"Because," said Sandringham, "you're not the man to put over to the civilians what they must believe. You're not impressive. I know you, and I know you're a good man in a pinch. But this pinch needs a salesman. So I'm going to have Werner make the ... er ... pitch to the planetary government. Results are more important than justice, so Werner will front this affair." Hardwick winced a little. But Sandringham was right. He didn't know how to be impressive. He could not speak with pompous conviction, which is so much more convincing than reason, to most people. He wasn't the man to get the co-operation of the non-Service population, because he could only explain what he knew and believed, and was not practiced in persuasion. But Werner was. He had the knack of making people believe anything, not because it was reasonable but because it was oratory. "I suppose you're right," acknowledged Hardwick. "We need civilian help and a lot of it. I'm not the man to get it. He is." He did not say anything about Werner being the man to get credit, whether he deserved it or not. He patted the dog's head and stood up. "I wish I had a good supply of soil-coagulant. I need to make a coffer-dam in the reserve area here. But I think I'll manage." Sandringham regarded him soberly as he moved to the door. As he was about to pass out of it, Sandringham said: "Hardwick--" "What?" "Take good care of yourself. Will you?" IV Therefore Senior Officer Werner, of the Colonial Survey, received his instructions from Sandringham. Hardwick never knew the details of the instructions Werner got. They were possibly persuasive, or they may have been menacing. But Werner ceased to argue for the movement of any fraction of the island's population to the arctic ice cap, and instead made frequent eloquent addresses to the planetary population on the scientific means by which their lives were to be saved. Between the addresses, perhaps, he sweated cold sweat when a tree sedately tilted in what had seemed solid soil, or a building settled perceptibly while he looked at it, or when ... say ... a section of the island's soil bulged upward. Publicly, he headed citizens' committees, and grandly gave instructions, and spoke in unintelligible and, therefore, extremely scientific terms when desperately earnest men asked for explanations. But he was perfectly clear in what he wanted them to do. He wanted drill-holes in the arable soil down to the depth at which the holes began to close up of themselves. He wanted those holes not more than a hundred feet apart, in lines which slanted at forty-five degrees to the gradient of the bedrock. Sandringham checked his speeches, at the rate of four a day. Once he had Hardwick called away from where he supervised extremely improbable operations. Hardwick was smeared with the island's grayish mud when he looked into the phone-plate to take the call.