Massy felt lonely. He could understand that nobody would want to live as the only human alive. Nobody would want to live as a member of the only group of people left alive. And everybody thinks of his home planet as all the world there is. I don't think that way, thought Massy. But maybe it's the way I'd feel about living if Riki were to die. It would be natural to want to share any danger or any disaster she faced. Which he was.
"L-look!" he said, stammering a little "You don't see! It isn't a case of your living while they die! If your home world becomes like this, what will this be like? We're farther from the sun! We're colder to start with! Do you think we'll live through anything they can't take? Food supplies or no, equipment or no, do you think we've got a chance? Use your brains!"
Herndon and Riki stared at him. And then some of the strained look left Riki's face and body. Herndon blinked, and said slowly:
"Why ... that's so! We were thought to be taking a terrific risk when we came here. But it'll be as much worse here—Of course! We are in the same fix they're in!"
He straightened a little. Color actually came back into his face. Riki managed to smile. And then Herndon said almost naturally:
"That makes things look more sensible! We've got to fight for our lives, too! And we've very little chance of saving them! What do we do about it, Massy?"
II
The sun was halfway toward mid-sky, and still attended by its sun-dogs, though they were fainter than at the horizon. The sky was darker. The mountain peaks reached skyward, serene and utterly aloof from the affairs of men. This was a frozen world, where there should be no inhabitants. The city was a fleet of metal hulks, neatly arranged on the valley floor, emptied of the material they had brought for the building of the colony. At the upper end of the valley the landing-grid stood. It was a gigantic skeleton of steel, rising from legs of unequal length bedded in the hillsides, and reaching two thousand feet toward the stars. Human figures, muffled almost past recognition, moved about a catwalk three-quarters of the way up. There was a tiny glittering below where they moved. They were, of course, men using sonic ice-breakers to shatter the frost which formed on the framework at night. Falling shards of crystal made a liquidlike flashing. The landing-grid needed to be cleared every ten days or so. Left uncleared, it would acquire an increasingly thick coating of ice. In time it could collapse. But long before that time it would have ceased to operate, and without its operation there could be no space travel. Rockets for lifting spaceships were impossibly heavy, for practical use. But the landing-grids could lift them out to the unstressed space where Lawlor drives could work, and draw them to ground with cargoes they couldn't possibly have carried if they'd needed rockets.
Massy reached the base of the grid on foot. It was not far from the village of drone-hulls. He was dwarfed by the ground-level upright beams. He went through the cold-lock to the small control-house at the grid's base.