"If I have to deal with that kind," Calhoun told the tormal, "I have to have some evidence that I mean what I say. If I don't, they'll be classing me with their fathers!"

The Med ship stirred. Calhoun glanced at the external-field dial. The mobile landing-grid was locking its force-field on. The little ship lifted. It went up and up and up. Calhoun looked sicker. The air in the lock was thinning swiftly. Two miles high. Three—

There were frantic metallic clankings. The indicator said that the outer door was dogged tight. Calhoun opened the inner door. The young man stumbled in, shockingly white and gasping for breath.

"Thanks," said Calhoun curtly.

He strapped himself in the control-chair. The vision-screens showed half the universe pure darkness and the rest a blaze of many-colored specks of light. They showed new stars appearing at the edge of the monstrous blackness. The Med ship was rising ever more swiftly. Presently the black area was not half the universe. It was a third. Then a fifth. A tenth. It was a disk of pure darkness in a glory of a myriad distant suns.

The external-field indicator dropped abruptly to zero. The Med ship was afloat in clear space. Calhoun tried the Lawlor drive, tentatively. It worked. The Med ship swung in a vast curved course out of the dark planet's shadow. There was the sun Canis, flaming in space. Calhoun made brisk observations, set a new course, and the ship sped on with an unfelt acceleration. This was, of course, the Lawlor propulsion system, used for distances which were mere millions of miles.

When the ship was entirely on automatic control, Calhoun swung around to his unwilling companion. Murgatroyd was regarding the youthful stranger with intense curiosity. He looked at Calhoun with some apprehension.

"My name's Calhoun," Calhoun told him. "I'm Med Service. That's Murgatroyd. He's a tormal. Who are you and how did you get captured?"

The prisoner went instantly into a pose of jaunty defiance.

"My name is Fredericks," he said blandly. "What happens next?"

"I'm headed for Canis III," said Calhoun. "In part to land you. In part to try to do something about this war. How'd you get captured?"

"They made a raid," said young Fredericks scornfully. "They landed a rocket out in open country. We thought it was 

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