He handled that gang of rugged individualists without raising his voice. There is something about a real leader that makes it unnecessary for him to get tough.
But back to the survey—I didn't see much of it as I was up to my elbows in pots and pans, but I knew what was going on. The valley we were in had been picked from photographs taken from the Jitterbug; it was now up to Paul to decide whether or not it was ideally suited to easy colonization. It had the advantage of being in direct line-of-sight with power station number two, but that was not essential. Line-of-sight power relays could be placed anywhere on the mountains (no name, as yet) just south of us. Most of the new villages would have to have power relayed anyhow. Aside from a safety factor for the heat trap there was no point in setting up extra power stations when the whole planet couldn't use the potential of one mass-conversion plant.
So they got busy—an engineering team working on drainage and probable annual water resources, topographers getting a contour, a chemistry-agronomy team checking on what the various rock formations would make as soil, and a community architect laying out a town and farm and rocket port plot. There were several other specialists, too, like the mineralogist, Mr. Villa, who was doodlebugging the place for ores.
Paul was the "general specialist" who balanced all the data in his mind, fiddled with his slip stick, stared off into the sky, and came up with the over all answer. The over all answer for that valley was "nix"—and we moved on to the next one on the list, packing the stuff on our backs.
That was one of the few chances I got to look around. You see, we had landed at sunrise—about five o'clock Wednesday morning sunrise was, in that longitude—and the object was to get as much done as possible during each light phase. Jupiter light is all right for working in your own fields, but no good for surveying strange territory—and here we didn't even have Jupiter light—just Callisto, every other dark phase, every twelve-and-half days, to be exact. Consequently we worked straight through light phase, on pep pills.
Now a man who is on the pills will eat more than twice as much as a man who is sleeping regularly. You know, the Eskimos have a saying, "Food is sleep." I had to produce hot meals every four hours, around the clock. I had no time for sightseeing.
We got to camp number two, pitched our tents, I served a scratch meal, and Paul passed out sleeping pills. By then the Sun was down and we really died for about twenty hours. We were comfortable enough —spun glass pads under us and resin sealed glass canvas over us.
I fed them again, Paul passed out more sleepy pills, and back we went to sleep. Paul woke me Monday afternoon. This time I fixed them a light breakfast, then really spread myself to turn them out a feast. Everybody was well rested by now, and not disposed to want to go right back to bed. So I stuffed them.
After that we sat around for a few hours and talked. I got out my squeeze box—brought along by popular demand, that is to say, Paul suggested it—and gave 'em a few tunes. Then we talked some more.
They got to arguing about where life started and somebody brought up the old theory that the Sun had once been much brighter—Jock Montague, it was, the chemist. "Mark my words," he said, "When we get around to exploring Pluto, you'll find that life was there before us. Life is persistent, like mass-energy."
"Nuts," answered Mr. Villa, very politely. "Pluto isn't even a proper planet; it used to be a satellite of Neptune."
"Well, Neptune, then," Jock persisted. "Life is all through the universe. Mark my words—when the Jove Project straightens out the bugs and gets going, they'll even find life on the surface of Jupiter."
"On Jupiter?" Mr. Villa exploded. "Please, Jock! Methane and ammonia and cold as a mother-in-law's kiss. Don't joke with us. Why, there's not even light down under on the surface of Jupiter; it's pitch dark."
"Isaid it and I'll say it again," Montague answered. "Life is persistent. Wherever there is mass and energy with conditions that permit the formation of large and stable molecules, there you will find life. Look at Mars. Look at Venus. Look at Earth—the most dangerous planet of the lot. Look at the Ruined Planet."
I said, "What do you think about it, Paul?"
The boss smiled gently. "I don't. I haven't enough data."
"There!" said Mr. Villa. "There speaks a wise man. Tell me, Jock, how did you get to be an authority on this subject?"
"I have the advantage," Jock answered grandly, "of not knowing too much about the subject. Facts are always a handicap in philosophical debate."
That ended that phase of it, for Mr. Seymour, the boss agronomist, said, "I'm not so much worried about where life came from as where it is going—here."
"How?" I wanted to know. "In what way?"
"What are we going to make of this planet? We can make it anything we want. Mars and Venus—they had native cultures. We dare not change them much and we'll never populate them very heavily. These Jovian moons are another matter; it's up to us. They say man is endlessly adaptable. I say on the contrary that man doesn't adapt himself as much as he adapts his environment. Certainly we are doing so here. But how?"
"I thought that was pretty well worked out," I said. "We set up these new centers, more people come in and we spread out, same as at Leda."
"Ah, but where does it stop? We have three ships making regular trips now. Shortly there will be a ship in every three weeks, then it will be every week, then every day. Unless we are almighty careful there will be food rationing here, same as on Earth. Bill, do you know how fast the population is increasing, back Earthside?"
I admitted that I didn't
"More than one hundred thousand more persons each day than there were the day before. Figure that up."
I did. "That would be, uh, maybe fifteen, twenty shiploads a day. Still, I imagine they could build ships to carry them."
"Yes, but where would we put them? Each day, more than twice as many people landing as there are now on this whole globe. And not just on Monday, but on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday—and the week and the month and the year after that, just to keep Earth's population stable. I tell you, it won't work. The day will come when we will have to stop immigration entirely." He looked around aggressively, like a man who expects to be contradicted.
He wasn't disappointed. Somebody said, "Oh, Seymour, come off it! Do you think you own this place just because you got here first? You snuck in while the rules were lax."
"You can't argue with mathematics," Seymour insisted. "Ganymede has got to be made self-sufficient as soon as possible—and then we've got to slam the door!"
Paul was shaking his head. "It won't be necessary."
"Huh?" said Seymour. "Why not? Answer me that. You represent the Commission: what fancy answer has the Commission got?"
"None," Paul told him. "And your figures are right but your conclusions are wrong. Oh, Ganymede has to be made self-sufficient, true enough, but your bogeyman about a dozen or more shiploads of immigrants a day you can forget."
"Why, if I may be so bold?"
Paul looked around the tent and grinned apologetically. "Can you stand a short dissertation on population dynamics? I'm afraid I don't have Jock's advantage; this is a subject I am supposed to know something about."
Somebody said, "Stand back. Give him air."
"Okay," Paul went on, "you brought it on yourselves. A lot of people have had the idea that colonization is carried on with the end purpose of relieving the pressure of people and hunger back on Earth. Nothing could be further from the truth."