[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction April 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You do not always have to go looking for
a guardian angel. He may be looking for
you--but perhaps for somebody else's benefit!
Rhadampsicus and Nodalictha were on their honeymoon, and consequently
they were sentimental. To be sure, it would not have been easy for
humans to imagine sentiment as existing between them. Humans would
hardly associate tenderness with glances cast from sets of sixteen
eyes mounted on jointed eye stalks, nor link langorous thrills with
a coy mingling of positronic repulsion blasts--even when the emission
of positron blasts from beneath one's mantle was one's normal personal
mode of locomotion. And when two creatures like Rhadampsicus and
Nodalictha stood on what might be roughly described as their heads and
twined their eye stalks together, so that they gazed fondly at each
other with all sixteen eyes at once, humans would not have thought of
it as the equivalent of a loving kiss. Humans would have screamed and
run--if they were not paralyzed by the mere sight of such individuals.
Nevertheless, they were a very happy pair and they were very
sentimental, and it was probably a good thing, considered from all
angles. They were still newlyweds on their wedding tour--they had been
married only seventy-five years before--when they passed by the sun
that humans call Cetis Gamma.
Rhadampsicus noted its peculiarity. He was anxious, of course, for
their honeymoon to be memorable in every possible way. So he pointed it
out to Nodalictha and explained what was shortly to be expected. She
listened with a bride's rapt admiration of her new husband's wisdom.
Perceiving his scientific interest, she suggested shyly that they stop
and watch.
* * * * *
Rhadampsicus scanned the area. There were planets--inner ones, and
then a group of gas giants, and then a very cosy series of three outer
planets with surface temperatures ranging from three to seven degrees
Kelvin.
They changed course and landed on the ninth planet out, where the
landscape was delightful. Rhadampsicus unlimbered his traveling kit and
prepared a bower. Nitrogen snow rose and swirled and consolidated as
he deftly shifted force-pencils. When the tumult subsided, there was a
snug if primitive cottage for the two of them to dwell in while they
waited for Cetis Gamma to accomplish its purpose.
Nodalictha cried out softly when she entered the bower. She was
fascinated by its completeness. There was even running liquid hydrogen
from a little rill nearby. And over the doorway, as an artistic and
appropriate touch, Rhadampsicus had put his own and Nodalictha's
initials, pricked out in amber chlorine crystals and intertwined within
the symbol which to them meant a heart. Nodalictha embraced him fondly
for his thoughtfulness. Of course, no human would have recognized it as
an embrace, but that did not matter.
Happily, then, they settled down to observe the phenomenon that Cetis
Gamma would presently display. They scanned the gas giant planets
together, and then the inner ones.
On the second planet out from the sun, they perceived small biped
animals busily engaged in works of primitive civilization. Nodalictha
was charmed. She asked eager questions, and Rhadampsicus searched
his memory and told her that the creatures were not well known, but
had been observed before. Limited in every way by their physical
constitution, they had actually achieved a form of space travel by
means of crude vehicles. He believed, he said, that the name they
called themselves was "men."
* * * * *
The sun rose slowly in the east, and Lon Simpson swore patiently as
he tried for the eighteenth time to get the generator back again in a
fashion to make it work. His tractor waited in the nearby field. The
fields waited. Over in Cetopolis, the scales and storesheds waited,
and somewhere there was doubtless a cargo ship waiting for a spacegram
to summon it to Cetis Gamma Two for a load of _thanar_ leaves. And of
course people everywhere waited for _thanar_ leaves.
A milligram a day kept old age away--which was not an advertising
slogan but sound, practical geriatric science. But _thanar_ leaves
would only grow on Cetis Gamma Two, and the law said that all habitable
planets had to be open for colonization and land could not be withheld
from market.
There was too much population back on Earth, anyhow. Therefore the
Cetis Gamma Trading Company couldn't make a planetwide plantation and
keep _thanar_ as a monopoly, but could only run its own plantation for
research and instruction purposes for new colonists. Colonists had to
be admitted to the planet, and they had to be sold land. But there are
ways of getting around every law.
Lon Simpson swore. The Diesel of his tractor ran a generator. The
generator ran the motors in the tractor's catawheels. But this was
the sixth time in a month that the generator had broken down, and
generators do not break down.
Lon put it together for the eighteenth time this breakdown, and it
still wouldn't work. There was nothing detectably wrong with it, but he
couldn't make it work.
Seething, he walked back to his neat, prefabricated house. He picked up
the beamphone. Even Cathy's voice at the exchange in Cetopolis could
not soothe him, he was so furious.
"Cathy, give me Carson--and don't listen!" he said tensely.
He heard clickings on the two-way beam.
"My generator's gone," he said sourly when Carson answered. "I've
repaired it twice this week. It looks like it was built to stop
working! What is this all about, anyhow?"
The representative of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company sounded bored.
"You want a new generator sent out?" he asked without interest. "Your
crop credit's still all right--if the fields are in good shape."
"I want machinery that works!" Lon Simpson snapped. "I want machinery
that doesn't have to be bought four times over a growing season! And I
want it at a decent price!"
"Look, those generators come out from Earth. There's freight on them.
There's freight on everything that comes out from Earth. You people
come to a developed planet, you buy your land, your machinery, your
house, and you get instruction in agriculture. Do you want the company
to tuck you in bed at night besides? Do you want a new generator or
not?"
"How much?" demanded Lon. When Carson told him, he hit the ceiling.
"It's robbery! What'll I have left for my crop if I buy that?"
* * * * *
Carson's voice was still bored. "If you buy it and your crop's up to
standard, you'll owe the crop plus three hundred credits. But we'll
stake you to next growing season."
"And if I don't?" demanded Lon. "Suppose I don't give you all my work
for nothing and wind up in debt?"
"By contract," Carson told him, "we've got the right to finish
cultivating your crop and charge you for the work because we've
advanced you credit on it. Then we attach your land and house for the
balance due. And you get no more credit at the Company stores. And
passage off this planet has to be paid for in cash." He yawned. "Don't
answer now," he said without interest. "Call me back after you calm
down. You'd only have to apologize."
Lon Simpson heard the click as he began to describe, heatedly, what
was in his mind. He said it anyhow. Then Cathy's voice came from the
exchange. She sounded shocked but sympathetic.
"Lon! Please!"
He swallowed a particularly inventive description of the manners,
morals and ancestry of all the directors and employees of the Cetis
Gamma Trading Company. Then he said, still fuming, "I told you not to
listen!"
His wrongs overcame him again. "It's robbery! It's peonage! They've got
every credit I had! They've got three-quarters of the value of my crop
charged up for replacements of the lousy machinery they sold me--and
now I'll end the growing season in debt! How am I going to ask you to
marry me?"
"Not over a beamphone, I hope," said Cathy.
He was abruptly sunk in gloom.
"That was a slip," he admitted. "I was going to wait until I got paid
for my crop. It looked good. Now--"
"Wait a minute, Lon," Cathy said. There was silence. She gave somebody
else a connection.
The phone-beams from the colony farms all went to Cetopolis and
Cathy was one of the two operators there. If or when the colony got
prosperous enough, there would be a regular intercommunication system.
So it was said. Meanwhile, Lon had a suspicion that there might be
another reason for the antiquated central station.