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Updated: May 12, 2025
The landing-grid locked on, raised the small space-craft until Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive. He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely; "Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"
Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by the smell of carrion.
There's a Talent," she added, "a young boy who can find people. He doesn't know how he does it, but.... We'll find you!" The ground-car turned in at the fleet's take-off ground. The normal interstellar traffic of a planet, of course, was handled by a spaceport, with ships brought down to ground and lifted out to space again by the force-fields generated in a giant landing-grid.
There was something which cast a long, lacy shadow. The landing-grid. "But they don't answer our call," observed Calhoun, "so we go down unwelcomed." He inverted the Med Ship and the emergency-rockets boomed. The ship plunged planetward. A long time later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry and to reinforce the sound.
He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian landing-grid mapped in the Sector Directory against the look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar-system drive. "I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the first time! And it's so obvious!
The landing-grid had thrust it swiftly out most of the way. Now it droned and drove on sturdily toward the enigmatic ship. Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials and news reporters at the spaceport. But he listened to the talk about him.
Your medical men will know something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship tormal and he stays with me!" The man with the blue hand said harshly; "There's somebody waiting to ask you questions. Here!" A ground-car came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid enclosure.
It began to descend; the landing-grid had locked onto it with projected force-fields and was drawing it down to ground. Bors growled to himself. It was not likely that this ship was the one he'd pursued, sight unseen, since the end of the fight off Meriden. But it was a possibility. If it were true, then everything that mattered to Bors was lost forever. Then a blip appeared.
It was listed as an inhabited planet, some four hundred years colonized, with a landing-grid and, at the time the main notice was written out, a flourishing interstellar commerce. But there was a memo, evidently added to the entry in some change of editions: "Since plague, special license from Med Service is required for landing." That was all. Absolutely all.
They swerved under the landing-grid. They raced and bounced across the clear surface which was the spaceport. There stood a giant, rotund cargo-ship, pointing skyward. There were ground-trucks still supplying cargo for its nearly filled-up holds. The six ground-cars braked, making clouds of dust. And suddenly there was not one or two men in each, but an astonishing number.
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