Calhoun's blaster made its inadequate rasping noise. The knife-blade turned incandescent for two-thirds of its length. The young man dropped the suddenly searing handle. The knife sank hissing into the snow.
"It's always thrilling to be dramatic," said Calhoun severely, "but I assure you it's much more satisfying to be sane. The young lady's name is Nym, I believe. I do not know the gentleman. But Nym's father and myself have come to put the technical resources of two civilizations at your disposal as a first step toward treatment of the pandemic isolation syndrome on this planet, which with the complications that have developed amounts to a Crusoe health problem."
Murgatroyd tried feverishly to get his head out of Calhoun's parka past his chin. He'd heard a blaster. He sensed excitement. His nose emerged, whiffing frantically. Calhoun pushed it back.
"Tell them, Hunt," he said irritably. "Tell them what we're here for and what you've done already!"
The girl's father told her unsteadily—almost humbly, for some reason—that the jet-sledge had come to take her and her sweetheart—to be her husband—to the hotlands where at least they would not die of cold. Calhoun added crossly that he believed there would even be food there—because of the ribbon in the sky.
Trembling and abashed, the fugitives got on the sledge. Its motor roared. It surged toward the hotlands under the golden glow of that ribbon—which obviously had no rational explanation unless somebody had made a grave mistake. But Calhoun had not.
IV
"An action is normally the result of a thought. Since we cannot retract an action, we tend to feel that we cannot retract the thought which produced it. In effect, we cling desperately to our mistakes. In order to change our views we have commonly to be forced to act upon new thoughts, so urgent and so necessary that without disowning our former, mistaken ideas, we can abandon them tactfully without saying anything to anybody—even ourselves."
The Practice of Thinking
Fitzgerald