“That may be a little oversimplified, but it should be close enough to the real thing to let this tofacco stuff grow — if you can get specimens here alive, to start things off. It would be a good idea to get some soil, too — I don’t suppose that powdering the local rock would help much. I may add in passing that I refuse even to attempt analyzing that soil. You’ll have to get enough to use.” Feth stared.
“But that’s ridiculous! We need tons, for a decent-sized plantation!” Sallman Ken shrugged.
“I know it. I tell you clearly that it will be easier to get those tons than to get an accurate soil analysis out of me. I simply don’t know enough about it, and I doubt if Sarr’s best chemist could hazard a prediction about the chemicals likely to be present in the solid state on that planet. At that temperature, I’ll bet organic compounds could exist without either fluorine or silicon.”
“I think we’d better get Drai back here to listen to that. I’m sure he was planning to have you synthesize both atmosphere and soil, so that we could set up the plantation entirely on our own.”
“Perhaps you’d better. I told him my limitations at the beginning; if he still expects that, he has no idea whatever of the nature of the problem.” Feth left, looking worried, though Ken was unable to understand what particular difference it made to the mechanic. Later he was to find out.
The worried expression was still more evident when Feth returned.
“He’s busy now. He says he’ll talk it over with you after that suit comes back, so that any alternatives can be considered, too. He wants me to take you out to the caves so you can see for yourself what he has in mind for making them usable.”
“How do we get there? They must be some distance from here.”
“Ordon Lee will take us around in the ship. It’s about two thousand miles. Let’s get into our suits.”
Ken heroically swallowed the impulse to ask why the whole subject should have come up so suddenly in the midst of what seemed a totally different matter, and went to the locker where the space suits were stowed. He more than suspected the reason, anyway, and looked confidently forward to having the trip prolonged until after the return of the trading torpedo.