She rose and almost ostentatiously went into the other cabin, to leave
him alone. He shrugged. He settled down into the chair which, to let a
Med Ship man break the monotony of life in unchanging surroundings,
turned into a comfortable sleeping arrangement. He fell instantly
asleep.

For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very
far away, light-years distant and light-years apart, four shiploads of
grain hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each
great ship had a single semiskilled blueskin for pilot and crew.

Thousands of millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to
their stellar types in a galaxy of which a very small proportion had
been explored and colonized by humanity. The human race was now to be
counted in quadrillions on scores of hundreds of inhabited worlds, but
the tiny Med Ship seemed the least significant of all possible created
things.

It could travel between star-systems and even star-clusters, but it
was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the
human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of
the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone
with no work to do or no resources in himself, or herself.

On the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhat
distastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him
in a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with
his furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.