There was a single burst of the unprintable. Then the formerly suave voice said waspishly; "_Well? The Med Service will hear of your interference!_" "Yes," said Calhoun. "I'll report it myself. I have a message for you. Dara is ready to pay for every ounce of grain and for the ships it was stored in. They'll pay in heavy metals,--iridium, uranium,--that sort of thing." The suave voice fairly curdled. "_As if we'd allow anything that was ever on Dara to touch ground here!_" "Ah! But there can be sterilization. To begin with metals, uranium melts at 1150 deg. centigrade, and tungsten at 3370 deg. and iridium at 2350 deg. You could load such things and melt them down in space and then tow them home. And you can actually sterilize a lot of other useful materials!" The suave voice said infuriatedly; "_I'll report this! You'll suffer for this!_" Calhoun said pleasantly; "I'm sure that what I say is being recorded, so that I'll add that it's perfectly practical for Wealdians to land on Dara, take whatever property they think wise,--to pay for damage done by blueskins, of course--and get back to Wealdian ships with absolutely no danger of carrying contagion. If you'll make sure the recording's clear." * * * * * He described, clearly and specifically, exactly how a man could be outfitted to walk into any area of any conceivable contagion, do whatever seemed necessary in the way of looting--but Calhoun did not use the word--and then return to his fellows with no risk whatever of bringing back infection. He gave exact details. Then he said; "My radar says you've four ships converging on me to blast me out of space. I sign off." The Med Ship disappeared from normal space, and entered that improbably stressed area of extension which it formed about itself and in which physical constants were wildly strange. For one thing, the speed of light in overdrive-stressed space had not been measured yet. It was too high. For another, a ship could travel very many times 186000 miles per second in overdrive. The Med Ship did just that. There was nobody but Calhoun and Murgatroyd on board. There was companionable silence,--there were only the small threshold-of-perception sounds which one did not often notice, but which it would have been intolerable to have stop. Calhoun luxuriated in regained privacy. For seven days he'd had twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and someone else. One need not be snobbish to wish to be alone sometimes! Murgatroyd licked his whiskers thoughtfully. "I hope," said Calhoun, "that things work out right. But they may remember on Dara that I'm responsible for some ten million bushels of grain reaching them. Maybe--just possibly--they'll listen to me and act sensibly. After all, there's only one way to break a famine. Not with ten million bushels for a whole planet! And certainly not with bombs!"