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Updated: July 24, 2025
So a planet-wide habit of non-rational response had formed and was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it. The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede was safe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the ship he'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have been doomed but for Calhoun.
It drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and since it came from Orede, the planet nearest to Dara of the blueskins, the health ministry informed the planet's chief executive. "It'll be blueskins," said that astute person firmly. "They're next door to Orede. That's who's done this.
So if they found a mineral deposit, it would have been in a temperate zone. Cattle would not be found deep in a mountainous terrain. The mine would not be on a prairie. The settlement on Orede, then, would be near the edge of mountains, not far from a prairie such as wild cattle would frequent, and it would be in a temperate climate. Forested areas could be ruled out.
And then Calhoun very, very carefully introduced into a virus culture the material he had been growing in a plastic cube. He watched what happened. He was satisfied, so much so that immediately afterward he barely managed to stagger off to bed. That night the ship from Orede came in, packed with frozen bloody carcasses of cattle. Calhoun knew nothing of it. But next morning Maril came back.
"The ship that was on Orede came in during the night," Maril told him shakily. "It was loaded with frozen meat, but one ship-load's not enough to make a difference on a whole planet! And if Weald hunts for us on Orede, we daren't go back for more meat." She said abruptly; "There are some prisoners. They were miners. They were crowded out of the ship.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight hulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try to steal it could be called stealing some of the innumerable wild cattle of Orede. The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not to hear or maybe they didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed by all of humanity beyond their world.
It was from the Ministry of Health. The space-port reported that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signalled its arrival from the mining-planet Orede. But, having sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space. It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals.
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.
The return of loot, mutual, full, and complete agreement that Darians were no longer carriers of plague, if they had ever been unless Weald convinced other worlds of this, Weald itself would join Dara in isolation from neighboring worlds. A messenger ship had to recall the twenty-seven ships once floating in orbit about Weald. Most of them would be used for some time, to bring beef from Orede.
He worked for a long time. Then he shrugged and gave it up. He'd repeated to absolute tedium the facts that any Darians blueskins on Orede ought to know. There'd been no answer. And it was all too likely that if he'd been received, that those who heard him took his message for a trick to discover if there were any hearers. He clicked off at last and stood up, shaking his head.
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