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Updated: May 20, 2025
It was from the Ministry of Health. The spaceport reported that a ship had just broken out from overdrive within the Wealdian solar system. Its tape-transmitter had automatically signaled 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.
He saw his guest's eyes shine a little with that joyous awe a man feels when he finds out something he has wanted long and badly to know. "Now," said Calhoun, "tell me something? Why does everybody on this planet hate the inhabitants of Dara? It's light-years away. Nobody claims to have suffered in person from them. Why make a point of hating them?" The Wealdian doctor grimaced.
But the stolen fleet was the only means by which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it might be dangerous. Hours passed. The Wealdian main fleet waited. There was no offensive movement by the fleet. There was no defensive action from the ground.
They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turn out fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for an anti-blueskin crusade.
There was strident argument. Presently Calhoun stood before the Wealdian admiral. "I came to explain something," said Calhoun pleasantly. "The situation has changed. You've noticed it, I'm sure." The admiral glared at him through two layers of plastic, which covered him almost like a gift-wrapped parcel. "Be quick!" he rasped. "First," said Calhoun, "there are no more blueskins.
Some hung eagerly around the airlocks of ships on the grid tarmac, waiting their turns to stand in corrosive gases for the decontamination of their suits, when they would burn the outer layers and step, aseptic and happy, into a Wealdian ship again. There they could think how rich they were going to be back on Weald. But the situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous.
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