Nodalictha rejoiced. Then she was a little distressed.
"But now I can't watch them!" she pouted. Rhadampsicus watched her gravely. She said ruefully, "I see, Rhadampsicus. You've spoiled me! But if I can't watch them for the time being, I won't have anything to occupy me. Darling Rhadampsicus, you must talk to me sometimes!"
He talked to her absorbedly. He seemed to think, however, that discussion of the local solar phenomena was conversation. With feminine guile, she pretended to be satisfied, but presently she went back to her housekeeping. She began to dream of their life when they had returned home, and of the residence they would inhabit there. Presently she was planning the parties she would give as a young matron, with canapés of krypton snow and zenon ice, with sprinklings of lovely red nickel bromide crystals for a garnish—
The sun rose again, and they lived. It was as if the sky were covered with a thick cloud bank which absorbed the monstrous radiation of a sun now four times its previous diameter and madly changing shape like a monstrous ameba of flame.
In time the sun set. It rose again. It set. And Cetis Gamma Two remained a living planet instead of being a scorched cinder.
When four days had gone by and nobody died, the colonists decided that they might actually keep on living. They had at first no especially logical foundation for their belief.
But Cathy boasted. And she boasted in Cetopolis. Since they were going to keep on living, the conventions required that she return to the planet's one human settlement and her duties as a beamphone operator. It wasn't proper for her to stay unchaperoned so long as she and Lon weren't married yet.
She had no difficulty with Carson. He didn't refer to her desertion. Carson had his own troubles. Now that he had decided that he would live, his problems multiplied. The colonists' barns were filled to capacity with thanar leaves which would pay off their debts to the Company. He began to worry about that.
Lost without the constant directives from the Company, he had his technicians step up the power in the settlement transmitter. He knew that the screen Lon had put up would stop ordinary spacegram transmission. Even with a tight beam, he could broadcast and receive only at night, when the screen was thinnest. Even so, he had to search out holes in the screen.