coating of frozen moisture.

He went back to the control room and pulled down the panel which made
available a small-scale but surprisingly adequate biological
laboratory. He set the plastic block in a container which would raise
it very, very gradually to a specific temperature and hold it there.
It was, obviously, a living culture from which any imaginable quantity
of the same culture could be bred. Calhoun set the apparatus with
great exactitude.

"This," he told Murgatroyd, "may be a good day's work. Now I think I
can rest."

Then, for a long while, there was no sound or movement in the Med
Ship. The girl may have slept, or maybe not. Calhoun lay relaxed in a
chair which at the touch of a button became the most comfortable of
sleeping places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curled
over his nose.

There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissable murmurings now and
again. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for such
infinitesimal stirrings of sound, carefully recorded for this exact
purpose, the feel of the ship would have been that of a tomb.

But it was quite otherwise when another ship-day began with the taped
sounds of morning activities as faint as echoes but nevertheless
establishing an atmosphere of their own.

Calhoun examined the plastic block and its contents. He read the
instruments which had cared for it while he slept. He put the