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Then he said longingly, "I'm about to catch up on some sleep." Maril rose and went into the other cabin. He settled down into the chair and fell instantly asleep. For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship.
His mind was filled with strictly professional considerations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely a source of information. "So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating questions you want to ask?" He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully; "I'm stupid, Maril, but you're touchy. There's nothing personal." "There is to me!" she said fiercely.
Maril was interviewed repeatedly, as the person best able to discuss him, and she did his reputation no harm. That was all that happened on Dara.... No. There was something else. A very curious thing, too. There was a spread of mild symptoms which nobody could exactly call a disease. They lasted only a few hours.
Murgatroyd climbed up into Calhoun's lap and with a determined air went to sleep there. Calhoun disturbed him long enough to get an instrument out of his pocket. He listened to Murgatroyd's heartbeat with it while Murgatroyd dozed. "Maril," he said. "Write down something for me. The time, and ninety-six, and one-twenty over ninety-four." She obeyed, not comprehending.
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!
But when contact and, in a fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer, prospects seemed less bright. Calhoun had definite plans, now, but there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated. Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock. "I've got things lined up," he told Maril, "if only they work out.
In fact, in the Med ship hurtling through space, on the fourth day of his journey he thought of an improvement that could be made in the sum of all those happenings when they were put together. He landed on Dara. Maril came to the Med Ship. Murgatroyd greeted her with enthusiasm. "Something unusual has happened," said Maril, very much subdued.
Maril protested fiercely, and her testimony agreed with Calhoun's in every respect, but from a blueskin viewpoint their own statements were damning. Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only semiskilled space pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
And you'd better not show yourself in public. You've been well fed. You'll be hated for that." Maril began to cry. Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, "Chee! Chee!" Calhoun held him close. There was confusion. And Calhoun found the Minister of Health at hand. He looked most harried of all the officials gathered to question Calhoun. He proposed that he get a look at the hospital situation right away.
There was confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not ready. The grid, too, was on the planet's night side. Presently the ship was locked onto by the grid's force-fields. It went downward. Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each other, until the ship actually touched ground.
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