“Now,” said Calhoun, “tell me something?  Why does everybody on this planet hate the inhabitants of Dara?  It’s light-years away.  Nobody claims to have suffered in person from them.  Why make a point of hating them?”

The Wealdian doctor grimaced.

“They’ve blue patches on their skins.  They’re different from us.  So they can be pictured as a danger and our political parties can make an election issue out of competing for the privilege of defending us from them.  They had a plague on Dara, once.  They’re accused of still having it ready for export.”

“Hm,” said Calhoun.  “The story is that they want to spread contagion here, eh?  Doesn’t anybody”—­his tone was sardonic—­“doesn’t anybody urge that they be massacred as an act of piety?”

“Yes-s-s-s,” admitted the doctor reluctantly.  “It’s mentioned in political speeches.”

“But how’s it rationalized?” demanded Calhoun.  “What’s the argument to make pigment-patches involve moral and physical degradation, as I’m assured is the case?”

“In the public schools,” said the doctor, “the children are taught that blueskins are now carriers of the disease they survived—­three generations ago!  That they hate everybody who isn’t a blueskin.  That they are constantly scheming to introduce their plague here so most of us will die and the rest will become blueskins.  That’s beyond rationalizing.  It can’t be true, but it’s not safe to doubt it.”

“Bad business,” said Calhoun coldly.  “That sort of thing usually costs lives in the end.  It could lead to massacre!”

“Perhaps it has, in a way,” said the doctor unhappily.  “One doesn’t like to think about it.”  He paused.  “Twenty years ago there was a famine on Dara.  There were crop failures.  The situation must have been very bad:  They built a spaceship.

“They’ve no use for such things normally, because no nearby planet will deal with them or let them land.  But they built a spaceship and came here.  They went in orbit around Weald.  They asked to trade for shiploads of food.  They offered any price in heavy metals—­gold, platinum, irridium, and so on.  They talked from orbit by vision communicators.  They could be seen to be blueskins.  You can guess what happened!”

“Tell me,” said Calhoun.

“We armed ships in a hurry,” admitted the doctor.  “We chased their spaceship back to Dara.  We hung in space off the planet.  We told them we’d blast their world from pole to pole if they ever dared take to space again.  We made them destroy their one ship, and we watched on visionscreens as it was done.”

“But you gave them food?”

“No,” said the doctor ashamedly.  “They were blueskins.”

“How bad was the famine?”

“Who knows?  Any number may have starved!  And we kept a squadron of armed ships in their skies for years—­to keep them from spreading the plague, we said.  And some of us believed it!”