FullReads

Ralph hardly looked up. His eyes were very bright. Bordman had shown him and he was copying feverishly the figures and formulae from a section of the definition book of the Colonial Survey. The books started with the specifications for antibiotic growth equipment for colonies with problems in local bacteria. It ended with definitions of the required strength-of-material and the designs stipulated for cages in zoos for motile fauna, subdivided into flying, marine, and solid-ground creatures: sub-sub-divided into carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, with the special specifications for enclosures to contain abyssal creatures requiring extreme pressures, and the equipment for maintaining a healthfully re-poisoned atmosphere for creatures from methane planets.

Redfeather had the third volume open at, “Landing Grids, Lightest Emergency, Commerce Refuges, For Use Of.” There were some dozens of non-colonized planets along the most-traveled spaceways on which refuges for shipwrecked spacemen were maintained. Small forces of Patrol personnel manned them. Space lifeboats serviced them. They had the minimum installations which could draw on their planets’ ionospheres for power, and they were not expected to handle anything bigger than a twenty-ton lifeboat. But the specifications for the equipment of such refuges were included in the reference volumes for Bordman’s use in the making of Colonial surveys. They were compiled for the information of contractors who wanted to bid on Colonial Survey installations, and for the guidance of people like Bordman who checked up on the work. So they contained all the data for the building of a landing grid, lightest emergency, commerce refuge for use of, in case of need. Redfeather copied feverishly.

Chuka ceased his boasting, but still he grinned.

“I know we’re stuck, Ralph,” he said amiably, “but it’s nice stuff to go in the records. Too bad we don’t keep coup-records like you Indians!”

Aletha’s cousin–Project Engineer–said crisply:

“Go away! Who made your solar mirror? It was more than an assist! You get set to cast beams for us! Girders! I’m going to get a lifeboat aloft and away to Trent! Build a minimum size landing grid! Build a fire under somebody so they’ll send us a colony ship with supplies! If there’s no new sandstorm to bury the radiation refrigerators Bordman brought to mind, we can keep alive with hydroponics until a ship can arrive with something useful!”

Chuka stared.

“You don’t mean we might actually live through this! Really?”

Aletha regarded the two of them with impartial irony.

“Dr. Chuka,” she said gently, “you accomplished the impossible. Ralph, here, is planning to attempt the preposterous. Does it occur to you that Mr. Bordman is nagging himself to achieve the inconceivable? It is inconceivable, even to him, but he’s trying to do it!”

“What’s he trying to do?” demanded Chuka, wary but amused.

“He’s trying,” said Aletha, “to prove to himself that he’s the best man on this planet. Because he’s physically least capable of living here! His vanity’s hurt. Don’t underestimate him!”

“He the best man here?” demanded Chuka blankly. “In his way he’s all right. The refrigeration proves that! But he can’t walk out-of-doors without a heat-suit!”

Ralph Redfeather said dryly, without ceasing his feverish work:

“Nonsense, Aletha. He has courage. I give him that. But he couldn’t walk a beam twelve hundred feet up. In his own way, yes. He’s capable. But the best man—-“

“I’m sure,” agreed Aletha, “that he couldn’t sing as well as the worst of your singing crew, Dr. Chuka, and any Amerind could outrun him. Even I could! But he’s got something we haven’t got, just as we have qualities he hasn’t. We’re secure in our competences. We know what we can do, and that we can do it better than any–” her eyes twinkled–“paleface. But he doubts himself. All the time and in every way. And that’s why he may be the best man on this planet! I’ll bet he does prove it!”

Redfeather said scornfully:

“You suggested radiation refrigeration! What does it prove that he applied it?”

“That,” said Aletha, “he couldn’t face the disaster that was here without trying to do something about it–even when it was impossible. He couldn’t face the deadly facts. He had to torment himself by seeing that they wouldn’t be deadly if only this one or that or the other were twisted a little. His vanity was hurt because nature had beaten men. His dignity was offended. And a man with easily-hurt dignity won’t ever be happy, but he can be pretty good!”