"It's still possible," said Captain Leicester. "We can pass down our technological heritage to our children and grandchildren, Moray, and some day, even if we're marooned here for life, our grandchildren will go back. Don't you know your history, Moray? From the invention of the steamboat to man's landing on the Moon was less than two hundred years. From there to the M-AM drives which landed us on Alpha Centauri, less than a hundred. We may all die on this Godforsaken lump of rock, we probably will. But if we can preserve our technology intact, enough to take our grandchildren back into the mainstream of human civilization, we won't be dying for nothing."

Moray looked at him with a deep pity. "Is it possible that you still don't understand? Let me spell it out for you, Captain, and you, Patrick. This planet will not support any advanced technology. Instead of a nickel-iron core, the major metals are low-density non-conductors, which explains why the gravity is so low. The rock, as far as we can tell without sophisticated equipment we don't have and can't build, is high in silicates but low in metallic ores. Metals are always going to be rare here--terrifyingly rare. The planet I spoke about, with enormous use of electric power, had huge fossil-fuel deposits and huge amounts of mountain streams to convert energy... and a very tough ecological system. This planet appears to be only marginally agricultural land, at least here. The forest cover is all that keeps it from massive erosion, so we must harvest timber with the greatest care, and preserve the forests as a lifeline. Added to that, we simply can't spare enough manual labor to build the vehicles you want, to service and maintain them, or to build such small roadways as they would need. I can give you exact facts and figures if you like, but in brief, if you insist on a mechanized technology you're handing down a death sentence--if not for all of us, at least for our grandchildren; we might make it through three generations, because with such small numbers we could move on to a new part of the planet when we'd burned out one area. But no more."

Patrick said with deep bitterness, "Is it worth while surviving, or even having grandchildren, if they're going to live this way?"

Moray shrugged. "I can't make you have grandchildren," he said. "But I have a responsibility to the ones already on the way, and there are colonies without advanced technology which have just as long a waiting list as the one planned around massive use of electricity. Our lifeline isn't you people, I'm sorry to say; you are--to put it bluntly, Chief--just so much dead weight. The people we need on this world are the ones in the New Hebrides Commune--and I suspect if we survive at all, it's going to be their doing."

"Well," Captain Leicester said, "I guess that tells us where we stand." He thought it over a minute. "What's ahead for us, then, Moray?"

Moray looked at the records, and said, "I note on your personnel printout that your hobby at the academy was building musical instruments. That isn't very high priority, but this winter we can use plenty of people who know something about it. Meanwhile, do you know anything about glass blowing, practical nursing, dietetics, or elementary teaching?"

"I joined the service as a Medical Corpsman," Patrick said surprisingly, "before I went into Officer's Training."

"Go talk to Di Asturien in the hospital, then. For the time being I'll mark you down as assistant orderly, subject to drafts of all able-bodied men in the building program. An engineer should be able to handle architectural work and designing. As for you, Captain--"

Leicester said irritably, "It's idiotic to call me Captain. Captain of what, for God's sake, man!"

"Harry, then," Moray said, with a small wry grin. "I suspect titles and things will just quietly disappear within three or four years, but I'm not going to deprive anyone of one, if he wants to keep it."

"Well, consider I've phased mine out," Leicester said. "Going to draft me to hoe in the garden? Once I'm out as a spaceship captain, it's all I'm good for."

"No," Moray said bluntly. I'm going to need whatever it was in you that made you a Captain--leadership, maybe."

"Any law against salvaging what technological know-how we have? Programming it into the computer, maybe, for those hypothetical grandchildren of ours?"

"Not so hypothetical in your case," Moray said, "Fiona MacMorair--she's over in the hospital as 'possible early pregnancy'--gave us your name as the probable father."

"Who the hell, pardoning the expression, who on this hell-fired world is Fiona Macwhatsis?" Leicester scowled. "I never heard of the damn girl."

Moray chuckled. "Does that matter? I happened to spend most of this wind making love to cabbage sprouts and baby bean plants, or at least listening to them telling me their troubles, but most of us spent it a little less--seriously, shall we say. Dr. Di Asturien's going to ask you the names of any possible female contacts. "

Leicester said, "The only one I remember, I had to fight for, and I lost." He rubbed the fading bruise on his chin. "Oh, wait--is this a redheaded girl, one of the Commune group?"

Moray said, "I don't know the girl by sight. But about three--fourths of the New Hebrides people are red-haired--they're mostly Scots, and a few Irish. I'd say the chances were better than average that unless the girl miscarries, you'll have a red-headed son or daughter come nine-ten months from now. So you see, Leicester, you have a stake in this world."

Leicester flushed, a slow angry blush. He said, "I don't want my descendants to live in caves and scratch the ground for a living. I want them to know what kind of world we came from."

Moray did not answer for a moment. Finally he said, "I ask you seriously--don't answer, I'm not the keeper of your conscience, but think it over--might it not be best to let our descendants evolve a technology indigenous to this world? Rather than tantalizing them with the knowledge of one that could destroy this planet?"

"I'm counting on my descendants having good sense," Leicester said.

"Go ahead and program the stuff into the computer, then, if you want to," Moray said with the same small shrug, "maybe they'll have too much good sense to use it."

Leicester turned to go. "Can I have my assistant back? Or has Camilla Del Rey been assigned to something important, like cooking or making curtains for the hospital?"

Moray shook his head. "You can have her back when she's out of the hospital," he said, "although I've got her listed as pregnant, for assignment to light work only, and I thought we'd ask her to write some elementary mathematics texts. But the computer isn't very strenuous; if she wants to go back to it, I've no objection."

He looked pointedly at the work charts cluttering his desk, and Harry Leicester, ex-captain of the starship, realized that he had been, for all practical purposes, dismissed.