he four looked uncomfortable. There was a long pause.

"They could be," said Calhoun detachedly, "cultures to be dumped on
Weald. Weald is making plans to wipe out Dara. So some fool has
decided to get Weald too busy fighting a plague of its own to bother
with you. Is that right?"

The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
in emptiness.

"Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were ordered
to do."

"I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald a
little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"

"But--"

"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
do anything of the kind."

One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and
he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and
reproachfully, "Thought y'were our frien'!"

He collapsed.

Calhoun very soberly tied them hand and foot and laid them out
comfortably on the floor. Maril watched, white-faced, her hand to her
throat. Murgatroyd looked agitated. He said anxiously, "_Chee? Chee?_"

"No," said Calhoun. "They'll wake up presently."

Maril said in a tense and desperate whisper, "You're betraying us!
You're going to take us to Weald!"

"No," said Calhoun. "We'll only orbit around it. First, though, I want
to get rid of those damned packed-up cultures. They're dead, by the
way. I killed them with super-sonics a couple of days ago, while a
fine argument was going on about distance-measurements by variable
Cepheids of known period."

He put the four boxes carefully in th