"Calling Med Ship!" said this second voice. "Calling Med Ship! Spaceport Tallien Three calling Med Ship Esclipus Twenty! For landing, repair to co-ordinates—"
The voice briskly gave specific instructions. It was a strictly professional voice. It repeated the instructions with precision.
Out of sheer habit, Calhoun said, "Acknowledge." Then he added sharply: "Hold it! I've just had an emergency call—"
The first voice interrupted stridently:
"Cut your signal, you fool! I told you not to answer any other call! Cut your signal!"
The strictly professional other voice said coldly:
"Emergency call, eh? That'll be paras. They're better organized than we thought, if they picked up your landing request! There's an emergency, all right! It's the devil of an emergency—it looks like devils! But this is the spaceport. Will you come in?"
"Naturally," said Calhoun. "What's the emergency?"
"You'll find out...." That was the professional voice. The other snapped angrily, "Cut your signal!" The professional voice again: "... you land. It's not...." "Cut your signal, you fool! Cut it...." The other voice again.
There was confusion. The two voices spoke together. Each was on a tight beam, while Calhoun's call was broadcast. The voices could not hear each other, but each could hear Calhoun.
"Don't listen to them! There's...." "to understand, but...." "Don't listen! Don't...." "... When you land."
Then the voice from the spaceport stopped, and Calhoun cut down the volume of the other. It continued to shout, though muffled. It bellowed, as if rattled. It mouthed commands as if they were arguments or reasons. Calhoun listened for fully five minutes. Then he said carefully into his microphone:
"Med Ship Esclipus Twenty calling spaceport. I will arrive at given co-ordinates at the time given. I suggest that you take precautions if necessary against interference with my landing. Message ends."
He swung the ship around and aimed for the destination with which he'd been supplied—a place in emptiness five diameters out, with the center of the sun's disk bearing so-and-so and the center of the planet's disk bearing so-and-thus. He turned the communicator volume down still lower. The miniature voice shouted and threatened in the stillness of the Med Ship's control room. After a time Calhoun said reflectively:
"I don't like this, Murgatroyd! An unidentified voice is telling us—and we're Med Ship personnel, Murgatroyd!—who we should speak to and what we should do. Our duty is plainly to ignore such orders. But with dignity, Murgatroyd! We must uphold the dignity of the Med Service!"
Murgatroyd said skeptically:
"Chee?"
"I don't like your attitude," said Calhoun, "but I'll bear in mind that you're often right."
Murgatroyd found a soft place to curl up in. He draped his tail across his nose and lay there, blinking at Calhoun above the furry half-mask.
The little skip drove on. The disk of the planet grew large. Presently it was below. It turned as the skip moved, and from a crescent it became a half-circle and then a gibbous near-oval shape. In the rest of the solar system nothing in particular happened. Small and heavy inner planets swam deliberately in their short orbits around the sun. Outer, gas-giant planets floated even more deliberately in larger paths. There were comets of telescopic size, and there were meteorites, and the sun Tallien sent up monstrous flares, and storms of improbable snow swept about in the methane atmosphere of the greater gas giant of this particular celestial family of this sun and its satellites. But the cosmos in general paid no attention to human activities or usually undesirable intentions. Calhoun listened, frowning, to the agitated, commanding voice. He still didn't like it.
Suddenly, it cut off. The Med Ship approached the planet to which it had been ordered by Sector Headquarters now some months ago. Calhoun examined the nearing world via electron telescope. On the hemisphere rolling to a position under the Med Ship he saw a city of some size, and he could trace highways, and there were lesser human settlements here and there. At full magnification he could see where forests had been cut away in wedges and half-squares, with clear spaces between them. This indicated cultivated ground, cleared for human use in the invincibly tidy-minded manner of men.
Presently he saw the landing grid near the biggest city—that half-mile-high, cagelike wall of intricately braced steel girders. It tapped the planet's ionosphere for all the power that this world's inhabitants could use, and applied the same power to lift up and let down the ships of space by which communication with the rest of humanity was maintained. From this distance, though, even with an electron telescope, Calhoun could see no movement of any sort. There was no smoke, because electricity from the grid provided all the planet's power and heat, and there were no chimneys. The city looked like a colored map, with infinite detail but nothing which stirred.
A tiny voice spoke. It was the voice of the spaceport.
"Calling Med Ship. Grid locking on. Right?"
"Go ahead," said Calhoun. He turned up the communicator.
The voice from the ground said carefully:
"Better stand by your controls. If anything happens down here you may need to take emergency action."
Calhoun raised his eyebrows. But he said:
"All set."
He felt the cushiony, fumbling motions as force fields from the landing grid groped for the Med Ship and centered it in their complex pattern. Then there came the sudden solid feeling when the grid locked on. The Med Ship began to settle, at first slowly but with increasing speed, toward the ground below.
It was all very familiar. The shape of the continents below him were strange, but such unfamiliarity was commonplace. The voice from the ground said matter-of-factly:
"We think everything's under control, but it's hard to tell with these paras. They got away with some weather rockets last week and may have managed to mount war heads on them. They might use them on the grid, here, or try for you."
Calhoun said:
"What are paras?"
"You'll be briefed when you land," said the voice. It added: "Everything's all right so far, though."
The Esclipus Twenty went down and down and down. The grid had locked on at forty thousand miles. It was a long time before the little ship was down to thirty thousand and another long time before it was at twenty. Then more time to reach ten, and then five, and one thousand, and five hundred. When solid ground was only a hundred miles below and the curve of the horizon had to be looked for to be seen, the voice from the ground said:
"The last hundred miles is the tricky part, and the last five will be where it's tight. If anything does happen, it'll be there."
Calhoun watched through the electron telescope. He could see individual buildings now, when he used full magnification. He saw infinitesimal motes which would be ground cars on the highways. At seventy miles he cut down the magnification to keep his field of vision wide. He cut the magnification again at fifty and at thirty and at ten.
Then he saw the first sign of motion. It was an extending thread of white which could only be smoke. It began well outside the city and leaped up and curved, evidently aiming at the descending Med Ship. Calhoun said curtly:
"There's a rocket coming up. Aiming at me."
The voice from the ground said: