"Well?" he asked. "Chuka said you needed me here. What's the matter?"
Ralph Redfeather nodded formally. Aletha was here, too, and two of Chuka's foremen—one did not look happy—and four of the Amerind steel-workers. They grinned at Bordman.
"I wanted you to see," said Aletha's cousin, "before we threw on the current. It doesn't look like that little grid could handle the sand it took care of. But Lewanika wants to report."
A dark man who worked under Chuka—and looked as if he belonged on solid ground—said:
"We cast the beams for the small landing-grid, Mr. Bordman. We melted the metal out of the cliffs and ran it into moulds as it flowed down."
He stopped. One of the Indians said:
"We made the girders into the small landing-grid. It bothered us because we built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We didn't understand why you ordered it there. But we built it."
The second dark man said with a trace of swagger:
"We made the coils, Mr. Bordman. We made the small grid so it would work the same as the big one when it was finished. And then we made the big grid work, finished or not!"
Bordman said impatiently: