But he was very tired. He was not elated. Riki can't be gotten away, he thought wearily, and I'm not going to go because it isn't quite fitting to go and leave her. They'll all be rejoicing presently, but nothing's settled. Then he thought with exquisite irony, She thinks I was inspired to genius by her, when I haven't done a thing I wasn't taught or didn't get out of books!
He put on the cold-garments as they were now modified for the increased frigidity. Nobody could breathe air at minus sixty-five degrees without getting his lungs frost-bitten. So there was now a plastic mask to cover one's face, and the air one breathed outdoors was heated as it came through a wire-gauze snout. But still it was not wise to stay out of shelter for too long a time.
Massy went out-of-doors. He stepped out of the cold-lock and gazed about him. The sun seemed markedly paler, and now it had lost its sun-dogs again. Ice crystals no longer floated in the almost congealed air. The sky was dark. It was almost purple, and it seemed to Massy that he could detect faint flecks of light in it. They would be stars, shining in the daytime.
There seemed to be no one about at all, only the white coldness of the mountains. But there was a movement at the mine-drift, and something came out of it. Four men appeared, muffled up like Massy himself. They rolled the eighteen-foot grid out of the mine-mouth, moving it on those inflated bags which are so much better than rollers for rough terrain. They looked absurdly like bears with steaming noses, in their masks and clothing. They had some sort of powered pusher with them, and they got the metal cage to the very top of a singularly rounded stone upcrop which rose in the center of the valley.
"We picked that spot," said Herndon's muffled voice through the chill, "because by shifting the grid's position it can be aimed, and be on a solid base. Right?"
"Quite all right," said Massy. "We'll go work it."
He moved heavily across the valley, in which nothing moved except the padded figures of the four technicians. Their wire-gauze breathing-masks seemed to emit smoke. They waved to him in greeting.
I'm popular again, he thought drearily, but it doesn't matter. Getting the Survey ship to ground won't help now, since Riki's forewarned. And this trick won't solve anything permanently on the home planet. It'll just postpone things.
He had a very peculiar ache inside. A Survey officer is naturally lonely. Massy had been lonely before he even entered the Service. He hadn't had a feeling of belonging anywhere, or with anyone, and no planet was really his home. Now he could believe that he belonged with someone. But there was the slight matter of a drop in the solar constant of an unimportant sol-type sun, and nothing could come of it.