he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship _tormal_ and he
stays with me!"

The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to
ask you questions. Here!"

A groundcar came rolling out from the side of the landing-grid
enclosure. The groundcar ran on wheels, and wheels were not much used
on modern worlds. Dara was behind the times in more ways than one.

"This car will take you to Defense and you can tell them anything you
want. But don't try to sneak back in this ship! It'll be guarded!"

The groundcar was enclosed, with room for a driver and the three from
the Med Ship. But armed men festooned themselves about its exterior
and it went bumping and rolling to the massive ground-layer girders of
the grid. It rolled out under them and onto a paved highway. It picked
up speed.

There were buildings on either side of the road, but few showed
lights. This was night, and the men at the landing-grid had set a
pattern of hunger, so that the silence and the dark buildings did not
seem a sign of tranquility and sleep, but of exhaustion and despair.

The highway lamps were few, by comparison with other inhabited worlds,
and the groundcar needed lights of its own to guide its driver over a
paved surface that needed repair. By those moving lights other
depressing things could be seen: untidiness, buildings not kept up to
perfection, evidences of apathy, the road, which hadn't been cleaned
lately, litter here and there.