developments in public health and individual medicine will spread as widely and as fast as can be managed. There were larger Med craft to handle dangerous situations and emergencies of novel form. But all Med ships were expected to handle everything possible, if only because space travel consumed such quantities of time.

This particular journey, for example: An emergency message had come to Sector Headquarters from the planetary government of Phaedra II. Carried on a commercial vessel in overdrive at many times the speed of light, it had taken three months to reach Headquarters. And the emergency in which it asked aid was absurd. There was, said the message, a state of war between Phaedra II and Canis III. Military action against Canis III would begin very shortly. Med Service aid for injured and ill would be needed. It was therefore requested at once.

The bare idea of war, naturally, was ridiculous. There could not be war between planets. Worlds communicated with each other by spaceships, to be sure, but the Lawlor interplanetary drive would not work save in unstressed space, and of course overdrive was equally inoperable in a planet's gravitational field. So a ship setting out for the stars had to be lifted not less than five planetary diameters from the ground before it could turn on any drive of its own. Similarly, it had to be lowered an equal distance to a landing after its drive became unusable. Space travel was practical only because there were landing-grids—those huge structures of steel which used the power of a planet's ionosphere to generate the force-fields for the docking and launching of ships of space. Hence landing-grids were necessary for landings. And no world would land a hostile ship upon its surface. But a landing-grid could launch bombs or missiles as well as ships, and hence could defend its planet, absolutely. So there could be no attacks and there could be defense, so wars could not be fought.

"The whole thing's nonsense," said Calhoun. "We'll get there, and we've been three months on the way and the situation is six months old and either it's all been compromised or it's long forgotten and nobody will like being reminded of it. And we've wasted our time and talents on a thankless job that doesn't exist, and couldn't! The universe has fallen on evil days, Murgatroyd! And we are the victims!"

Murgatroyd leisurely uncurled his tail from about his nose. When Calhoun talked at such length, it meant sociability. Murgatroyd got up, and stretched, and said, "Chee!" He waited. If Calhoun really meant to go in for conversation, Murgatroyd would 

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