“The astrogators are coming,” she said swiftly.  “They’ll bring some boxes with them.  They’ll ask you to instruct them so they can handle our ship better.  They lost themselves coming back from Orede.  No, they didn’t lose themselves, but they lost time, enough time almost to make an extra trip for meat.  They need to be experts.  I’m to come along, so they can be sure that what you teach them is what you’ve been doing right along.”

Calhoun said, “Well?”

“They’re crazy!” said Maril vehemently.  “They knew Weald would do something monstrous sooner or later.  But they’re going to try to stop it by being more monstrous sooner!  Not everybody agrees, but there are enough.  So they want to use your ship—­it’s faster in overdrive and so on.  And they’ll go to Weald in this ship and—­they say they’ll give Weald something to keep it busy without bothering us!”

Calhoun said dryly, “This pays me off for being too sympathetic with blueskins!  But if I’d been hungry for a couple of years, and was despised to boot by the people who kept me hungry, I suppose I might react the same way.  No,” he said curtly as she opened her lips to speak again, “don’t tell me the trick.  Considering everything, there’s only one trick it could be.  But I doubt profoundly that it would work.  All right.”

He slid the door back and returned to the control room.  Maril followed him.  He said detachedly, “I’ve been working on a problem outside of the food one.  It isn’t the time to talk about it right now, but I think I’ve solved it.”

Maril turned her head, listening.  There were footsteps on the tarmac outside the ship.  Both doors of the airlock were open.  Four men came in.  They were young men who did not look quite as hungry as most Darians, but there was a reason for that.  Their leader introduced himself and the others.  They were the astrogators of the ship Dara had built to try to bring food from Orede.  They were not, said their self-appointed leader, good enough.  They’d overshot their destination.  They came out of overdrive too far off line.  They needed instruction.

Calhoun nodded, and observed that he’d been asking for them.  They were, of course, blueskins.  On one the only visible disfigurement was a patch of blue upon his wrist.  On another the appearance of a blue birthmark appeared beside his eye and went back and up his temple.  A third had a white patch on his temple, with all the rest of his face a dull blue.  The fourth had blue fingers on one hand.

“We’ve got orders,” said their leader, steadily, “to come on board and learn from you how to handle this ship.  It’s better than the one we’ve got.”

“I asked for you,” repeated Calhoun.  “I’ve an idea I’ll explain as we go along....  Those boxes?”

Someone was passing in iron boxes through the airlock.  One of the four very carefully brought them inside.

“They’re rations,” said a second young man.  “We don’t go anywhere without rations, except Orede.”