He met the two ground-car loads of refugees with his arms in the air. He did not want to be shot down by mistake. He said hurriedly, when Kim and the other lean survivors gathered about him:
"Everything's all right. We've a pack of prisoners but we won't bother to feed them intravenously for the moment. How'd you get the ground-cars?"
"Hunters," said Kim savagely. "We found them and killed them and took their cars. We found some other refugees, too, and I cured them—at least they will be cured. When we saw the smoke we started for the city. Some of us still have the plague, but we've all had our serum shots." His face worked. "When we started for the city, another car overtook us. Naturally he wasn't suspicious of a car! We blasted him. Half of us have arms, now."
"I don't think we need them," said Calhoun. "Our prisoners are quite peacefully sleeping. They stormed a building where I'd fired on them, and I'd dumped some dextrethyl in the air-conditioning system. They keeled over. Later, Murgatroyd and I went in and made their slumber more ... ah ... lasting with polysulfate. The few who weren't caught were ... ah ... demoralized. I think the city's clean, now. But we've got to get to the landing-grid control room. There are some calls coming in from space. I think the first shipload of colonists is arriving. I didn't answer, so they went in orbit around the planet. I want you people to talk to them."
"We'll bring their ship down," said the bearded man hungrily, "and blast them as they come out the exit port!"
Calhoun shook his head.
"To the contrary," he said regretfully. "You'll put on the clothes of some of our prisoners. You'll tell the arriving colonists that the plague hit you, too. You'll pretend to be one of the characters we really have safely sleeping, and you'll say all the rest have been bowled over by the plague that was sowed here to win the planet for the characters you're talking to. If they land, they'll die—or so you'll tell them. And so they will all go home, very unhappy, and they'll tell the public about it. And there will be no more shiploads of colonists arriving. We don't want them. If we persuade them to go home and not come back, there are fewer chances of unfavorable consequences to us."
The bearded man growled. But later he was one of the most convincing of the scarecrow figures whose images appeared in the vision-plates of the ship overhead. He was especially pathetic and alarming. When he'd finished, there'd have been a mass mutiny of the passengers had the spaceship skipper tried to land them.
Later, all the fugitives were very conscientious about bringing the captive invaders out of the lethargy that had been begun by dextrethyl and reinforced by polysulfate. They enjoyed their labor, after Calhoun explained.
"They came in their own ship," he said mildly, "and it's still in the landing grid—which they repaired for us, by the way. And I've been aboard the ship with Kim, here, and we've smashed their drive and communicators, and wrecked their Duhanne circuits. We took out the breech-plugs of their rockets and dumped their rocket fuel. Of course we removed their landing boats. So we're going to put them in their ship and hoist them up to space with the landing grid, and we're going to set them in a lovely orbit, to wait until we've time to spare for them. Up there they can't run or land or even signal if another shipload of colonists turns up. They'll feed themselves and they won't need guarding, and they'll be quite safe until we get help from Dettra. And that will come as soon as the Med Service has told Dettra that it wasn't a plague but an invasion that seemed to take their colony away from them."