"Then when you tell them to me," said Herndon, "they'll get done! I'll have Riki put this into that pulse-code you explained to us and she'll get it off right away."
He stood up.
"I didn't explain the code to her!" insisted Bordman. "She was already translating it when you gave her my suggestion!"
"All right," said Herndon. "I'll get this sent back at once!"
He hurried out of the office. This, thought Bordman irritably, is how reputations are made, I suppose. I'm getting one. But his own reaction was extremely inappropriate. If the people of Lani II did suspend helicopter-supported grids of wire in the atmosphere, they could warm masses of underground rock and stone and earth. They could establish what were practically reservoirs of life-giving heat under their cities. They could contrive that the warmth from below would rise only as it was needed. But—
Two hundred days to conditions corresponding to the colony-planet. Then two thousand days of minimum-heat conditions. Then very, very slow return to normal temperature, long after the sun was back to its previous brilliance. They couldn't store enough heat for so long. It couldn't be done. It was ironic that in the freezing of ice and the making of glaciers the planet itself could store cold.
Also, there would be monstrous storms and blizzards on Lani II as cold conditions got worse. The wire-grids could be held aloft for shorter and shorter periods, and each time they would pull down less power than before. Their effectiveness would diminish even faster than the need for effectiveness increased.
Bordman felt even deeper depression as he worked out the facts. His proposal was essentially futile. It would be encouraging, and to a very slight degree and for a certain short time it would palliate the situation on the inner planet. But in the long run its effect would be zero.
He was embarrassed, too, that Herndon was so admiring. Herndon would tell Riki that he was marvelous. She might—though cagily—be inclined to agree. But he wasn't marvelous. This trick of a flier-supported grid was not new. It had been used on Saril to supply power for giant peristaltic pumps emptying a polder that had been formed inside a ring of indifferently upraised islands.
All I know, thought Bordman bitterly, is what somebody's showed me or I've read in books. And nobody's showed or written how to handle a thing like this!