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He brought the ship up on its tail and sat it down on the landing platform for a perfect three-pointer as the jets rumbled to silence. Then, abruptly, they sank landing craft, platform and all. The pilot buzzed Control Tower frantically as Kielland fought down panic. Sorry, said Control Tower. Something must have gone wrong. They'd have them out in a jiffy.
"Louie, get the landing craft pilot and don't let him out of your sight. Tell him I'll be ready in twenty minutes " "Hold it," said Kielland. "Aren't you Simpson?" The man wiped mud off his cheeks and spat. He was tall and graying. "That's right." "Where do you think you're going?" "Aren't you relieving me?" "I am not!" "Oh, my."
Simpson stood up again with a roar. "I've told them a thousand times if I've told them once " He shook his head helplessly as Kielland wiped mud out of his eyes. "This is the one you wanted to see." Kielland sputtered. "Can it talk to you?" "It doesn't talk, it squeaks." "Then ask it to explain why the platform it built didn't hold the landing craft."
You really couldn't blame them for objecting." "Well, if they think they can drive us off that way, they're going to have to get that brilliant intelligence of theirs into action," Simpson said ominously. "We'll bring enough equipment down there to mine them out of house and home." "Why?" said Kielland. "After all, they're mining it themselves a lot more efficiently than we could ever do it.
When there's such obvious evidence of incompetence, the time to correct it is now." "Well maybe we can go outside and see him." "We'll see him right here." Kielland sank down on the bench near the wall. A tiny headache was developing; he found a capsule in his samples case and popped it in his mouth. Simpson looked sad and nodded to the orderly who had stopped scrubbing down the wall.
One solid week I work to teach these idiots what I want them to do, and you have to come along at the one moment all week when I really need their concentration." He glared, his face purple. "Concentration! I should hope for so much! You got to have a brain to have concentration " "Barton, this is Kielland. He's here from the Home Office, to solve all our problems."
He could have won even wider fame, and doubtless if he had remained in Norway, he would have been one of that group of great Norwegians who have given their little land renown surpassed by that of no other in the modern republic of letters. The name of Boyesen would have been set with the names of Bjornson, of Ibsen, of Kielland, and of Lie.
The Mud-pups who had been taught the excavation procedure previously had either disappeared into the swamp or forgotten everything they'd ever been taught. Simpson had expected it, but it was enough to keep Kielland sleepless for three nights and drive his blood pressure to suicidal levels.
"Then just don't bother me for a while. I'm going to be busy. Watching TV." An hour later Kielland was in Control Tower, watching the pale screen as the little remote-controlled explorer circled the installation. Three TV cameras were in operation as he settled down behind the screen. He told Sparks what he wanted to do, and the ship whizzed off in the direction the Mud-pup raiders had taken.
It is the clean, "deserving poor," who understand the art of hypocritical humility it is these whom the society seeks in vain in St. Peter's Parish. Still another problem of the most vital consequence Kielland has attacked in his two novels, Poison and Fortuna . It is, broadly stated, the problem of education.
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