“I have a sweetheart there....”

Calhoun shook his head.

“No,” he said reprovingly.  “Nearly all the mining colony had packed itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead.  But not all.  And there’s been no check of what men were in the ship and what men weren’t.  You wouldn’t go to Orede if it were likely your sweetheart had died on the way to you.  Here’s your coffee.  Sugar or saccho, and do you take cream?”

She trembled a little, but she took the cup.

“I don’t understand.”

“Murgatroyd and I,” explained Calhoun—­and he did not know whether he spoke out of anger or something else—­“we are do-gooders.  We go around trying to keep people from getting sick or dying.  Sometimes we even try to keep them from getting killed.  It’s our profession.  We practise it even on our own behalf.  We want to stay alive.  So since you make such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.  Especially since we’re going there anyhow.”

“You don’t believe anything I’ve said!” It was a statement.

“Not a word,” admitted Calhoun.  “But you’ll probably tell us something more believable presently.  When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday.”

“Would you rather do your own cooking?” asked Calhoun politely.  “Or would you permit me to ready a snack?”

“I—­I’ll do it,” she said.

She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted from storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at dialed-for intervals.  There was also equipment for preparing food for oneself, in one’s own chosen manner—­again an item to help make solitude not unendurable.

Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory, looking up the planet Orede.  He was headed there, but he’d had no reason to inform himself about it before.  Now he read with every appearance of absorption.

The girl ate daintily.  Murgatroyd watched with highly amiable interest.  But she looked acutely uncomfortable.

Calhoun finished with the Directory.  He got out the micro-film reels which contained more information.  He was specifically after the Med Service history of all the planets in this sector.  He went through the filmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.

But Sector Twelve had not been run well.  There was no adequate account of a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of an inhabited planet!  It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit, and was over before another Med Ship came by.

There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after the fact.  There should have been a collection of infectious material and a reasonably complete identification and study of the agent.  It hadn’t been made.  There was probably some other emergency at the time, and it slipped by.  Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector, resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and its consequences.