"How sad!" said M'hort.
"He's never stopped dreaming that we might get back to Earth."
"If only," said M'hort, "he would join us at our festivals as you do! If only he would laugh when we gather for meals! But, ah, he will do none of these things. Many times he sits in his meegan and broods. You say he insists there is a way to return to your planet?"
Carl was embarrassed for his friend. "When we first landed," he explained, "Rex thought that somehow we could use the auxiliaries."
"Ah, yes," said M'hort, trying hard to understand these things which were strange to him. "The auxiliaries."
"You see, we can manufacture unlimited quantities of rocket fuel with the fuel-generator that most ships carry. It's a catalytic process, the raw material being any fairly dense rock.
"The auxiliaries were a sort of obsession with Rex. I couldn't control him. In the few days before you found us, he manufactured seven or eight tons of merbohydrate. He filled the ship full. I let him have his way. We lifted the ship and left Worta. Rex was certain we could find another planet and get back to Earth by a stepping-stone method."
"Ah, but there are no other planets near enough," said M'hort, recalling this fact which Carl had previously taught him.
"Within light-years. As I say, I let Rex have his way until half the fuel was used up. Then I had to fight him."
Carl looked ashamedly at his fists. "I knocked him out as we came back to Worta. But somehow he never gave up the idea that we could use the auxiliaries somehow."