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Updated: August 12, 2024
It would be too sensible for them to have done it!" Murgatroyd said "Chee!" in a subdued voice. "But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar orbit would be ridiculous! They " Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
And in two days, or three, Calhoun would be escorted back to the landing-grid, and lifted out to space, and he'd spend long empty days in overdrive and land somewhere else to do the whole thing all over again. It all happened exactly as he expected, with one exception. Every human being he met on Weald wanted to talk about blueskins. Blueskins and the idea of blueskins obsessed everyone.
"Don't you believe the blueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Weald and spread plague there?" "No," said Calhoun. "Why?" "It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her. "With only dead men on board, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid could bring it down. So that would be no good.
And therefore In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of Dara, well beyond the atmosphere. Harsh voices talked with increasing arrogance to the landing-grid staff. A monster ship of Weald came heavily down, riding the landing-grid's force-fields. It touched gently. Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they had been assured was theirs.
It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the mountain-tops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an erratic course, lest there be opposition. But there was no sign.
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.
Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the spaceport office. A small space-boat, designed to inspect the circling grain-ships from time, was already aloft. The landing-grid had thrust it swiftly out most of the way. Now it droned and drove on sturdily toward the enigmatic ship.
And then it will remain quite stationary above one spot on the planet, a hundred and eighty degrees longitude away from the landing-grid and directly over the equator." He scribbled for a moment. "Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few hundred, and here! And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!" He grumbled to himself.
But that cover-up had to be completed. Vehicles appeared at the edge of the landing-grid. Bors sent men out with small arms to get their messages. These were the supplies he'd demanded. Food. Rocket-fuel. More food. The vehicles trundled into the open and stopped. Men from the Isis waved away the drivers and took over the trucks. They brought most of them to the ship's side.
Other sectors had been called on to help it catch up. Calhoun was one of the loaned Med Ship men, and because of the emergency he'd been given a list of half a dozen planets to be inspected one after another, instead of reporting back to sector headquarters after each visit. He'd had minor troubles before with landing-grid operators in Sector Twelve. So he was very patient.
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