There was talk of stocking the stream with fish, on the morning the Survey ship came in. The great landing-grid gave out a deep-toned, vibrant, humming note, like the deepest possible note of the biggest organ that could be imagined. A speck appeared very, very high up in a pale-blue sky with trimmings of golden gas-clouds. The Survey ship came down and down and settled as a shining silver object in the very center of the gigantic red-painted landing-grid.
Later, her skipper came to find Massy. He was in Herndon's office. The skipper struggled to keep sheer blankness out of his expression.
"What ... what the hell?" he demanded querulously of Massy. "This is the damnest sight in the whole galaxy, and they tell me you're responsible! There've been ringed planets before, and there've been comets and who-knows what! But shining gas pipes aimed at the sun, half a million miles across.... What the? There are two of them! Both the occupied planets!"
Herndon explained with a bland succinctness why the curtains hung in space. There was a drop in the solar constant—
The skipper exploded. He wanted facts! Details! Something to report! And dammit, he wanted to know!
Massy was automatically on the defensive when the skipper shot his questions to him. A Senior Colonial Survey officer is not revered by the Survey ship-service officers. Men like Massy can be a nuisance to a hard-working ship's officer. They have to be carried to unlikely places for their work of checking over colonial installations. They have to be put down on hard-to-get-at colonies, and they have to be called for, sometimes, at times and places which are inconvenient. So a man in Massy's position is likely to feel unpopular.
"I'd just finished the survey here," he said defensively, "when a cycle of sunspot cycles matured. All the sunspot periods got in phase, and the solar constant dropped. So I naturally offered what help I could to meet the situation."