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: