Kraag was ashamed and then, unaccountably, angry. But he stood at the port, drinking his coffee and watching Jonner, and said nothing.
Either with chalk or with some soft rock he had found—Kraag could not tell which—Jonner wrote something on the big stone that was Stein's monument. Then he stood up and turned toward the sphere.
"Kraag," he said. "Kraag, are you tuned in?"
"Yes," replied Kraag shortly.
"You have today to surrender. Tonight I'm going to hatch you out of your comfortable egg."
Kraag switched off the communications system and paced the room, anger burning slowly inside him. This was ridiculous. He held all the cards. He had the guns, he had the sphere. Jonner was outside, weaponless, with a limited supply of food and water. Yet Jonner had him on the defensive.
How had it happened? How could it happen? Kraag lit a cigarette and puffed at it slowly, applying his mind coldly to the situation.
He didn't doubt that Jonner would do as he threatened, but he didn't think it was the recklessness of desperation. More likely, Jonner deliberately, calculatingly, planned to reduce his own chances for comfort, in order to bring Kraag down to more even terms with him.
If Jonner broke the hull of the sphere, it could be repaired—by someone working outside, free from interruption by an enemy. Until it was repaired, it would mean that Kraag, too, would have to live in a spacesuit. And Jonner might knock open a hole, or more than one, big enough to permit him to enter the sphere and attack Kraag in the darkness.
If only he could surround the sphere with light at night, he could keep Jonner at a distance. But with the solar mirror gone, the searchlight, on top of the sphere's other electrical requirements, would discharge the batteries before the night was half gone.