"To the contrary," insisted Massy. "They've got to know right away! You're going to issue orders and they'll need to understand how urgent they are!"
Herndon looked absolutely hopeless.
"What's the good of doing anything?" When Massy frowned, he added as if exhausted: "Seriously, is there any use? You're all right. A Survey ship's due to take you away. It's not coming because they know there's something wrong, but because your job should be finished about now. But it can't do any good! It would be insane for it to land at home. It couldn't carry away more than a few dozen refugees, and there are twenty million people who're going to die. It might offer to take some of us. But ... I don't think many of us would go. I wouldn't. I don't think Riki would."
"I don't see—"
"What we've got right here," said Herndon, "is what they're going to have back home. And worse. But there's no chance for us to keep alive here! You are the one who pointed it out! I've been figuring, and the way the solar-constant curve is going—I plotted it from the figures they gave us—it couldn't possibly level out until the oxygen, anyhow, is frozen out of the atmosphere here. We aren't equipped to stand anything like that, and we can't get equipped. There couldn't be equipment to let us stand it indefinitely! Anyhow the maximum cold conditions will last two thousand days back home—six Earth-years. And there'll be storage of cold in frozen oceans and piled-up glaciers—It'll be twenty years before home will be back to normal in temperature, and the same here. Is there any point in trying to live—just barely to survive—for twenty years before there'll be a habitable planet to go back to?"
Massy said irritably:
"Don't be a fool! Doesn't it occur to you that this planet is a perfect experiment-station, two hundred days ahead of the home world, where ways to beat the whole business can be tried? If we can beat it here, they can beat it there!"
Herndon said detachedly:
"Can you name one thing to try here?"
"Yes," snapped Massy. "I want the walk-heaters and the step-heaters outside turned off. They use power to keep walkways clear of frost and doorsteps not slippery. I want to save that heat!"