The inner planet, Lani II, had twenty millions of inhabitants, as against the three hundred people in the colony on Lani III. The outer planet was already frozen, but there would be glaciation on the inner world in two hundred days. Glaciation and human life are mutually exclusive. Human beings can survive only so long as food and power hold out, and shelter against really bitter cold cannot be improvised for twenty million people! And, of course, there could be no outside help on any adequate scale. News of the need for it would travel too slowly. One other world might hear in two months, and send what aid it could in four. But the next would not hear for four months, and could not send help in less than eight. It would take five Earth-years to get a thousand ships to Lani Il—and a thousand ships could not rescue more than one per cent of the population. But in five years there would not be nearly so many people left alive.
Heindon licked his lips. There were three hundred people in the already-frozen colony. They had food and power and shelter. They had been considered splendidly daring to risk the conditions here. But all their home world would presently be like this. And there was no possibility of equipping everybody there as the colonists were equipped.
"Our people," said Riki in a thin voice, "all of them. Mother and Father and the others. Our cousins. All our friends. Home is going to be like…like that!"
She jerked her head toward a port which let in the frigid colony-world's white daylight. Her face worked.
Massy was aware of an extreme unhappiness on her account. For himself, of course, the tragedy was less.
He had no family. He had very few friends. But he could see something that had not occurred to them as yet.
"Of course," he said, "it's not only their trouble. If the solar constant is really dropping like that…why things out here will be pretty bad, too. A lot worse than they are now. We'll have to get to work to save ourselves!"
Riki did not look at him. Herndon bit his lips. It was plain that their own fate did not concern them immediately. But when one's home world is doomed, one's personal safety seems a very trivial matter.
There was silence save for the crackling, tumultuous noises that came out of the speaker on Herndon's desk. In the midst of that confused sound there was a wavering, whining, high-pitched note which swelled and faded and grew distinct again.
"We," said Massy without confidence, "are right now in the conditions they'll face a good long time from now."
Herndon said dully:
"But we couldn't live here without supplies from home. Or even without the equipment we brought. But they can't get supplies from anywhere, and they can't make such equipment for everybody! They'll die!" He swallowed, and there was a clicking noise in his throat. "They…they know it, too. So they…warn us to try to save ourselves because…they can't help us anymore."
There are many reasons why a man can feel shame that he belongs to a race which can do the things that some men do. But sometimes there are reasons to be proud, as well. The home world of this colony was doomed, but it sent a warning to the tiny group on the colony-world, to allow them to try to save themselves.
"I…wish we were there to…share what they have to face," said Riki. Her voice sounded as if her throat hurt. "I…don't want to keep on living if… everybody who…ever cared about us is going to die!"
Massy felt lonely. He could understand that nobody would want to live as the only human alive. Nobody would want to live as a member of the only group of people left alive. And everybody thinks of his home planet as all the world there is. I don't think that way, thought Massy. But maybe it's the way I'd feel about living if Riki were to die. It would be natural to want to share any danger or any disaster she faced. Which he was.
"L-look!" he said, stammering a little. "You don't see! It isn't a case of your living while they die! If your home world becomes like this, what will this be like? We're farther from the sun! We're colder to start with! Do you think we'll live through anything they can't take? Food supplies or no, equipment or no, do you think we've got a chance? Use your brains!"
Herndon and Riki stared at him. And then some of the strained look left Riki's face and body. Herndon blinked, and said slowly:
"Why…that's so! We were thought to be taking a terrific risk when we came here. But it'll be as much worse here. Of course! We are in the same fix they're in!"
He straightened a little. Color actually came back into his face. Riki managed to smile. And then Herndon said almost naturally:
"That makes things look more sensible! We've got to fight for our lives, too! And we've very little chance of saving them! What do we do about it, Massy?"
II
The sun was halfway toward mid-sky, and still attended by its sun-dogs, though they were fainter than at the horizon. The sky was darker. The mountain peaks reached skyward, serene and utterly aloof from the affairs of man. This was a frozen world, where there should be no inhabitants. The city was a fleet of metal hulks, neatly arranged on the valley floor, emptied of the material they had brought for the building of the colony. At the upper end of the valley the landing-grid stood. It was a gigantic skeleton of steel, rising from legs of unequal length bedded in the hillsides, and reaching two thousand feet toward the stars. Human figures, muffled almost past recognition, moved about a catwalk three-quarters of the way up. There was a tiny glittering below where they moved. They were, of course, men using sonic ice-breakers to shatter the frost which formed on the framework at night. Falling shards of crystal made a liquidlike flashing. The landing-grid needed to be cleared every ten days or so. Left uncleared, it would acquire an increasingly thick coating of ice. In time it could collapse. But long before that time it would have ceased to operate, and without its operation there could be no space travel. Rockets for lifting spaceships were impossibly heavy, for practical use. But the landing-grids could lift them out to the unstressed space where Lawlor drives could work, and draw them to ground with cargoes they couldn't possibly have carried if they'd needed rockets.
Massy reached the base of the grid on foot. It was not far from the village of drone-hulls. He was dwarfed by the ground-level upright beams. He went through the cold-lock to the small control-house at the grid's base.
He nodded to the man on standby as he got painfully out of his muffling garments.
"Everything all right?" he asked.
The standby operator shrugged. Massy was Colonial Survey. It was his function to find fault, to expose inadequacies in the construction and operation of colony facilities. It's natural for me to be disliked by men whose work I inspect, thought Massy. If I approve it doesn't mean anything, and if I protest, it's bad. He had always been lonely, but it was a part of the job.
"I think," he said painstakingly, "that there ought to be a change in maximum no-drain voltage. I'd like to check it."
The operator shrugged again. He pressed buttons under a phone-plate.
"Shift to reserve power," he commanded when a face appeared in the plate. "Gotta check no-drain juice."