in particular. 'Would you marry someone like me? Great Manitou,no!'"
"For an excellent reason," said Aletha firmly. "When I get back fromhere--_if_ I get back from here--I'm going to marry Bob RunningAntelope. He's nice. I like the idea of marrying him. I want to! But Ilook forward not only to happiness but to contentment. To me that'simportant. It isn't to you, or to the woman you ought to marry. And I... well ... I simply don't envy either of you a bit!"
"I see," said Bordman with irony. He didn't. "I wish you all thecontentment you look for." Then he snapped: "But what's this businessabout expecting more from me? What spectacular idea do you expect me topull out of somebody's hat now? Because I'm frantically vain!"
"I haven't the least idea," said Aletha calmly. "But I think you'll comeup with something we couldn't possibly imagine. And I didn't say it wasbecause you were vain, but because you are discontented with yourself.It's born in you! And there you are!"
"If you mean neurotic," snapped Bordman, "you're all wrong. I'm notneurotic! I'm not. I'm annoyed. I'll get hopelessly behind schedulebecause of this mess! But that's all!"
Aletha stood up and shrugged her shoulders ruefully.
"I repeat my apology," she told him, "and leave you the office. But Ialso repeat that I think you'll turn up something nobody elseexpects--and I've no idea what it will be. But you'll do it now toprove that I'm wrong about how your mind works."
She went out. Bordman clamped his jaws tightly. He felt that especiallyhaunting discomfort which comes of suspecting that one has been toldsomething about himself which may be true.
"Idiotic!" he fumed, all alone. "Me neurotic? Me wanting to prove I'mthe best man here out of vanity?" He made a scornful noise. He satimpatiently at the desk. "Absurd!" he muttered wrathfully. "Why should Ineed to prove to myself I'm capable? What would I do if I felt such aneed, anyhow?"
Scowling, he stared at the wall. It was irritating. It was a naggingsort of question. What would he do if she were right? If he did needconstantly to prove to himself----
He stiffened, suddenly. A look of intense surprise came upon his face.He'd thought of what a self-doubtful, discontented man would try to do,here on Xosa II at this juncture.
The surprise was because he had also thought of how it could be done.
* * * * *
The _Warlock_ came to life. Her skipper gloomily answered the emergencycall from Xosa II. He listened. He clicked off the communicator andhastened to an exterior port, deeply darkened against those times whenthe blue-white sun of Xosa shone upon this side of the hull. He movedthe manual control to make it more transparent. He stared down at themonstrous, tawny, mottled surface of the planet five thousand milesaway. He searched for the spot he bitterly knew was the colony's site.
He saw what he'd been told he'd see. It was an infinitely fine,threadlike projection from the surface of the planet. It rose at aslight angle--it leaned toward the planet's west--and it expanded andwidened and formed an extraordinary sort of mushroom-shaped object thatwas completely impossible. It could not be. Humans do not create visibleobjects twenty miles high, which at their tops expand like toadstools onexcessively slender stalks, and which drift westward and fray and growthin, and are constantly renewed.
But it was true. The skipper of the _Warlock_ gazed until he wascompletely sure. It was no atomic bomb, because it continued to exist.It faded, but was constantly replenished. There was no such thing!
He went through the ship, bellowing, and faced mutinous snarlings. Butwhen the _Warlock_ was around on that side of the planet again, themembers of the crew saw the strange appearance, too. They examined itwith telescopes. They grew hysterically happy. They went frantically towork to clear away the signs of a month and a half of mutiny anddespair.
It took them three days to get the ship to tidiness again, and duringall that time the peculiar tawny jet remained. On the sixth day the jetwas fainter. On the seventh it was larger than before. It continuedlarger. And telescopes at highest magnification verified what theemergency communication had said.
Then the crew began to experience frantic impatience. It was worse,waiting those last three or four days, than even all the hopeless timebefore. But there was no reason to hate anybody, now. The skipper wasvery much relieved.
* * * * *
There was eighteen hundred feet of steel grid overhead. It made acrisscross, ring-shaped wall more than a quarter-mile high and almost tothe top of the surrounding mountains. But the valley was not exactly anormal one. It was a crater, now: a steeply sloping, conical pit whosewalls descended smoothly to the outer girders of the red-painted,glistening steel structure. More girders for the completion of the gridprojected from the sand just outside its half-mile circle. And in thelanding grid there was now a smaller, elaborate, truss-braced object. Itrested on the rocky ground, and it was not painted, and it was quitesmall. A hundred feet high, perhaps, and no more than three hundredacross. But it was visibly a miniature of the great, now-uncovered,re-painted landing grid which was qualified to handle interstellar cargoships and all the proper space-traffic of a minerals-colony planet.
A caterwheel truck came lurching and rolling and rumbling down the sideof the pit. It had a sunshade and ground-reflector wings, and Bordmanrode tiredly on a hobbyhorse saddle in its back cargo section. He wore aheat-suit.
The truck reached the pit's bottom. There was a tool shed there. Thecaterwheel-truck bumped up to it and stopped. Bordman got out, visiblycramped by the jolting, rocking, exhausting-to-unaccustomed-musclesride.
"Do you want to go in the shed and cool off?" asked Chuka brightly.
"I'm all right," said Bordman curtly. "I'm quite comfortable, so long asyou feed me that expanded air." It was plain that he resented needingeven a special air supply. "What's all this about? Bringing the_Warlock_ in? Why the insistence on my being here?"
"Ralph has a problem," said Chuka blandly. "He's up there. See? He needsyou. There's a hoist. You've got to check degree-of-completion anyhow.You might take a look around while you're up there. But he's anxious foryou to see something. There where you see the little knot of people. Theplatform."
Bordman grimaced. When one was well started on a survey, one got used toheights and depths and all sorts of environments. But he hadn't been upon steel-work in a good many months. Not since a survey on Kalka IVnearly a year ago. He would be dizzy at first.
He accompanied Chuka to the spot where a steel cable dangled from analmost invisibly thin beam high above. There was a strictly improvisedcage to ascend in--planks and a handrail forming an insecure platformthat might hold four people. He got into it, and Dr. Chuka got in besidehim. Chuka waved his hand. The cage started up.
Bordman winced as the ground dropped away below. It was ghastly to bedangling in emptiness like this. He wanted to close his eyes. The cagewent up and up and up. It took many long minutes to reach the top.
There was a platform there. Newly-made. The sunlight was blindinglybright. The landscape was an intolerable glare. Bordman adjusted hisgoggles to maximum darkness and stepped gingerly from the swaying cageto the hardly more solid-seeming area. Here he was in mid-air on aplatform barely ten feet square. It was rather more than twice theheight of a metropolitan skyscraper from the ground. There were actualmountain-crests only half a mile away and not much higher. Bordman wasacutely uncomfortable. He would get used to it, but----
* * * * *
"Well?" he asked fretfully. "Chuka said you needed me here. What's thematter?"
Ralph Redfeather nodded very formally. Aletha was here, too, and two ofChuka's foremen--one did not look happy--and four of the Amerindsteel-workers. They grinned at Bordman.
"I wanted you to see," said Aletha's cousin, "before we threw on thecurrent. It doesn't look like that little grid could handle the sand ittook care of. But Lewanika wants to report."
A dark man who worked under Chuka--and looked as if he belonged on solidground--said carefully:
br />
"We cast the beams for the small landing grid, Mr. Bordman. We meltedthe metal out of the cliffs and ran it into molds as it flowed down."
He stopped. One of the Indians said:
"We made the girders into the small landing grid. It bothered us becausewe built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We didn'tunderstand why you ordered it there. But we built it."
The second dark man said with a trace of swagger:
"We made the coils, Mr. Bordman. We made the small grid so it would workthe same as the big one when it was finished. And then we made the biggrid work, finished or not!"
Bordman said