“And now,” said Calhoun, “I suppose you’ll tell me the truth about those boxes you brought on board.  You said they were rations, but they haven’t been opened in six days.  I have an idea what they mean, but you tell me.”

The 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 the disposal unit.  He operated it.  The boxes and their contents streamed out to space in the form of metallic and other vapors.  Calhoun sat at the control desk.