shouldn’t.

“Redfeather tells me,” he added, again curtly, “that the power in storage can be used to cool the colony buildings—and therefore condense drinking water from the air—for just about six months. There is food for about six months. If one lets the buildings warm up a little, to stretch the fuel, there won’t be enough water to drink. Go on half rations to stretch the food, and there won’t be enough water to last and the power will give out anyhow. No profit there!”

There were nods. The matter had been thrashed out long before.

“There’s food in the Warlock overhead,” Bordman went on coldly, “but they can’t use the landing boat more than a few times. It can’t use ship fuel. No refrigeration to hold it stable. They couldn’t land more than a ton of supplies all told. There are five hundred of us here. No help there!”

He looked from one to another.

“So we live comfortably,” he told them with irony, “until our food and water and minimum night-comfort run out together. Anything we do to try to stretch anything is useless because of what happens to[30] something else. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are you doing—since you accept it?”

[30]

Dr. Chuka said amiably:

“We’ve picked a storage place for our records, and our miners are blasting out space in which to put away the record of our actions to the last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building a broadcast unit we’ll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will run twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardless of how the terrain is changed by drifting sand.”

“And,” said Bordman, “the fact that nobody will be here to give directions.”

Chuka added benignly:

“We’re doing a great deal of singing, too. My people are ... ah ... religious. When we are ... ah ... no longer here ... there have been boastings that there’ll be a well-practiced choir ready to go to work in the next world.”

White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who could grin at such a thought. But he went on grimly:

“And I understand that athletics have also been much practiced.”

 Prev. P 26/42 next