"Murgatroyd," he said, "it is a Med service rule that a Med ship man is expendable in case of need. I'm very much afraid that we've got to be expended. Hang on, now! We try some action!"
He turned the Med ship end for end and fed full power to the rockets. The ship would decelerate even faster than it had gathered speed. He set the nearest-object indicator to high gain. It showed the now-retreating mass of stone and soil from Canis. Calhoun then set up a scanner to examine a particular part of the sky.
"Since fathers can be insulted," he observed, "they've made a missile to fight its way down through anything that's thrown at it. It'll be remote-controlled for the purpose. It's very doubtful that there's a spaceship on the planet to fight it back. There's been no reference to one, anyhow. So what the missile will have to fight off will be stuff from the landing-grid only. Which is good. Moreover, fathers being what they are, regardless, that missile won't be a high-speed one. They'll want to be able to call it back at the last minute. They'll hope to."
"Chee!" said Murgatroyd, insisting that he didn't like the rocket-roar.
"So we will make ourselves as unpopular as possible with the fathers," observed Calhoun, "and if we live through it we will make ourselves even more cordially hated by the sons. And then they will be able to tolerate each other a little, because they both hate us so much. And so the public-health situation on Canis III may be resolved. Ah!"
The nearest-object indicator showed something moving toward the Med ship. The scanner repeated the information in greater detail. There was a small object headed toward the planet from empty space. Its velocity and course—
Calhoun put on double acceleration to intercept it, while he pointed the ship quartering so he'd continue to lose outward speed.
Ten minutes later the spacephone growled:
"Med ship! What do you think you're doing?"