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 the truth 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. CHAPTER 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 that they might see before they were shot down. They found the landing-grid. It contained nothing larger than Calhoun's Med Ship, Aesclipus Twenty. They searched here and there. They flitted to and fro, scanning wide bands of the surface of Dara. The planet's cities and highways and industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky. It looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former grain-ships which Calhoun had said blueskins had seized and rushed away. If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them. Dara offered no opposition to the scout-ships. Nothing rose to space to oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main fleet waited while they reported monotonously that they saw no sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it might be dangerous.