He scribbled for a moment.

“Which means forty-two thousand miles high, give or take a few hundred, and—­here!  And I was hunting for it in a close-in orbit!”

He grumbled to himself.  He waited while the solar-system drive pushed the Med Ship a quarter of the way around the bright planet below.  The sunset line vanished and the planet’s disk became a complete circle.  Then Calhoun listened to the monitor earphones again, and grunted once more, and changed course, and presently made a noise indicating satisfaction.

He abandoned instrument control and peered directly out of a port, handling the solar system drive with great care.  Murgatroyd said depressedly, “Chee!”

“Stop worrying,” commanded Calhoun.  “We haven’t been challenged, and there is a beacon transmitter at work, just to make sure that nobody bumps into what we’re looking for.  It’s a great help, because we do want to bump, but gently.”

Stars swung across the port out of which he looked.  Something dark appeared, and then straight lines and exact curvings.  Even Maril, despairing and bewildered as she was, caught sight of something vastly larger than the Med Ship, floating in space.  She stared.  The Med Ship maneuvered very cautiously.  She saw another large object.  A third.  A fourth.  There seemed to be dozens of them.

They were spaceships, huge by comparison with Aesclipus Twenty.  They floated as the Med Ship did.  They did not drive.  They were not in formation.  They were not at even distances from each other.  They did not point in the same direction.  They swung in emptiness like derelicts.

Calhoun jockeyed his small ship with infinite care.  Presently there came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound.  The appearance out the vision port became stationary, but still unbelievable.  The Med Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast surface of welded metal.

Calhoun relaxed.  He opened a wall panel and brought out a vacuum suit.  He began briskly to get it on.

“Things moving smoothly,” he commented.  “We weren’t challenged.  So it’s extremely unlikely that we were spotted.  Our friends on the floor ought to begin to come to shortly.  And I’m going to find out now whether I’m a hero or in sure-enough trouble!”

Maril said drearily, “I don’t know what you’ve done, except—­”

Calhoun blinked at her, in the act of hauling the vacuum suit up his chest and over his shoulders.

“Isn’t it self-evident?” he demanded.  “I’ve been giving astrogation lessons to these characters.  I certainly didn’t do it to help them dump germ-cultures on Weald!  I brought them here!  Don’t you see the point?  These are space ships.  They’re in orbit around Weald.  They’re not manned and they’re not controlled.  In fact, they’re nothing but sky-riding storage bins!”

He seemed to consider the explanation complete.  He wriggled his arms into the sleeves and gloves of the suit.  He slung the air tanks over his shoulder and hooked them to the suit.