“What?”

“It’ll be regrettable,” said Calhoun.  He was suddenly very tired.  “It’ll spoil any chance of our coming back and stealing some more food, like interstellar mice.  If they find out what we’ve done they’ll expect us to try it again.  They might get set to fight.  Or they might simply land the rest of these ships.”

“If I’d realized what you were about,” said Maril, “I’d have joined in the lessons.  I could have piloted a ship.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted to,” said Calhoun.  He yawned.  “You wouldn’t want to be a heroine.  No normal girl does.”

“Why?”

“Korvan,” said Calhoun.  He yawned again.  “I’ve asked about him.  He’s been trying very desperately to deserve well of his fellow blueskins.  All he’s accomplished is develop a way to starve painlessly.  He wouldn’t feel comfortable with a girl who’d helped make starving unnecessary.  He’d admire you politely, but he’d never marry you.  And you know it.”

She shook her head, but it was not easy to tell whether she denied the reaction of Korvan, whom Calhoun had never met, or denied that he was more important to her than anything else.  The last was what Calhoun plainly implied.

“You don’t seem to be trying to be a hero!” she protested.

“I’d enjoy it,” admitted Calhoun, “but I have a job to do.  It’s got to be done.  It’s more important than being admired.”

“You could take another ship back,” she told him.  “It would be worth more to Dara than the Med Ship is!  And then everybody would realize that you’d planned everything.”

“Ah,” said Calhoun, “but you’ve no idea how much this ship matters to Dara!”

He seated himself at the controls.  He slipped headphones over his ears.  He listened.  Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave lengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald.  There was no mention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft.  There was no mention of the ships at all.  There was plenty of mention of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to see which political party could promise the most complete protection against blueskins.

After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung the Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around which Dara rolled.  He said, “Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!”

Murgatroyd grabbed.  The stars went out and the universe reeled and the Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own, into which no signal could come, no danger could enter, and in which there could be no sound except those minute ones made to prevent silence.

Calhoun yawned again.

“Now there’s nothing to be done for a day or two,” he said wearily, “and I’m beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on Dara.  It’s one way not to feel hungry.  And one dreams such delicious meals!  But looking hungry is a social requirement, on Dara.”