A ship from Orede had come out of overdrive and lay dead in emptiness.  It did not answer calls.  It did not move in space.  It floated eerily in no orbit, going nowhere, doing nothing.  And panic was the consequence.

It seemed to Calhoun that the official handling of the matter accounted for the terror that he could feel building up.  The unexplained bit of news was on the air all over the planet Weald.  There was nobody awake of all the world’s population who did not believe that there was a new danger in the sky.  Nobody doubted that it came from blueskins.  The treatment of the news was precisely calculated to keep alive the hatred of Weald for the inhabitants of the world Dara.

Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the spaceport office.  A small spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling grain ships from time to time, was already aloft.  The landing-grid had thrust it swiftly out most of the way.  Now it droned and drove on sturdily toward the enigmatic ship.

Calhoun took no part in the agitated conferences among the officials and news reporters at the spaceport.  But he listened to the talk about him.  As the investigating small ship drew nearer to the deathly-still cargo vessel, the guesses about the meaning of its breakout and following silence grew more and more wild.

But, singularly, there was no single suggestion that the mystery might not be the work of blueskins.  Blueskins were scape-goats for all the fears and all the uneasiness a perhaps over-civilized world developed.

Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery ship and circled it, beaming queries.  No answer.  It reported the cargo ship dark.  No lights anywhere on or in it.  There were no induction-surges from even pulsing, idling engines.  Delicately, the messenger craft maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel.  It reported that microphones detected no motion whatever inside.

“Let a volunteer go aboard,” commanded the chief executive.  “Let him report what he finds.”

A pause.  Then the solemn announcement of an intrepid volunteer’s name, from far, far away.  Calhoun listened, frowning darkly.  This pompous heroism wouldn’t be noticed in the Med Service.  It would be routine behavior.

Suspenseful, second-by-second reports.  The volunteer had rocketed himself across the emptiness between the two again separated ships.  He had opened the airlock from outside.  He’d gone in.  He’d closed the outer airlock door.  He’d opened the inner.  He reported—­

The relayed report was almost incoherent, what with horror and incredulity and the feeling of doom that came upon the volunteer.  The ship was a bulk-cargo ore-carrier, designed to run between Orede and Weald with cargos of heavy-metal ores and a crew of no more than five men.  There was no cargo in her holds now, though.

Instead, there were men.  They packed the ship.  They filled the corridors.  They had crawled into every space where a man could find room to push himself.  There were hundreds of them.  It was insanity.  And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off with so preposterous a load of living creatures.