"I'll come in to town tonight," he said darkly. "Date?"
"Y-yes," stammered Cathy. "Oh, yes!"
He hung up and went back out to the field and the tractor. He began to
think sourly of a large number of things all at once. There was a law
to encourage people to leave Earth for colonies on suitable planets.
There was even governmental help for people who didn't have funds
of their own. But if a man wanted to make something of himself, he
preferred to use his own money and pick his own planet and choose his
own way of life.
Lon Simpson had bought four hectares of land on Cetis Gamma Two. He'd
paid his passage out. He'd given five hundred credits a month for an
instruction course on the Company's plantation, during which time he'd
labored faithfully to grow, harvest, and cure _thanar_ leaves for the
Company's profit. Then he'd bought farm machinery from the Company--and
a house--and very painstakingly had set out to be a colonist on his own.
* * * * *
Just about that time, Cathy had arrived on a Company ship and taken up
her duties as beamphone operator at Cetopolis. It was a new colony,
with not more than five thousand humans on the whole planet, all of
them concentrated near the one small town with its plank sidewalks and
prefabricated buildings. Lon Simpson met Cathy, and his labors on his
_thanar_ farm acquired new energy and purpose.
But he was up against a shrewd organization. His inordinately expensive
farm machinery broke down. He repaired it. After a time it could not
be repaired any longer and he had to buy more. Before the _thanar_
plants were half grown, he owed more than half his prospective crop for
machinery replacements.
Now he could see the method perfectly. The Company imported all
machinery. It made that machinery in its own factories, machinery
that was designed to break down. So this year--even if nothing else
happened--Lon would wind up owing more for machinery replacements than
the crop would bring.
It was not likely that nothing else would happen. Next season he
would start off in debt, instead of all clear, and if the same thing
happened he would owe all his crop and be six thousand credits behind.
By harvest after next, his farm and house could be foreclosed for debt
and he could either try to work for other colonists--who were in the
process of going through the same wringer themselves--or hire out as a
farmhand on the Company's plantation. He would never be able to save
space-fare away from the planet. He would be very much worse off than
the assisted emigrants to other planets, who had not invested all they
owned in land and machinery and agricultural instructions.
And there was Cathy. She owed for her passage. It would be years before
she could pay that back, if ever. She couldn't live in the farmhand
barracks. They might as well give up thinking about each other.
It was a system. Beautifully legal, absolutely airtight. Not a thing
wrong with it. The Company had a monopoly on _thanar_, despite the law.
It had all the cultivated land on Cetis Gamma Two under its control,
and its labor problem was solved. Its laborers first paid something
like sixteen thousand credits a head for the privilege of trying to
farm independently for a year or two, and then became farmhands for
the Company at a bare subsistence wage.
Lon Simpson was in the grip of that system. He had taken the generator
apart and put it back together eighteen times. There was nothing
visibly wrong with it. It had been designed to break down with nothing
visibly wrong with it. If he couldn't repair it, though, he was out
fifteen hundred credits, his investment was wiped out, and all his
hopes were gone.
He took the generator apart for the nineteenth time. He wondered grimly
how the Company's designers made generators so cleverly that they would
stop working so that even the trouble with them couldn't be figured
out. It was a very ingenious system.
* * * * *
Out on the ninth planet, Rhadampsicus explained the situation to his
bride as they waited for the interesting astronomical phenomenon.
They were quite cosy, waiting. Their bower was simple, of course.
Frozen nitrogen walls, and windows of the faint bluish tint of oxygen
ice. Rhadampsicus had grown some cyanogen flower-crystals to make the
place look homelike, and there was now a lovely reflection-pool in
which liquid hydrogen reflected the stars. Cetis Gamma, the local
sun, seemed hardly more than a very bright and very near star--it was
four light-hours away--and it glimmered over the landscape and made
everything quite charming.
Nodalictha, naturally, would not enter the minds of the male bipeds
on the inner planet. Modesty forbade such a thing--as, of course, the
conscientiousness of a brand-new husband limited Rhadampsicus to the
thoughts of the males among the bipeds. But Nodalictha was distressed
when Rhadampsicus told her of what was occurring among the bipeds. He
guided her thoughts to Cathy, in the beamphone exchange at Cetopolis.
"But it is terrible!" said Nodalictha in distress when she had absorbed
Cathy's maiden meditations. She did not actually speak in words and
soundwaves. There is no air worth mentioning at seven degrees Kelvin.
It's all frozen. A little helium hangs around, perhaps. Nothing else.
The word for communication is not exactly the word for speech, but it
will do. Nodalictha said, "They love each other! In a cute way, they
are like--like we were, Rhadampsicus!"
Rhadampsicus played a positron-beam on her in feigned indignation.
If that beam had hit a human, the human would have curled up in a
scorched, smoking heap. But Nodalictha bridled.
"Rhadampsicus!" she protested fondly. "Stop tickling me! But can't you
do something for them? They are so cute!"
And Rhadampsicus gallantly sent his thoughts back to the second planet,
where a biped grimly labored over a primitive device.
* * * * *
Lon Simpson, staring at the disassembled generator, suddenly blinked.
The grimness went out of his expression. He stared. An idea had
occurred to him. He went over it in his mind. He blew out his breath in
a long whistle. Then, very painstakingly, he did four or five things
that completely ruined the generator for the extremely modest trade-in
allowance he could have gotten for it at the Company store.
He worked absorbedly for perhaps twenty minutes, his eyes intent. At
the end of that time he had threads of unwound secondary wire stretched
back and forth across a forked stick of _dhil_ weed, and two small
pieces of sheet iron twisted together in an extremely improbable
manner. He connected the ends of the secondary wire to contacts in his
tractor. He climbed into the tractor seat. He threw over the drive
control.
The tractor lurched into motion. The Diesel wasn't running. But the
tractor rolled comfortably as Lon drove it, the individual motors in
the separate catawheels drawing power from a mere maze of wires across
a forked stick--plus two pieces of sheet iron. There was plenty of
power.
Lon drove the tractor the rest of the morning and all afternoon with a
very peculiar expression on his face. He understood what he had done.
Now that he had done it, it seemed the most obvious of expedients. He
felt inclined to be incredulous that nobody had ever happened to think
of this particular device before. But they very plainly hadn't. It
was a source of all the electric power anybody could possibly want.
The voltage would depend on the number of turns of copper wire around
a suitably forked stick. The amperage would be whatever that voltage
could put through whatever was hooked to it.
He no longer needed a new generator for his tractor. He had one.
He didn't even need a Diesel.
With adequate power--he'd been having to nurse the Diesel along,
too, lately--Lon Simpson ran his tractor late into the twilight. He
cultivated all the ground that urgently needed cultivation, and at
least one field he hadn't hoped to get to before next week. But his
expression was amazed. It is a very peculiar sensation to discover
that one is a genius.
* * * * *
That night, in Cetopolis, he told Cathy all about it. It was a very
warm night--an unusually warm night. They walked along the plank
sidewalks of the little frontier town--as a new colony, Cetis Gamma Two
was a frontier--and Lon talked extravagantly.
He had meant to explain painfully to Cathy that there was no use in
their being romantic about each other. He'd expected to have to tell
her bitterly that he was doomed to spend the rest of his life adding
to the profits of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company, with all the laws
of the human race holding him in peonage. He'd thought of some very
elegant descriptions of the sort of people who'd worked out the system
in force on Cetis Gamma Two.
But he didn't. As they strolled under the shiver trees that lined the
small town's highways, and smelled the _chanel_ bushes beyond the
town's limits, and listened to the thin violinlike strains of what
should have been night birds--they weren't; the singers were furry
instead of feathered, and they slept in burrows during the day--as they
walked with linked fingers in the warm and starlit night, Lon told
Cathy about his invention.
He explained in detail just why wires wound in just that fashion, and
combined with bits of sheet iron twisted in just those shapes, would
produce power for free and forever. He explained how it had to be so.
He marveled that nobody had ever thought of it before. He explained it
so that Cathy could almost understand it.
"It's wonderful!" she said wistfully. "They'll run spaceships on your
invention, won't they, Lon? And cities? And everything! I guess you'll
be very rich for inventing it!"
He stopped short and stared at her. He hadn't thought that far ahead.
Then he said blankly:
"But I'll have to get back to Earth to patent it! And I haven't got the
money to pay one fare, let alone two!"
"Two?" asked Cathy hopefully. "Why two?"
"You're going to marry me, aren't you?" he demanded. "I sort of hope
that was all settled."
Cathy stamped her foot.
"Hadn't you heard," she asked indignantly, "that such things aren't
taken for granted? Especially when two people are walking in the
starlight and are supposed to be thrilled? It isn't settled--not until
after you've kissed me, anyhow!"
He remedied his error.
* * * * *
Out on the ninth planet, very far away, Nodalictha blushed slightly.
As a bride, she was in that deliciously embarrassing state of
becoming accustomed to discussions which would previously have been
unconventional.
"They are so quaint!" Then she hesitated and said awkwardly, "The idea
of putting their--their lips together as a sign of affection--"
Rhadampsicus was amused, as a bridegroom may be by the delightful
innocences of a new wife. He evinced his amusement in a manner no human
being could conceivably have recognized as the tender laugh it was.
"Little goose!" he said fondly. Of course, instead of a fowl, he
thought of a creature that had thirty-four legs and scales instead of
feathers and was otherwise thoroughly ungooselike. "Little goose, they
do that because they can't do this!"
And he twined his eye stalks sentimentally about hers.
* * * * *
Days passed on Cetis Gamma Two. Lon Simpson cultivated his _thanar_
fields. But he began to worry. His new power source was more than a
repair for a broken-down tractor. It was valuable. It was riches! He
had in it one of those basic, overwhelmingly important discoveries by
which human beings have climbed up from the status of intelligent
Earthbound creatures to galactic colonists--And a lot of good it had
done them!
It was a basic principle for power supply that would relieve mankind
permanently of the burden of fuels. The number of planets available
for colonization would be multiplied. The cost of every object made by
human beings would be reduced by the previous cost of power. The price
of haulage from one planet to another would be reduced to a fraction.
Every member of the human race would become richer as a result of
the gadget now attached to Lon Simpson's tractor. He was entitled to
royalties on the wealth he was to distribute. But....
He was a _thanar_ farmer on Cetis Gamma Two. His crop was mortgaged. He
could not possibly hope to raise enough money to get back to Earth to
arrange for the marketing of his invention. Especially, he could not
conceivably raise money enough to take Cathy with him. He had riches,
but they weren't available. And something else might happen to ruin him
at any time.
Something else did. The freezer element of his deep-freeze locker broke
down. He didn't notice it. He had a small kitchen locker in which food
for week-to-week use was stored. He didn't know anything about the
deep-freeze unit that held a whole growing season's supply of food.
The food in it--all imported from Earth and very expensive--thawed,
fermented, spoiled, developed evil smelling gases, and waited for an
appropriate moment to reveal itself as a catastrophe.
There were other things to worry about at the time. A glacier up at
Cetis Gamma Two's polar region began to retreat, instead of growing
as was normal for the season. There was a remarkable solar prominence
of three days' duration swinging around the equator of the local sun.
There was a meeting of directors of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company,
at which one of the directors pointed out that the normal curve of
increase for profits was beginning to flatten out, and something had
to be done to improve the financial position of the company. Ugly
sun-spots appeared on the northern hemisphere of Cetis Gamma. If there
had been any astronomers on the job, there would have been as much
excitement as a four alarm fire. But there were no astronomers.
The greatest agitation on the second planet of Cetis Gamma Two was felt
by Lon Simpson. Cathy had made friends with a married woman colonist
who would chaperon her on a visit to Lon's farm, and was coming out
to visit and see the place that was to be the scene of the ineffable,
unparalleled happiness she and Lon would know after they were married.
She came, she saw, she was captivated. Lon blissfully opened the door
of the house she was to share. He had spent the better part of two days
cleaning up so it would be fit for her to look at. Cathy entered. There
was a dull, booming noise, a hissing, and a bubbling, and then a rank
stench swept through the house and strangled them.
* * * * *
The boom, of course, was the bursting open of the deep-freeze locker
from the pressure of accumulated gases within it. The smell was that
of the deep-freeze contents, ten days thawed out without Lon knowing
it. There are very few smells much worse than frozen fish gone very,
very bad in a hot climate. If there are worse smells, they come from
once-frozen eggs bursting from their shells when pressure outside
them is relieved. In this case, trimmings were added by fermenting
strawberries, moldy meat and badly decayed vegetables, all triumphantly
making themselves known at the same instant.
Cathy gasped and choked. Lon got her out of doors, gasping himself. It
was not difficult to deduce what had happened.
He opened the house windows from the outside, so the smell could go
away. But he knew despair.
"I--can't show you the house, Cathy," he said numbly. "My locker went
bad and all the food followed suit."
"Lon!" wailed Cathy. "It's terrible! How will you eat?"
Lon began to realize that the matter was more serious than the loss
of an opportunity for a sentimental inspection of the house. He had
dreamed splendidly, of late. He didn't quite know how he was going
to manage it, but since his tractor was working magnificently he had
come to picture himself and Cathy in the rôle of successful colonists,
zestfully growing _thanar_ leaves for the increasing multitudes of
people who needed a milligram a day.
He'd reverted to the pictured dreams in the Cetis Gamma Trading
Company's advertisements. He'd daydreamed of himself and Cathy as
growing with the colony, thriving as it throve, and ultimately becoming
moderately rich--in children and grandchildren, anyhow--with life
stretching out before them in a sort of rosy glow. He'd negligently
assumed that somehow they would also be rich from the royalties on his
invention. But now he came down to reality.
His house was uninhabitable for the time being. He could continue
to cultivate his fields, but he wouldn't be able to eat. The local
plant-life was not suitable for human digestion. He had to live on food
imported from Earth. Now he had to buy a new stock from the Company,
and it would bankrupt him.
With an invention worth more--probably--than the Cetis Gamma Company
itself, if he could realize on it, he still was broke. His crop was
mortgaged. If Carson learned about his substitute for a generator, the
Company would immediately clamp down to get it away from him.
He took Cathy back to Cetopolis. He feverishly appealed to other
colonists. He couldn't tell them about his generator substitute. If
they knew about it, in time Carson would know. If they used it, Carson
would eventually get hold of a specimen, to send back to Earth for
pirating by the Cetis Gamma Trading Company. All Lon could do was try
desperately to arrange to borrow food to live on until his crop came
in, though even then he wouldn't be in any admirable situation.
He couldn't borrow food in quantity. Other colonists had troubles,
too. They'd give him a meal, yes, but they couldn't refill his freezer
without emptying their own. Which would compel them to buy more. Which
would be charged against their crops. Which would simply hasten the day
when they would become day-laborers on the Company's _thanar_ farm.
Lon had about two days' food in the kitchen locker. He determined to
stretch it to four. Then he'd have to buy more. With each meal, then,
his hopes of freedom and prosperity--and Cathy--grew less.
Of course, he could starve....
* * * * *
Rhadampsicus was enormously and pleasantly interested in what went on
in Cetis Gamma's photosphere. From the ninth planet, he scanned the
prominences with enthusiasm, making notes. Nodalictha tried to take
a proper wifely interest in her husband's hobby, but she could not
keep it up indefinitely. She busied herself with her housekeeping.
She fashioned a carpet of tufted methane fibres and put up curtains
at the windows. She enlarged the garden Rhadampsicus had made, adding
borders of crystallized ammonia and a sort of walkway with a hedge
of monoclinic sulphur which glittered beautifully in the starlight.
She knew that this was only a temporary dwelling, but she wanted
Rhadampsicus to realize that she could make any place a comfortable
home.
He remained absorbed in the phenomena of the local sun. One great
prominence, after five days of spectacular existence, divided into two
which naturally moved apart and stationed themselves at opposite sides
of the sun's equator. They continued to rotate with the sun itself,
giving very much the effect of an incipient pinwheel. Two other minor
prominences came into being midway between them. Rhadampsicus watched
in fascination.
Nodalictha came and reposed beside him on a gentle slope of volcanic
slag. She waited for him to notice her. She would not let herself be
sensitive about his interest in his hobby, of course, but she could not
really find it absorbing for herself. A trifle wistfully, she sent her
thoughts to the female biped on the second planet.
After a while she said in distress, "Rhadampsicus! Oh, they are so
unhappy!"
Rhadampsicus gallantly turned his attention from the happenings on the
sun.
"What's that, darling?"
"Look!" said Nodalictha plaintively. "They are so much in love,
Rhadampsicus! And they can't marry because he hasn't anything edible to
share with her!"
Rhadampsicus scanned. He was an ardent and sentimental husband. If his
new little wife was distressed about anything at all, Rhadampsicus was
splendidly ready to do something about it.
* * * * *
Lon Simpson looked at his kitchen locker. The big deep-freezer was
repaired now. Once a season, a truck came out from Cetopolis and filled
it. The food was costly. A season's supply was kept in deep-freeze.
Once in one or two weeks, one refilled the kitchen locker. It was best
to leave the deep-freeze locker closed as much as possible. But now the
big deep-freeze was empty. He'd cleaned out the ghastly mess in it, and
he had it running again, but he had nothing to put in it. To have it
refilled would put him hopelessly at the Company's mercy, but there was
nothing else to do.
Bitterly, he called the Trading Company office, and Carson answered.
"This is Simpson," Lon told him. "How much--"
"The price for a generator," said Carson, bored, "is the same as
before. Do you want it sent out?"
"No! My food locker broke down. My food store spoiled. I need more."
"I'll figure it," replied Carson over the beamphone. He didn't seem
interested. After a moment, he said indifferently, "Fifteen hundred
credits for standard rations to crop time. Then you'll need more."
"It's robbery!" raged Lon. "I can't expect more than four thousand
credits for my crop! You've got three thousand charged against me now!"
Carson yawned. "True. A new generator, fifteen hundred; new food
supplies fifteen hundred. If your crop turns out all right, you'll
start the new season with two thousand credits charged up as a loan
against your land."
Lon Simpson strangled on his fury. "You'll take all my leaves and I'll
still owe you! Then credit for seed and food and--If I need to buy more
machinery, you'll own my farm _and_ crop next crop time! Even if my
crop is good! Your damned Company will own my farm!"
"That's your lookout," Carson said without emotion. "Being a _thanar_
farmer was your idea, not mine. Shall I send out the food?"
Lon Simpson bellowed into the beamphone. He heard clicking, then
Cathy's voice. It was at once reproachful and sympathetic.
"Lon! Please!"
* * * * *
But Lon couldn't talk to her. He panted at her, and hung up. It is
essential to a young man in love that he shine, somehow, in the eyes
of the girl he cares for. Lon was not shining. He was appearing as the
Galaxy's prize sap. He'd invested a sizable fortune in his farm. He was
a good farmer--hard-working and skilled. In the matter of repairing
generators, he'd proved to be a genius. But he was at the mercy of
the Cetis Gamma Company's representative. He was already in debt. If
he wanted to go on eating, he'd go deeper. If he were careful and
industrious and thrifty, the Trading Company would take his crop and
farm in six more months and then give him a job at day-labor wages.
He went grimly to the kitchen of his home. He looked at the trivial
amount of food remaining. He was hungry. He could eat it all right now.