Part 27 (1/2)

He went into the boatport, turned to beam paternally back at her, and shut the port behind him. Seconds later the s.p.a.ceboat took off. It left behind clouds of rocket smoke.

And, though Hoddan hadn't the faintest idea of it, it left behind the maddest girl in several solar systems.

X

It is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned. Hoddan went skyward in the s.p.a.ceboat with feelings of warm grat.i.tude toward the Lady Fani. He had not the slightest inkling that she, who had twice spoiled her father's skulduggery so far as it affected him, felt any but the friendliest of feelings toward him. He remembered that he had kept her from the necessity of adjusting to matrimony with the Lord Ghek. It did not occur to him that most girls intend to adjust to marriage with somebody, anyhow, and he did not even suspect that it is a feminine instinct to make a highly dramatic and romantic production of their marriage so they'll have something to be sentimental about in later years.

As Hoddan drove on up and up, the sky became deep purple and then black velvet set with flecks of fire. He was relieved by the welcome he'd received earlier today from the emigrants, but he remained slightly puzzled by a very faint impression of desperation remaining. He felt very virtuous on the whole, however, and his plans for the future were specific. He'd already composed a letter to his grandfather, which he'd ask the emigrant fleet to deliver. He had another letter in his mind--a form letter, practically a public-relations circular--which he hoped to whip into shape before the emigrants got too anxious to be on their way.

He considered that he needed to earn a little more of their grat.i.tude so he could make everything come out even; self-liquidated; everybody satisfied and happy but himself.

For himself he antic.i.p.ated only the deep satisfaction of accomplishment.

He'd wanted to do great things since he was a small boy, and in electronics since his adolescence, when he'd found textbooks in the libraries of looted s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps. He'd gone to Walden in the hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege to be stupid without penalty. In other than free economies, of course, stupidity is held to be the duty of administrators. But Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which were needed by people who knew their need.

It was only when he'd made contact with the fleet, and was in the act of maneuvering toward a boat-blister on the liner he'd brought back, that doubts again a.s.sailed him. He had done a few things--accomplished a little. He'd devised a broadcast-power receptor and a microwave projector and he'd turned a Lawlor drive into a ball lightning projector and worked out a few little things like that. But the first had been invented before by somebody in the Cetis cl.u.s.ter, and the second could have been made by anybody and the third was standard practice on Zan. He still had to do something significant.

When he made fast to the liner and crawled through the boat-tube to its hull, he was in a state of doubt which pa.s.sed very well for modesty.

The bearded old man received him in the skipper's quarters, which Hoddan himself had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to have aged, in hours.

”We grow more astounded by the minute,” he told Hoddan heavily, ”by what you have brought us. Ten s.h.i.+ploads like this and we would be better equipped than we believed ourselves in the beginning. It looks as if some thousands of us will now be able to survive our colonization of the planet Thetis.”

Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand on Hoddan's shoulder.

”We are grateful,” he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. ”Please do not doubt that! It is only that ... that-- You had to accept what was given for our use. But I cannot help wis.h.i.+ng very desperately that ...

that instead of unfamiliar tools for metal-working and machines with tapes which show pictures.... I wish that even one more jungle-plow had been included!”

Hoddan's jaw dropped. The people of Colin wanted planet-subduing machinery. They wanted it so badly that they did not want anything else.

They could not even see that anything else had any value at all. Most of them could only look forward to starvation when the s.h.i.+p supplies were exhausted, because not enough ground could be broken and cultivated early enough to grow food enough in time.

”Would it,” asked the old man desperately, ”be possible to exchange these useless machines for others that will be useful?”

”L--let me talk to your mechanics, sir,” said Hoddan unhappily. ”Maybe something can be done.”

He restrained himself from tearing his hair as he went to where mechanics of the fleet looked over their treasure-trove. He'd come up to the fleet again to gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it was so far from being enough.

He gathered together the men who'd tried to keep the fleet's s.h.i.+ps in working order during their flight. They were competent men, of course.

They were resolute. But now they had given up hope. Hoddan began to lecture them. They needed machines. He hadn't brought the machines they wanted, perhaps, but he'd brought the machines to make them with. Here were automatic shapers, turret lathes, dicers. Here were cutting-points for machines these machines could make, to make the machines the colony on Thetis would require. He'd brought these because they had the raw material. They had their s.h.i.+ps themselves! Even some of the junk they carried in crates was good metal, merely worn out in its present form.

They could make anything they needed with what he'd brought them. For example, he'd show them how to make ... say ... a lumber saw.

He showed them how to make a lumber saw--slender, rapierlike revolving tool with which a man stabbed a tree and cut outward with the speed of a knife cutting hot b.u.t.ter. And one could mount it so--and cut out planks and beams for temporary bridges and such constructions.

They watched, baffled. They gave no sign of hope. They did not want lumber saws. They wanted jungle-breaking machinery.

”I've brought you everything!” he insisted. ”You've got a civilization, compact, on this s.h.i.+p! You've got life instead of starvation! Look at this. I make a water pump to irrigate your fields!”