“Interesting,” said Calhoun, noncommittally.

“And when we went to Weald,” said Maril very carefully indeed, “you were working with some culture material.  You wrote quite a lot about it in the ship’s log.  You gave yourself an injection.  Remember?  And Murgatroyd?  You wrote down your temperature, and Murgatroyd’s?” She moistened her lips.  “You said that if infection passed between us, something would be very infectious indeed?”

“This is a long discussion,” said Calhoun.  “Does it arrive at a point?”

“It does,” said Maril.  “Thousands of people are having their pigment-spots fade away.  Not only children but grownups.  And Korvan has found out that it always seems to happen after a day when they felt feverish and very thirsty, and then felt all right again.  You tried out something that made you feverish and thirsty.  I had it too, in the ship.  Korvan thinks there’s been an epidemic of something that is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it.  There are always trivial epidemics that nobody notices.  Korvan’s found evidence of one that’s making blueskin no longer a word with any meaning.”

“Remarkable!” said Calhoun.

“Did you do it?” asked Maril.  “Did you start a harmless epidemic that wipes out the virus that makes blueskins?”

Calhoun said in feigned astonishment, “How can you think such a thing, Maril?”

“Because I was there,” said Maril.  She said, somehow desperately, “I know you did it!  But the question is, are you going to tell?  When people find they’re not blueskins any longer, when there’s no such thing as a blueskin any longer, will you tell them why?”

“Naturally not,” said Calhoun.  “Why?” Then he guessed.  “Has Korvan—­”

“He thinks,” said Maril, “that he thought it up all by himself.  He’s found the proof.  He’s very proud.  I’d have to tell him how the ideas got into his head if you were going to tell.  And he’d be ashamed and angry.”

Calhoun considered, staring at her.

“How it happened doesn’t matter,” he said at last.  “The idea of anybody doing it deliberately would be disturbing, too.  It shouldn’t get about.  So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover what’s happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened.  But not why.”

She read his face carefully.

“You aren’t doing it as a favor to me,” she decided.  “You’d rather it was that way.”

She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed.  Then she nodded and went away.

An hour later the Wealdian space fleet was reported massed in space and driving for Dara.

* * * * *

8

There were small scout ships which came on ahead of the main fleet.  They’d originally been guard boats, intended for solar system duty only and quite incapable of overdrive.  They’d come from Weald in the cargo holds of the liners now transformed into fighting ships.  The scouts swept low, transmitting fine-screen images back to the fleet, of all they might see before they were shot down.  They found the landing-grid.  It contained nothing larger than Calhoun’s Med Ship, Aesclipus Twenty.