On the ship-day after, the time for breakout approached.  While the ship was practically a world all by itself, it was easy to look forward with confidence to the future.  But when contact and, in a fashion, conflict with other and larger worlds loomed nearer, prospects seemed less bright.  Calhoun had definite plans, now, but there were so many ways in which they could be frustrated.

Calhoun sat down at the control board and watched the clock.

“I’ve got things lined up,” he told Maril, “if only they work out.  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.  There was no sensation attached to overdrive travel except at the beginning and the end.  It was now time for the end.  He might find most anything having happened.  His plans might immediately be seen to be hopeless.  Weald could have sent ships to Dara, or Dara might be in such a state of desperation....

As it turned out, Dara was desperate.  The Med Ship came out nearly a light-month from the sun about which the planet Dara revolved.  Calhoun went into a short hop toward it.  Then Dara was on the other side of the blazing yellow star.  It took time to reach it.

He called down, identifying himself and the ship and asking for coordinates so his ship could be brought to ground.  There was confusion, as if the request were so unusual that the answers were not ready.  The grid, too, was on the planet’s night side.  Presently the ship was locked onto by the grid’s force-fields.  It went downward.

Calhoun saw that Maril sat tensely, twisting her fingers within each other, until the ship actually touched ground.

Then he opened the exit port—­and faced armed men in the darkness, with blast-rifles trained on him.  There was a portable cannon trained on the Med Ship itself.

“Come out!” rasped a voice.  “If you try anything you get blasted!  Your ship and its contents are seized by the planetary government!”

* * * * *

5

It seemed that the smell of hunger was in the air.  The armed men were emaciated.  Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the ground.  Calhoun’s captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung loosely upon them.  Where the lights struck upon their faces, their cheeks were hollow.  They were cadaverous.  And there were the splotches of pigment of which Calhoun had heard.

The man nearest the Med Ship’s port had a monstrous, irregular dull-blue marking over half of one side of his face and up upon his forehead.  The man next to him had a blue throat.  The next man again was less marked, but his left ear was blue and there was what seemed a splashing of the same color on the skin under his hair.