That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.
It was not at all a direct and forthright scheme. It began with the untwisting of more of the rope that had lowered Jorgenson. It went on with the making of string from that fiber. They made a great deal of string. Then, very clumsily and awkwardly, they wove strips of cloth, a couple of inches wide and five or six long. They made light strong cords extend from the ends of the cloth strips. Then they practiced with these bits of cloth and the broken stones a former prisoner had piled so neatly.
The copter came and dropped food and water. When it left, they practiced. When it came again they were not practicing, but when it went away they practiced. They were a naked man and a naked Thrid, left upon a morsel of rock in a boundless sea, rehearsing themselves in an art so long-forgotten that they had to reinvent the finer parts of the technique. They experimented. They tried this. They tried that. When the copter appeared, they showed themselves. They rushed upon the dropped bag containing food and water as if fiercely trying to deny each other a full share. Once they seemed to fight over the dropped bag. The copter hovered to watch. The fight seemed furious and deadly, but inconclusive.
When the copter went away Jorgenson and Ganti went briskly back to their practicing.
They were almost satisfied with their proficiency, now. They had lost some of the small stones, but there were many left. They began to work with seaweed, the kind with long central stems which dried to brittle stiffness. They determined exactly how long they should be allowed to dry. They studied the way in which the flat seaweed foliage must be dried on rounded stone spaces to form seemingly solid surfaces of almost any shape. But they were utterly brittle when they were dry. It was not possible to make them hold any form for more than a day or so, even if sprinkled with cold water to keep them from crumbling to dust.
And they practiced with the strip of cloth and the stones. Ganti became more skilful than Jorgenson, but even Jorgenson became an expert.
There came a day when the copter dropped the bag of food and Ganti danced with seeming rage and shook his fist at it. The crew-Thrid saw him, but paid no attention. They went away. And Ganti and Jorgenson went to work.
They hauled seaweed ashore. It had to dry to some degree before it could hold a form at all. While it dried, they practiced. The leaves were ready before the stems. They spread them on rounded surfaces, many leaves thick. They dried to dark-gray-greenish stuff looking like the crudest possible cardboard without a fraction of cardboard's strength or stiffness. Presently the stems were dry enough to be stiff but not yet entirely brittle. They made a framework, uniting its members with string from the dropped rope.
Two days before the copter was due again, they used the cardboard-like but fragile curved sheet of seaweed-leaves to cover the frame. Finished, they had what looked like the fuselage of a landed copter.