cabinet of Dara for the second time. His tone and manner were very dry. "Now," he said curtly, "I would like a few more astrogators to train.
"And," he finished wrily, "I brought back an emergency supply of ship-provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough to feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving." Maril said; "But there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!" He gaped at her. "What do you think we're here for?" He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness.
Spain was among the first of his objective points, in the proud memory of his descent from the Spanish nobles who, driven out of Spain in the fifteenth century, went over to Venice, and changed the name belonging to the House of Dara to that of D'Israeli, the sons of Israel a cognomen never borne by any other family and remained there for two hundred years, going to England only when, Venice falling into decay, it was necessary to go where they could live in safety.
A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid enclosure. The groundcar 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!"
They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and affection, minutes since they'd thirsted for his blood. Two hours after the first ship, a second landed. Dara went wild again. Four hours later still, the third arrived.
Heman, Calcol, and Dara, though men of great talent, were not prophets, whereas uneducated countrymen, nay, even women, such as Hagar, Abraham's handmaid, were thus gifted. Nor is this contrary to ordinary experience and reason.
"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.
With no trained pilots at all, it would be hopeless. So Calhoun, by his own story, appeared to have doomed every living being on Dara to massacre from the bombs of Weald. It was this last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance.
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