as impressed by the
discoveries, and went off to suck his thumbs and brood over the new
knowledge, much to Dave's relief.

More work established the fact that welding bits of the sky together was
not particularly difficult. The liquid sky was perfectly willing to bond
onto anything, including other bits of itself.

Now, if he could get a gang up the thousand miles to the sky with enough
torches to melt the cracks, it might recongeal as a perfect sphere. The
stuff was strong, but somewhat brittle. He still had no idea of how to
get the stars and planets back in the right places.

"The mathematician thought of such an idea," Sersa Garm said sourly.
"But 'twould never work. Even with much heat, it could not be done. For
see you, the upper air is filled with phlogiston, which no man can
breathe. Also, the phlogiston has negative weight, as every school child
must know. Your liquid sky would sink through it, since negative weight
must in truth be lighter than no weight, while nothing else would rise
through the layer. And phlogiston will quench the flame of a rocket, as
your expert von Braun discovered."

The man was a gold mine of information, all bad. The only remaining
solution, apparently, was to raise a scaffolding over the whole planet
to the sky, and send up mandrakes to weld back the broken pieces. They
wouldn't need to breathe, anyhow. With material of infinite
strength--and an infinite supply of it--and with infinite time and
patience, it might have been worth considering.

Nema came out the next day with more cheering information. Her
multi-times great grandfather, Sather Karf, regretted it, but he must
have good news to release at once; the populace was starving because the
food multipliers couldn't produce reliable supplies. Otherwise, Dave
would find venom being transported into his blood in increasing amounts
until the pain drove him mad. And, just incidentally, the Sons of the
Egg who'd attacked him in the hospital had tried to reach the camp twice
already, once by interpenetrating into a shipment of mandrakes, which
indicated to what measures they would resort. They meant to kill him
somehow, and the defense of him was growing too costly unless there were
positive results.

Dave hinted at having nearly reached the solution, giving her only a bit
of his wild idea of welding the sky. She took off with that, but he was
sure it wouldn't satisfy the Sather. In that, he was right. By
nightfall, when she cam