with you. Is that right?"

The young men stirred unhappily. Young men can very easily be made
into fanatics. But they have to be kept stirred up. They can't be
provided with sound reason for self-respect. On the Med Ship there'd
not been a single reference to Weald except as an object toward which
the Med Ship was being astrogated. There'd been no reference to
blueskins or enemies or threats or anything but space-piloting. The
four young men were now fanatical about the proper handling of a ship
in emptiness.

"Well, sir," said one of them, unhappily, "that's what we were ordered
to do."

"I object," said Calhoun. "It wouldn't work. I just left Weald a
little while back, remember. They've been telling themselves that some
day Dara would try that. They've made preparations to fight any
imaginable contagion you could drop on them. Every so often somebody
claims it's happening. It wouldn't work. I object!"

"But--"

"In fact," said Calhoun, "I forbid it. I shall prevent it. You shan't
do anything of the kind."

One of the young men, staring at Calhoun, nodded suddenly. His eyes
closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank
heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly
went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate
attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and