he hoped to
whip into shape before the emigrants got too anxious to be on their way.
He considered that he needed to earn a little more of their gratitude so
he could make everything come out even; self-liquidated; everybody
satisfied and happy but himself.

For himself he anticipated only the deep satisfaction of accomplishment.
He'd wanted to do great things since he was a small boy, and in
electronics since his adolescence, when he'd found textbooks in the
libraries of looted spaceships. He'd gone to Walden in the hope of
achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy
industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege to be stupid
without penalty. In other than free economies, of course, stupidity is
held to be the duty of administrators. But Hoddan now believed himself
in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which
were needed by people who knew their need.

It was only when he'd made contact with the fleet, and was in the act of
maneuvering toward a boat-blister on the liner he'd brought back, that
doubts again assailed him. He had done a few things--accomplished a
little. He'd devised a broadcast-power receptor and a microwave
projector and he'd turned a Lawlor drive into a ball lightning projector
and worked out a few little things like that. But the first had been
invented before by somebody in the Cetis cluster, and the second could
have been made by anybody and the third was standard practice on Zan. He
still had to do something significant.

When he made fast to the liner and crawled through the boat-tube to its
hull, he was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.

* * * * *

The bearded old man received him in the skipper's quarters, which Hoddan
himself had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to
have aged, in hours.

"We grow more astounded by the minute," he told Hoddan heavily, "by what
you have brought us. Ten shiploads like this and we would be better
equipped than we believed ourselves in the beginning. It looks as if
some thousands of us will now be able to survive our colonization of the
planet Thetis."

Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand on Hoddan's shoulder.

"We are grateful," he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. "Please do
not doubt that! It is only that ... that-- You had to accept what was
given for our use. But I cannot help wishing very desperately that .