M'hort's fear showed in his eyes. "There is no place for him to visit?"
"Not a planetary body within countless billions of miles."
M'hort paced. "We should not have this trouble," he said fretfully. "I am most annoyed with Rex. Look at us of Worta. Do we not know we are doomed, that the unhealthful conditions beneath Worta are producing a sterility that will soon destroy us as if we had never been? Yet we are gay and take what there is of life. Why must Rex make us all unhappy? And I feel he is planning—something that can never be undone."
He hesitated. "Carl, this merbohydrate—it is dangerous?"
Carl laughed. "Just about the peppiest explosion known to the human race." He touched M'hort's arm. "I'll find out what he's planning."
Carl went straight to the surface and stood in the cave opening, his breath hanging in puffy clouds of white. Rex was at that moment letting down the ship's gangplank. He wheeled the fuel-generator out on its short tripod.
All day Carl watched as Rex set "pills" of merbohydrate into the rock face of the snow-shorn, worked-over hill and detonated them. Tons of chipped rock cascaded toward the mouth of the generator. Rex panted as he worked with a square-point shovel. The twenty-pound merbohydrate ingots came rolling out at the rate of one a minute. Rex carried the ingots into the ship.
As the red star was about to settle for the night behind the sharply-silhouetted horizon, Rex wheeled the generator back into the ship. About that time, Carl panted up the hill to the mesa level. "Rex!" he called.
Rex stood scowling near the airlock. Plainly, Carl was not welcome.
Carl panted, "Going for a ride?"