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But he and all the men on the ship were still crazy with panic from the gas they kept breathing until they died!" Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked, "You don't think the Darians intended to kill?" "I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always urging the police to use panic gas in case of public tumult. But it's too dangerous.
He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly heavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two space-suits and a curious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside the face-plate, and said briskly; "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it, will you Maril?" He began to work his way out of his vacuum-suit. "Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled and provisioned.
If I can make somebody on Dara listen, which is unlikely, and follow my advice, which they probably won't; and if Weald doesn't get the ideas it probably will get; and isn't doing what I suspect it is why, maybe something can be done." "I'm sure you'll do your best," said Maril politely. Calhoun managed to grin. He watched the clock.
She was at that age when girls and men of corresponding type can grow most passionately devoted to ideals or causes in default of a promising personal romance. When concerned with such causes they become splendidly confident that whatever they decide to do is sensible if only it is dramatic. But Maril was shaken, now. Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way.
"Everything seems worse. Even the lights." "Using all the power," said the driver, "to warm up ground to grow crops where it ought to be winter. Not doing too well, either." Calhoun knew, somehow, that Maril moistened her lips. "I was sent," she explained to the driver, "to go ashore on Trent and then make my way to Weald. I mailed reports of what I found out back to Trent.
Calhoun set the apparatus with great exactitude. "This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I can rest." Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med Ship. The girl Maril may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in a chair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable of sleeping-places.
But he looked at Maril with respect. Not every woman could have faced the fact that a man did not feel impelled to make passes at her. It is simply a fact that has nothing to do with desirability or charm or anything else. "You're going to marry him," he said. "I hope you'll be very happy." "He's the man I want," said Maril frankly. "He looks forward to splendid discoveries.
When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee with tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers, Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed. "I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like other people. Toward me, for example.
Calhoun had presented them with that estate over their bitter objection. But they would glory in it, if they reached Dara. Maril looked at him with very strange eyes. "Now what?" she asked. "We hang around," said Calhoun, "to see if anybody comes up from Weald to find out what's happened. It's always possible to pick up a sort of signal when a ship goes into overdrive.
Even as he helped and urged Maril onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it panic gas. Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting. Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering terror.
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