..
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.

He showed them how to make a lumber saw--slender, rapierlike revolving
tool with which a man stabbed a tree and cut outward with the speed of a
knife cutting hot butter. And one could mount it so--and cut out planks
and beams for temporary bridges and such constructions.

They watched, baffled. They gave no sign of hope. They did not want
lumber saws. They wanted jungle-breaking machinery.

"I've brought you everything!" he insisted. "You've got a c