"And Yet So Far"

Like "Que Donn'rez Vous?" in Tales Of The Flying Mountain and like both "Holmgang" and "Brake" in the Psychotechnic History (for both these stories, see here), Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited, part three, "And Yet So Far," is a story with a technical problem and therefore a technical solution.

In "And Yet So Far," a wrecked spaceship orbiting in a zone of lethal radiation carries equipment indispensable for the Rustum colony. When Fleet Captain Kivi has said that the level of radiation precludes the retrieval of the equipment and therefore that the colonists who do not want to continue in these changed circumstances "'...can return home with the fleet...'" (p. 86), we read:

"But that will be all of us! Svoboda cried. The few who are stubborn enough to remain will be too few to survive under any conditions. You have just sentenced the Rustum colony to death, and thereby everything the colony believed in. It's all been for nothing.
"'I'm sorry,' said the Finn." (ibid.)

That Svoboda's four sentences are italicized means that he inwardly thought them. However, the facts that he "cried" them and that Kivi replied mean that he outwardly uttered them. So I think that the punctuation is wrong.

It occurred to me just in time that the technical solution would be heralded by a moment of realization and, sure enough:

"The gross matter of a man's body could pace in circles, worrying, till an unweighable thought stopped him in his tracks. If only a thought could stop a spaceship in its orbit with the same ease. But an idea was not a magnetic field.
"Or was it?
"Svoboda leapt from his chair. He banged his left arm against the headrest." (p. 87)

We recognize all the signs of a moment of realization but nevertheless will have to read on to learn how an idea can be a magnetic field.