Her skipper came to find Bordman. He was in Herndon's office. The skipper struggled to keep sheer blankness out of his expression.
"What the hell?" he demanded. "This is the damnedest 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! And there are two of them—both the occupied planets!"
Herndon explained why the curtains hung in space. There was a drop in the solar constant....
The skipper exploded. He wanted facts! Details! Something to report!
Bordman was automatically on the defensive when the skipper swung his questions at him. A Senior Colonial Survey officer is not revered by the Survey ship-service officers. Men like Bordman 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 Bordman'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."
The skipper regarded him incredulously.
"But it couldn't be done!" he said. "They told me how you did it, but it couldn't be done! Do you realize that these vapor-curtains will make fifty border-line worlds fit for use? Half a pound of sodium vapor a week!" He gestured helplessly. "They tell me the amount of heat reaching the surface here has been upped by fifteen per cent! D'you realize what that means?"
"I haven't been worrying about it," admitted Bordman. "There was a local situation and something had to be done. I—er—remembered things, and Riki suggested something I mightn't have thought of. So it's worked out like this." Then he said abruptly: "I'm not leaving. I'll let you take my resignation back. I think I'm going to settle here. It'll be a long time before we get really temperate-climate conditions here, but we can warm up a valley like this for cultivation, and it's going to be a rather satisfying job. It's a brand new planet with a brand new ecological system to be established."
The skipper of the Survey ship sat down hard. Then the sliding door of Herndon's office opened and Riki came in. The skipper stood up again. Bordman awkwardly made the introduction. Riki smiled.