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Updated: May 12, 2025
"With only dead men on board, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid could bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken living men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They might ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on Weald if they were found to be plague victims. So that would be no good, either!
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.
The landing-field force-field locked on to it, and its descent began. The business of landing was all very familiar, from the blue rim which appeared at the limb of the planet from one diameter out, to the singular flowing-apart of the surface features as the ship sank still lower. There was the circular landing-grid, rearing skyward for nearly a mile.
And there would be a landing-grid. Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It need be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high. But its shadow would be distinctive. Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it many-fold, and it was the mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings.
And there would be a landing-grid. Handling only one ship at a time, it might be a very small grid. It could be only hundreds of yards across and less than half a mile high. But its shadow would be distinctive. Calhoun searched among low mountains near unforested prairie in a temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings.
There were a hundred blasters which would fire upon him at the same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be destroyed. He would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon him. His death was remarkably close. Nothing remained but the order to fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything.
They'd come from Weald in the cargo-holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships. The scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet, of all that they might see before they were shot down. They found the landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship, Aesclipus Twenty. They searched here and there.
So Calhoun would be killed. His execution was to take place in the open space of the landing-grid, with vision cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin planet. Half-starved men with grisly blue blotches on their skins, marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions.
He'd had minor troubles before with landing-grid operators in Sector Twelve. So he was very patient. He named the planet last inspected, the one from which he'd set out for Weald Three. The voice from the communicator said sharply: "What port before that?" Calhoun named the one before the last. "Don't drive any closer," said the voice harshly, "or you'll be destroyed!"
The last of the four chartered space-liners, come to take refugees away before the Mekinese arrived, saw the disappearance of the ships in the rear of the fleet's formation. The liner was lowered to the ground by the landing-grid. It reported what it had seen. Those who were entitled to depart on it crowded aboard. With the fleet gone, panic began.
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