But then the pariah planet made a new proposal.  It would send a messenger ship to stop its own fleet’s bombardment if Weald would accept payment of the grain ships and their cargos.  It would pay in ingots of irridium and uranium and tungsten, and gold if Weald wished it, for all damages Weald might claim.

It would even pay indemnity for the miners of Orede, who had died by accident but perhaps in some sense through its fault.  It would pay.  But if it were bombed, Weald must spout atomic fire and the fleet of Weald would have no home planet to return to.

This proposal seemed both craven and foolish.  It would allow the fleet of Weald to loot and then betray Dara.  But it was Calhoun’s idea.  It seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald.  They felt only contempt for blueskins.  Contemptuously, they accepted the semi-surrender.

The broadcast waves of Dara told of agreement, and wild and fierce resentment filled the pariah planet’s people.  There was almost revolution to insist upon resistance, however hopeless and however fatal.  But not all of Dara realized that a vital change had come about in the state of things on Dara.  The enemy fleet had not a hint of it.

In menacing array, the invading fleet spread itself about the skies of Dara, well beyond the atmosphere.  Harsh voices talked with increasing arrogance to the landing-grid staff.  A monster ship of Weald came heavily down, riding the landing-grid’s force-fields.  It touched gently.  Its occupants were apprehensive, but hungry for the loot they had been assured was theirs.  The ship’s outer hull would be sterilized before it returned to Weald, of course.  And there was adequate protection for the landing-party.

Men came out of the ship’s ports.  They wore the double, transparent sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested, and which were perfect protection against contagion.  They were double garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible envelope.

Men wearing such sag-suits could walk about on Dara.  They could work on Dara.  They could loot with impunity and all contamination must remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled around them, killing any possible organism of disease.  Then, for extra assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ever having come within two layers of plastic of infection.

What loot they gathered, obviously, could be decontaminated before it was returned to Weald.  Metals could be melted, if necessary.  Gems could be sterilized.  It was a most satisfactory discovery, to realize that blueskins could be not only scorned but robbed.  There was only one bit of irrelevant information the space fleet of Weald did not have.

That information was that the people of Dara weren’t blueskins any longer.  There’d been a trivial epidemic....