"More than a ‘maybe’ by the bleak projection made just before we left home; it was the thing to be avoided at any cost—a settlement which would quiet things down, destroy our will to resist, without changing any essential in the longer-range prediction of disaster. So I switched the subject and squelched possibility by being difficult about irrelevancies politely offensive. Manuel, you and I know—and Adam knows—that there must be an end to food shipments; nothing less will save Luna from disaster. But can you imagine a wheat farmer fighting to end those shipments?"