“Nobody has,” growled another man still.  “But here’s this man Calhoun.  I’m not convinced he can work magic, but we can find out if he lies.  Put a guard on his ship.  Otherwise let our health men give him his head.  They’ll find out if he’s from this Medical Service he tells of! and this Maril....”

“I can be identified,” said Maril.  “I was sent to gather information and send it in secret writing to one of us on Trent.  I have a family here.  They’ll know me!  And I—­there was someone who was working on foods, and I believe he made it possible to use ... all sorts of vegetation for food.  He will identify me.”

Someone laughed harshly.

Maril swallowed.

“I’d like to see him,” she repeated.  “And my family.”

Some of the blue-splotched men turned away.  A broad-shouldered man said bluntly, “Don’t look for them to be glad to see you.  And you’d better not show yourself in public.  You’ve been well fed.  You’ll be hated for that.”

Maril began to cry.  Murgatroyd said bewilderedly, “Chee!  Chee!”

Calhoun held him close.  There was confusion.  And Calhoun found the Minister of Health at hand.  He looked most harried of all the officials gathered to question Calhoun.  He proposed that he get a look at the hospital situation right away.

It wasn’t practical.  With all the population on half rations or less, when night came people needed to sleep.  Most people, indeed, slept as many hours out of the traditional twenty-four as they could manage.  It was much more pleasant to sleep than to be awake and constantly nagged at by continued hunger.

And there was the matter of simple decency.  Continuous gnawing hunger had an embittering effect upon everyone.  Quarrelsomeness was a common experience.  And people who would normally be the leaders of opinion felt shame because they were obsessed by thoughts of food.  It was best when people slept.

Still, Calhoun was in the hospitals by daybreak.  What he found moved him to savage anger.  There were too many sick children.  In every case undernourishment contributed to their sickness.  And there was not enough food to make them well.  Doctors and nurses denied themselves food to spare it for their patients.  And most of that self-denial was doubtless voluntary, but it would not be discreet for anybody on Dara to look conspicuously better fed than his fellows.

Calhoun brought out hormones and enzymes and medicaments from the Med Ship while the guard in the ship looked on.  He demonstrated the processes of synthesis and auto-catalysis that enabled such small samples to be multiplied indefinitely.  He was annoyed by a clamorous appetite.  There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody was half-fed, or less.  They approved of Calhoun.  They even approved of Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function.