"They clung to their sins!" said the bearded man bitterly. "They did not adopt our ways! Our example went for naught! They brought others of their kind to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more they outnumbered us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should not govern them. And they lured our young people to imitate them—frivolous, sinful, riotous folk that they were!"
Hoddan nodded again. There were elderly people on Zan who talked like this. Not his grandfather! If you listened long enough they'd come to some point or other, but they had arranged their thoughts so solidly that any attempt to get quickly at their meaning would only produce confusion.
"Twenty years since," said the bearded man with an angry gesture, "we made a bargain. We held a third of all the land of the planet, but our young men were falling away from the ways of their fathers. We made a bargain with the newcomers. We would trade our lands, our cities, our farms, our highways, for ships to take us to a new world, and food for the journey and machines for the taming of the planet we would select. We sent some of our number to find a world to which we could move. Ten years back, they returned. They had found it. The planet Thetis."
Again Hoddan had no reaction. The name meant nothing.
"We began to prepare," said the old man, his eyes flashing. "Five years since, we were ready. But we had to wait three more before the bargainers were ready to complete the trade. They had to buy and collect the ships. They had to design and build the machinery we would need. They had to collect the food supplies. Two years ago we moved our animals into the ships, and loaded our food and our furnishings, and took our places. We set out. For two years we have journeyed toward Thetis."
Hoddan felt an instinctive respect for people who would undertake to move themselves, the third of the population of a planet, over a distance that meant years of voyaging. They might have tastes in costume that he did not share, and they might go in for elaborate oratory instead of matter-of-fact statement, but they had courage.
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. "I take it this brings us up to the present."
"No," said the old man. "Six months ago we considered that we might well begin to train the operators of the machines we would use on Thetis. We uncrated machines. We found ourselves cheated!"
Hoddan found that he could make a fairly dispassionate guess of what advantage—say—Nedda's father would take of people who would not check on his good faith for two years and until they were two years' journey away.
"How badly were you cheated?" asked Hoddan.
"Of our lives!" said the angry old man. "Do you know machinery?"
"Some kinds," admitted Hoddan.
"Come," said the leader of the fleet.
With a sort of dignity that was theatrical only because he was aware of it, the leader of the people of Colin showed the way. The hold was packed tightly with cases of machinery. One huge crate had been opened and its contents fully disclosed. Others had been hacked at enough to show their contents.
The uncrated machine was a jungle plow. It was a powerful piece of equipment which would attack jungle on a thirty-foot front, knock down all vegetation up to trees of four-foot diameter, shred it, loosen and sift the soil to a three-foot depth, and leave behind it smoothed, broken, pulverized dirt mixed with ground-up vegetation ready to break down into humus. Such a machine would clear tens of acres in a day, turning jungle into farm land ready for crops.
"We ran this for five minutes," said the bearded man fiercely as Hoddan nodded. He lifted a motor hood.
The motors were burned out. Worthless insulation. Gears were splintered and smashed. Low-grade metal castings. Assembly-bolts had parted. Tractor treads were bent and cracked. It was not a machine except in shape. It was a mock-up in worthless materials which probably cost its maker the twentieth part of what an honest jungle plow would cost to build.
Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents. "It's not all like this!" he said incredulously.
"Some is worse," said the old man, with dignity. "There are crates which are marked to contain turbines. Their contents are ancient, worn-out brick-making machines. There are crates marked to contain generators. They are filled with corroded irrigation pipes and broken castings. We have ship-loads of crush-baled, rusted sheet-metal trimmings! We have been cheated of our lives!"
Hoddan found himself sick with honest fury. The population of one-third of a planet, packed into spaceships for two years and more, would be appropriate subjects for sympathy at the best of times. But it was only accident that had kept these people from landing on Thetis by rocket—since none of their ships would be expected ever to rise again—and from having their men go out and joyfully hack at alien jungle to make room for their machines to land—and then find out they'd brought scrap metal for some thousands of light-years to no purpose.
They'd have starved outright. In fact, they were in not much better case right now. Because there was nowhere else that they could go! There was no new colony which could absorb so many people, with only their bare hands for equipment to live by. There was no civilized, settled world which could admit so many paupers without starving its own population. There was nowhere for these people to go!
Hoddan's anger took on the feeling of guilt. He could do nothing, and something had to be done.
"Why—why did you come to Darth?" he asked. "What can you gain by orbiting here? You can't expect—"
The old man faced him.
"We are beggars," he said with bitter dignity. "We stopped here to ask for charity . . . for the old and worn-out machines the people of Darth can spare us. We will be grateful for even a single rusty plow. Because we have to go on. We can do nothing else. We will land on Thetis. And one plow can mean that a few of us will live who would otherwise die."
Hoddan ran his hands through his hair. This was not his trouble, but he could not ignore it.
"But again, why Darth?" he asked helplessly. "Why not stop at a world with riches to spare? Darth's a poor place."
"Because it is the poor who are generous," said the bearded man evenly.
Hoddan paced up and down. Presently he said jerkily:
"With all the goodwill in the world . . . Darth is poverty-stricken. It has no industries. It has no technology. It has not even roads! It is a planet of little villages and tiny towns. A ship from elsewhere stops here only once a month. Ground communications are almost non-existent. To spread the word of your need over Darth would require months. But to collect what might be given, without roads or even wheeled vehicles—it's impossible! And I have the only space-vessel on the planet, and it's not fit for a journey between suns."
The bearded man waited with a sort of implacable despair.
"But," continued Hoddan grimly, "I have an idea. I have contacts on Walden. The government of Walden does not regard charity with favor. The need for charity seems a—ah—a criticism of the Waldenian standard of living."
The bearded man said coldly:
"I can understand that. The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them."
But Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities. This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions. But on the other hand, it wasn't a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly remembered an oration he'd heard his grandfather give many, many times in the past.
Straight thinkin', the old man had said obstinately, is a delusion. You think things out clear and simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! Real things ain't simple! Any time you try to figure things out so they's simple and straightforward, you're goin' against nature and you're going to get 'em mixed up! So when something happens, and you're in a straightforward, hopeless fix, why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out!