The face in the screen grumbled. Bordman swallowed. It was not a Survey officer's privilege to maintain discipline. And anyhow, there was no particular virtue in discipline here and now. He watched the current-demand dial. It stood a little above normal day-drain, which was understandable. The outside temperature was down. There was more power needed to keep the dwellings warm, and there was always a lot of power needed in the mine the colony had been formed to exploit. The mine had to be warmed for the men who worked to develop it. The current-demand needle dropped abruptly, hung steady, and dropped again and again as additional parts of the colony's power uses were switched to reserve. The needle hit bottom. It stayed there. Bordman had to walk around the standby man to get at the voltmeter. It was built around standard, old-fashioned vacuum-tubes, and tested it. He pushed in the contact plugs, read the no-drain voltage, licked his lips, and made a note. He reversed the leads, so it would read backward. He took another reading. He drew in his breath very quietly. "Now I want the power turned on in sections," he told the operator. "The mine first, maybe. It doesn't matter. But I want to get voltage readings at different power take-offs." The operator looked pained. He spoke with unnecessary elaboration to the face in the phone-plate, and grudgingly went through the process by which Bordman measured the successive drops in voltage with power drawn from the ionosphere. The current available from a layer of ionized gas is, in effect, the current-flow through a conductor with marked resistance. It is possible to infer a gas's ionization from the current it yields. The cold-lock door opened. Riki Herndon came in, panting a little. "There's another message from home," she said sharply. Her voice seemed strained. "They picked up our answering-beam and are giving the information you asked for." "I'll be along," said Bordman. "I just got some information here." He got into his cold-garments again, and followed her out of the control-hut. "The figures from home aren't good," said Riki, when mountains visibly rose on every hand around them. "Ken says they're much worse than he thought. The rate of decline in the solar constant's worse than we figured or could believe." "I see," said Bordman, inadequately. "It's absurd!" said Riki angrily. "There've been sunspots and sunspot cycles all along--I learned about them in school. I learned about a four-year and a seven-year cycle, and that there were others. They should have known, they should have calculated in advance! Now they talk about sixty-year cycles coming in with a hundred-and-thirty-year cycle to pile up with all the others.... What's the use of scientists if they don't do their work right and twenty million people die of it?"