statements were damning.

Calhoun had taken four young astrogators to space. They were the only
semiskilled space pilots Dara had. There were no fully qualified men.
Calhoun had asked for them, and taken them out to emptiness, and there
he had instructed them in modern guidance methods for ships of space.

So far there was no disagreement. He'd proposed to make them more
competent pilots; more capable of driving a ship to Orede, for
example, to raid the enormous cattle herds there. And he'd had them
drive the Med Ship to Weald, against which there could be no
objection.

But just before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them
drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd
been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots
off separately, so he and Maril claimed, in huge ships crammed with
grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow.

Nobody believed in shiploads of grain to be had for the taking. They
did know that the only four partially experienced space pilots on Dara
had been taken away and by Calhoun's own story sent out of the ship
after they'd been drugged.

Had they been trained, and had they been helped or even permitted to
sow the seeds of plague on Weald, and had they come back prepared to
pass on training to other men to handle other space ships now
feverishly being built in hidden places on Dara, then Dara might have
a chance of survival.