30 The Voice came to North. "We've simply got to
drop more people," he explained, "we've helped matters quite a bit with
those last two colonies, but we've got to get rid of our other two
extra pods and bring the population in the other pods and in the ships
down to a reasonable level. Even as used as our people are to these
conditions, there have been several violent confrontations in the last
few days, one resulting in serious injury. "
31 "The Commander of one of The Godden ships," North began, "admitted
similar problems this morning, and asked my advice in dealing with
them. They've got to be pretty desperate to do something like that. But
take a look out there ….there's nothing big enough for a decent colony,
even if we pulled all the pieces in this system
together it wouldn't make enough of a planet."
32 "Then we're going to have to be lucky," The Voice commented , "in
the next couple of systems. Yellow suns are the most promising ones for
good planets. We've got several nearby. Let's take a look."
33 "You're The First Speaker," North agreed. "We've got enough
crystals for a couple of more leaps. Let's take a look at THAT one.
It's closest. If there's nothing there we'll go in by star drive to the
next one. If there's nothing there, we've got one more leap. Then,
we're going to have to sit down somwhere and set up a matter converter
to make some negative matter fuel. Have you taken a look at our fuel
gauges lately? We're down to the emergency reserves less than
one-thousand pounds."
34 "I'm sure," assured The Voice, "The Lords are guiding us, I'm sure!
Somewhere nearby there's a safe world, an inhabitable world. We cannot
have come this far to perish."
35 "That's what worries me," admitted North, "the Ghost Ships never
interfere with anyone, yet they gave us water and deliberately left
behind shelters for us.