Hoddan got up. He looked about him. He hadn’t brought hydroponic piping. And there was no raw material. He took a pair of power-snips and cut away a section of wall lining. He cut it into strips. He asked the diameter of the pipe. Before their eyes he made pipe — spirally wound around a mandrel and line-welded to solidity.
“I need some of that on my ship,” said another man.
The bearded man said heavily:
“We’ll make some and send it to the ships that need it.”
“No,” said Hoddan. “We’ll send the tools to make it We can make the tools here. There must be other kinds of repairs, too. With the machines I’ve brought, we’ll make the tools to make repairs. Picture-tape machines have reels that show exactly how to do it.”
It was a new idea. The mechanics had other and immediate problems beside the over-all disaster of the fleet. Pumps that did not work. Motors that heated up. They could envision the meeting of those problems, and they could envision the obtaining of jungle plows. But they couldn’t imagine anything in between. They were capable of learning how to make tools for repairs.
Hoddan taught them. In one day there were five ships being brought into better operating condition — for ultimate futility — because of what he’d brought. Two days. Three. Mechanics began to come to the liner. Those who’d learned first, pompously passed on what they knew. On the fourth day somebody began to use a vision-tape machine to get information on a fine point in welding. On the fifth day there were lines of men waiting to use them.
On the sixth day a mechanic on what had been a luxury passenger liner scores of years ago, asked to talk to Hoddan by space-phone. He’d been working feverishly at the minor repairs he’d been unable to make for so long. To get material he pulled a crate off one of the junk machines supplied the fleet. He looked it over. He believed that if this piece were made new, and that replaced with sound metal, the machine might be usable!
Hoddan had him come to the liner which was now the flagship of the fleet. Discussion began and Hoddan began to draw diagrams. They were not clear. He drew more. Abruptly, he stared at what he’d outlined. He saw something remarkable. If one applied a perfectly well-known bit of pure-science information that nobody bothered with… He finished the diagram and a vast, soothing satisfaction came over him.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he said. “Not enough room!”
He looked about him. Insensibly, as he talked to the first man on the fleet to show imagination, other men had gathered around. They were now absorbed.
“I think,” said Hoddan, “that we can make an electronic field that’ll soften the cementite between the crystals of steel, without heating up anything else. If it works, we can use plastic dies! And then that useless junk you’ve got can be rebuilt.”
They listened gravely, nodding as he talked. They did not quite understand everything, but they had the habit of believing him now.
Soon Hoddan had a cold-metal die-stamper in operation. It was very large. It drew on the big ship’s drive-unit for power. One put a rough mass of steel in place between plastic dies. One turned on the power. In a tenth of a second the steel was soft as putty. Then it stiffened and was warm. But in that tenth of a second it had been shaped with precision.
It took two days to duplicate the jungle plow Hoddan had first been shown, in new, sound metal. But after the first one worked triumphantly, they made forty of each part at a time and turned out enough jungle plows for the subjugation of all Thetis’ forests.
One day Hoddan waked from a cat nap with a diagram in his head. He drew it, half-asleep, and later looked and found that his unconscious mind had designed a power-supply system which made Walden’s look rather primitive.
During the first six days Hoddan did not sleep to speak of, and after that he merely cat-napped when he could. But he finally agreed with the emigrants’ leader — now no longer fierce, but fiercely triumphant — that he thought they could go on. And he would ask a favor. He propped his eyelids open with his fingers and wrote the letter to his grandfather that he’d composed in his mind in the liner on Krim. He managed to make one copy, unaddressed, of the public-relations letter that he’d worked out at the same time. He put it through a facsimile machine and managed to address each of fifty copies. Then he yawned uncontrollably.
He still yawned when he went to take leave of the leader of the people of Colin. That person regarded him with warm eyes.
“I think everything’s all right,” said Hoddan exhaustedly. “You’ve got a dozen machine-shops and they’re multiplying themselves, and you’ve got some enthusiastic mechanics, now, who’re drinking in the vision-tape stuff and finding out more than they guessed there ever was. And they’re thinking, now and then, for themselves. I think you’ll make out”
The bearded man said humbly:
“I have waited until you said all was well. Will you come with us?”
“No-o-o,” said Hoddan. He yawned again. “I’ve got to work here. There’s an obligation I have to meet.”
“It must be very admirable work,” said the old man wistfully. “I wish we had some young men like you among us.”
“You have,” said Hoddan. “They’ll be giving you trouble presently.”
The old man shook his head, looking at Hoddan very affectionately.
“We will deliver your letters,” he said warmly. “First to Krim, and then to Walden. Then we will go on and let down your letter and gift to your grandfather on Zan. Then we will go on toward Thetis. Our mechanics will work at building machines while we are in overdrive. But also they will build new tool shops and train new mechanics, so that every so often we will need to come out of overdrive to transfer the tools and the men to new ships.”
Hoddan nodded exhaustedly. This was right.
“So,” said the old man contentedly, “we will simply make those transfers in orbit about the planets for which we have your letters. You will pardon us if we only let down your letters, and do not visit those planets? We have prejudices.”
“Perfectly satisfactory,” said Hoddan.
“The mechanics you have trained,” said the old man proudly, “have made a little ship ready for you. It is not much larger than your spaceboat, but it is fit for travel between suns, which will be convenient for your work. I hope you will accept it. There is even a tiny tool shop on it!”
Hoddan would have been more touched if he hadn’t known about it. But one of the men entrusted with the job had needed his advice. He knew what he was getting. It was the spaceyacht he’d used before, refurbished and fitted with everything the emigrants could provide.
He affected great surprise and expressed unfeigned appreciation. Barely an hour later he transferred to it with the spaceboat in tow. He watched the emigrant fleet swing out to emptiness and resume its valiant journey. But it was not a hopeless journey, now. In fact, the colony on Thetis ought to start out better equipped than most settled planets.
And he went to sleep. He’d nothing urgent to do, except allow a certain amount of time pass before he did anything. He was exhausted. He slept the clock round, and waked and ate sluggishly, and went back to sleep again. On the whole, the cosmos did not notice the difference. Stars flamed in emptiness, and planets rotated sedately. Comets flung out gossamer veils or retracted them, and spaceliners went about upon their lawful occasions.
When he waked again he was rested, and he reviewed all his actions and his situation. It appeared that matters promised fairly well on the emigrant fleet now gone forever. They would remember Hoddan with affection for a year or so, and dimly after that. But settling a new world would be enthralling and important work. Nobody’d think of him at all, after a certain length of time. But he had to think of an obligation he’d assumed on their account.