t fall down."

"Your estimate of its degree of completion?"

"Eighty per cent," said Redfeather formally.

"You've stopped work on it?"

"Work on it has been stopped," agreed the Indian.

"Even though the colony can receive no more supplies until it is
completed?"

"Just so," said Redfeather without expression.

"Then I issue a formal order that I be taken to the landing-grid site
immediately," said Bordman angrily. "I want to see what sort of
incompetence is responsible! Will you arrange it--at once?"

Redfeather said in a completely emotionless voice:

"You want to see the site of the landing grid. Very good. Immediately."

He turned and walked out into the incredible, blinding sunshine. Bordman
blinked at the momentary blast of light, and then began to pace up and
down the office. He fumed. He was still ashamed of his collapse from the
heat during the travel from the landed rocket-boat to the colony.
Therefore he was touchy and irritable. But the order he had given was
strictly justifiable.

He heard a small noise. He whirled. Dr. Chuka, huge and black and
spectacled, rocked back and forth in his seat, suppressing laughter.

"Now, what the devil does that mean?" demanded Bordman suspiciously. "It
certainly isn't ridiculous to ask to see the structure on which the life
of the colony finally depends!"

"Not ridiculous," said Dr. Chuka. "It's--hilarious!"

He boomed laughter in the office with the rounded ceiling of a remade
robot hull. Aletha smiled with him, though her eyes were grave.

"You'd better put on a heat-suit," she said to Bordman.

He fumed again, tempted to defy all common sense because its dictates
were not the same for everybody. But he marched away, back to the
cubbyhole in which he had awakened. Angrily, he donned the heat-suit
that had not protected him adequately before, but had certainly saved
his life. He filled the canteens topping full--he suspected he hadn't
done so the last time. He went back to the Project Engineer's office
with a feeling of being burdened and absurd.

* * * * *

Out a filter-window, he saw that men with skins as dark as Dr. Chuka's
were at work on a ground car. They were equipping it with a sunshade and
curious shields like wings. Somebody pushed a sort of caterwheel
handtruck toward it. They put big, heavy tanks into its cargo space. Dr.
Chuka had disappeared, but Aletha was back at work making notes from the
loose-leaf vo