The bearded old man received him in the skipper's quarters, which Hoddan himself had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to have aged, in hours.
"We grow more astounded by the minute," he told Hoddan heavily, "by what you have brought us. Ten shiploads like this and we would be better equipped than we believed ourselves in the beginning. It looks as if some thousands of us will now be able to survive our colonization of the planet Thetis."
Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand on Hoddan's shoulder.
"We are grateful," he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. "Please do not doubt that! It is only that ... that— You had to accept what was given for our use. But I cannot help wishing very desperately that ... that instead of unfamiliar tools for metal-working and machines with tapes which show pictures.... I wish that even one more jungle-plow had been included!"
Hoddan's jaw dropped. The people of Colin wanted planet-subduing machinery. They wanted it so badly that they did not want anything else. They could not even see that anything else had any value at all. Most of them could only look forward to starvation when the ship supplies were exhausted, because not enough ground could be broken and cultivated early enough to grow food enough in time.
"Would it," asked the old man desperately, "be possible to exchange these useless machines for others that will be useful?"
"L—let me talk to your mechanics, sir," said Hoddan unhappily. "Maybe something can be done."
He restrained himself from tearing his hair as he went to where mechanics of the fleet looked over their treasure-trove. He'd come up to the fleet again to gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it was so far from being enough.
He gathered together the men who'd tried to keep the fleet's ships in working order during their flight. They were competent men, of course. They were resolute. But now they had given up hope. Hoddan began to lecture them. They needed machines. He hadn't brought the machines they wanted, perhaps, but he'd brought the machines to make them with. Here were automatic shapers, turret lathes, dicers. Here were cutting-points for machines these machines could make, to make the machines the colony on Thetis would require. He'd brought these because they had the raw material. They had their ships themselves! Even some of the junk they carried in crates was good metal, merely worn out in its present form. They could make anything they needed with what he'd brought them. For example, he'd show them how to make ... say ... a lumber saw.