The mechanics stirred uneasily. They had watched without comprehension. Now they listened without enthusiasm. Their eyes were like those of children who watch marvels without comprehension.

He made a sledge whose runners slid on the air between themselves and whatever object would otherwise have touched them. It was practically frictionless. He made a machine to make nails. He made a power-hammer which hummed and pushed nails into any object that needed to be nailed. He made-He stopped abruptly, and sat down with his head in his hands. The people of the fleet faced so overwhelming a catastrophe that they could not see through it. They could only experience it. As their leader would have been unable to answer questions about the fleet’s predicament before he’d poured out the tale in the form it had taken in his mind, now these mechanics were unable to see ahead. They were paralyzed by the completeness of the disaster before them. They could live until the supplies of the fleet gave out. They could not grow fresh supplies without jungle-breaking machinery. They had to have jungle-breaking machinery. They could not imagine wanting anything more or less than jungle-breaking machinery.

Hoddan raised his head. The mechanics looked dully at him.

“You men do maintenance?” he asked. “You repair things when they wear out on the ship? Have you run out of some of the materials you need for repairs?”

After a long time a tired-looking man said slowly:

“On the ship I come from, we’re having trouble. Our hydroponic garden keeps the air fresh, of course. But the water-circulation pipes are gone. Rusted through. We haven’t got any pipe to fix them with. We have to keep the water moving with buckets.”

Hoddan got up. He looked about him. He hadn’t brought hydroponic piping. And there was no raw material. He took a pair of power-snips and cut away a section of wall lining. He cut it into strips. He asked the diameter of the pipe. Before their eyes he made pipe — spirally wound around a mandrel and line-welded to solidity.

“I need some of that on my ship,” said another man.

The bearded man said heavily:

“We’ll make some and send it to the ships that need it.”

“No,” said Hoddan. “We’ll send the tools to make it We can make the tools here. There must be other kinds of repairs, too. With the machines I’ve brought, we’ll make the tools to make repairs. Picture-tape machines have reels that show exactly how to do it.”

It was a new idea. The mechanics had other and immediate problems beside the over-all disaster of the fleet. Pumps that did not work. Motors that heated up. They could envision the meeting of those problems, and they could envision the obtaining of jungle plows. But they couldn’t imagine anything in between. They were capable of learning how to make tools for repairs.

Hoddan taught them. In one day there were five ships being brought into better operating condition — for ultimate futility — because of what he’d brought. Two days. Three. Mechanics began to come to the liner. Those who’d learned first, pompously passed on what they knew. On the fourth day somebody began to use a vision-tape machine to get information on a fine point in welding. On the fifth day there were lines of men waiting to use them.

On the sixth day a mechanic on what had been a luxury passenger liner scores of years ago, asked to talk to Hoddan by space-phone. He’d been working feverishly at the minor repairs he’d been unable to make for so long. To get material he pulled a crate off one of the junk machines supplied the fleet. He looked it over. He believed that if this piece were made new, and that replaced with sound metal, the machine might be usable!

Hoddan had him come to the liner which was now the flagship of the fleet. Discussion began and Hoddan began to draw diagrams. They were not clear. He drew more. Abruptly, he stared at what he’d outlined. He saw something remarkable. If one applied a perfectly well-known bit of pure-science information that nobody bothered with… He finished the diagram and a vast, soothing satisfaction came over him.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” he said. “Not enough room!”

He looked about him. Insensibly, as he talked to the first man on the fleet to show imagination, other men had gathered around. They were now absorbed.

“I think,” said Hoddan, “that we can make an electronic field that’ll soften the cementite between the crystals of steel, without heating up anything else. If it works, we can use plastic dies! And then that useless junk you’ve got can be rebuilt.”

They listened gravely, nodding as he talked. They did not quite understand everything, but they had the habit of believing him now.

Soon Hoddan had a cold-metal die-stamper in operation. It was very large. It drew on the big ship’s drive-unit for power. One put a rough mass of steel in place between plastic dies. One turned on the power. In a tenth of a second the steel was soft as putty. Then it stiffened and was warm. But in that tenth of a second it had been shaped with precision.

It took two days to duplicate the jungle plow Hoddan had first been shown, in new, sound metal. But after the first one worked triumphantly, they made forty of each part at a time and turned out enough jungle plows for the subjugation of all Thetis’ forests.

One day Hoddan waked from a cat nap with a diagram in his head. He drew it, half-asleep, and later looked and found that his unconscious mind had designed a power-supply system which made Walden’s look rather primitive.

During the first six days Hoddan did not sleep to speak of, and after that he merely cat-napped when he could. But he finally agreed with the emigrants’ leader — now no longer fierce, but fiercely triumphant — that he thought they could go on. And he would ask a favor. He propped his eyelids open with his fingers and wrote the letter to his grandfather that he’d composed in his mind in the liner on Krim. He managed to make one copy, unaddressed, of the public-relations letter that he’d worked out at the same time. He put it through a facsimile machine and managed to address each of fifty copies. Then he yawned uncontrollably.

He still yawned when he went to take leave of the leader of the people of Colin. That person regarded him with warm eyes.

“I think everything’s all right,” said Hoddan exhaustedly. “You’ve got a dozen machine-shops and they’re multiplying themselves, and you’ve got some enthusiastic mechanics, now, who’re drinking in the vision-tape stuff and finding out more than they guessed there ever was. And they’re thinking, now and then, for themselves. I think you’ll make out”

The bearded man said humbly:

“I have waited until you said all was well. Will you come with us?”

“No-o-o,” said Hoddan. He yawned again. “I’ve got to work here. There’s an obligation I have to meet.”

“It must be very admirable work,” said the old man wistfully. “I wish we had some young men like you among us.”

“You have,” said Hoddan. “They’ll be giving you trouble presently.”

The old man shook his head, looking at Hoddan very affectionately.

“We will deliver your letters,” he said warmly. “First to Krim, and then to Walden. Then we will go on and let down your letter and gift to your grandfather on Zan. Then we will go on toward Thetis. Our mechanics will work at building machines while we are in overdrive. But also they will build new tool shops and train new mechanics, so that every so often we will need to come out of overdrive to transfer the tools and the men to new ships.”

Hoddan nodded exhaustedly. This was right.

“So,” said the old man contentedly, “we will simply make those transfers in orbit about the planets for which we have your letters. You will pardon us if we only let down your letters, and do not visit those planets? We have prejudices.”

“Perfectly satisfactory,” said Hoddan.