The Med Ship was being towed. Calhoun had asked for it and it was being done. There should have been no way to tow him short of a physical linkage between ships. There were force-fields which could perform that function—landing grids used them constantly—but ships did not mount them—not ordinary ships, anyhow. That fact bothered Calhoun.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble," he said, scowling, "as if wars were going back into fashion and somebody was getting set to fight them. Who's got us, anyhow?"
The request for Med Service aid had come from Phaedra II. But the military action—if any—had been stated to be due on Canis III. The flaming nearby sun and its family of planets was the Canis solar system. The odds were, therefore, that he'd been snatched out of overdrive by the Phaedrian fleet. He'd been expected. They'd ordered him not to use the spacephone. The local forces wouldn't care if the planet overheard. The invaders might. Unless there were two space fleets in emptiness, jockeying for position for a battle in the void. But that was preposterous. There could be no battles in unstressed space where any ship could flick into overdrive flight in the fraction of a second!
"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun querulously, "this is all wrong! I can't make head or tail or anything! And I've got a feeling that there is something considerably more wrong than I can figure out. At a guess, it's probably a Phaedrian vessel that's hooked on to us. They didn't seem surprised when I said who I was. But—"
He checked his instrument board. He examined the screens. There were planets of the yellow sun, which now was nearly dead ahead. Calhoun saw an almost infinitely thin crescent, and knew that it was the sunward world toward which he was being towed. Actually, he didn't need a tow. He'd asked for it for no particular reason except to put whoever had stopped him in the wrong. To injure a Med Ship would be improper even in war—especially in war.
His eyes went back to the external-field dial. There was a force-field gripping the ship. It was of the type used by landing grids—a type impractical for use on shipboard. A grid to generate such a force-field had to have one foot of diameter for roughly every ten miles of range. A ship to have the range of his captor would have to be as big as a planetary landing grid. And no planetary landing grid could handle it.
Then Calhoun's eyes popped open and his jaw dropped.
"Murgatroyd!" he said, appalled. "Confound them, it's true! They've found a way to fight!"
Wars had not been fought for many hundreds of years, and there was no need for them now. Calhoun had only lately been studying the records of warfare in all its aspects and consequences, and as a medical man he felt outraged. Organized slaughter did not seem a sane process for arriving at political conclusions. The whole galactic culture was based upon the happy conviction that wars could never happen again. If it was possible, they probably would. Calhoun knew humanity well enough to be sure of that.
"Chee?" said Murgatroyd inquiringly.
"You're lucky to be a tormal!" Calhoun told him. "You never have to feel ashamed of your kind."
The background information he had about warfare in general made him feel skeptical in advance about the information he would presently be given. It would be what used to be called propaganda, given him under the name of briefing. It would agree with him that wars in general were horrible, but it would most plausibly point out—with deep regret—that this particular war, fought by this particular side, was both admirable and justified.
"Which," said Calhoun darkly, "I wouldn't believe even if it were true!"
II
"Information secured from others is invariably inaccurate in some fashion. A complete and reasoned statement of a series of events is almost necessarily trimmed and distorted and edited, or it would not appear reasonable and complete. Truly factual accounts of any series of happenings will, if honest, contain inconsistent or irrational elements. Reality is far too complex to be reduced to simple statements without much suppression of fact . . ."
Manual, Interstellar Medical Service. P. 25.
He was able to verify his guess about the means by which interstellar war had become practical, when the Med Ship was landed. Normally, a landing grid was a gigantic, squat structure of steel girders, half a mile high and a full mile in diameter. It rested upon bedrock, was cemented into unbreakable union with the substance of its planet, and tapped the ionosphere for power. When the Med Ship reached the abysmal darkness of the nearest planet's shadow, there were long, long pauses in which it hung apparently motionless in space. There were occasional vast swingings, as if something reached out and made sure where it was. And Calhoun made use of his nearest-object indicator and observed that something very huge fumbled about and presently became stationary in emptiness, and then moved swiftly and assuredly down into the blackness which was the planet's night-side. When it and the planetary surface were one, the Med Ship began its swift descent in the grip of landing grid-type force-fields.
It landed in the center of a grid—but not a typical grid. This was more monstrous in size than any spaceport boasted. It was not squat, either, but as tall as it was wide. As the ship descended, he saw lights in a control-system cell, midway to the ground. It was amazing but obvious. The Med Ship's captors had built a landing grid which was itself a spaceship. It was a grid which could cross the void between stars. It could wage offensive war.
"It's infernally simple," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, distastefully. "The regular landing grid hooks onto something in space and pulls it to the ground. This thing hooks onto something on the ground and pushes itself out into space. It'll travel by Lawlor or overdrive, and when it gets somewhere it can lock onto any part of another world and pull itself down to that and stay anchored to it. Then it can land the fleet that traveled with it. It's partly a floating dry dock and partly a landing craft, and actually it's both. It's a ready-made spaceport anywhere it chooses to land. Which means that it's the deadliest weapon in the past thousand years!"
Murgatroyd climbed on his lap and blinked wisely at the screens. They showed the surroundings of the now-grounded Med Ship, standing on its tail. There were innumerable stars overhead. All about, there was the whiteness of snow. But there were lights. Ships at rest lay upon the icy ground.
"I suspect," growled Calhoun, "that I could make a dash on emergency rockets and get behind the horizon before they could catch me. But this is just a regular military base!"
He considered his recent studies of historic wars, of battles and massacres and looting and rapine. Even modern, civilized men would revert very swiftly to savagery once they had fought a battle. Enormities unthinkable at other times would occur promptly if men went back to barbarity. Such things might already be present in the minds of the crews of these spaceships.
"You and I, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun, "may be the only wholly rational men on this planet. And you aren't a man."
"Chee!" shrilled Murgatroyd. He seemed glad of it.
"But we have to survey the situation before we attempt anything noble and useless," Calhoun observed. "But still—what's that?"
He stared at a screen which showed lights on the ground moving toward the Med Ship. They were carried by men on foot, walking on the snow. As they grew nearer it appeared that there were also weapons in the group. They were curious, ugly instruments—like sporting rifles save that their bores were impossibly large. They would be— Calhoun searched his new store of information. They would be launchers of miniature rockets, capable of firing small missiles with shaped charges which could wreck the Med Ship easily.