But then he went to the kitchen locker. He put a small packet of frozen
green peas in the tin can between the two coils.
The humming sound increased. After a moment there was another parcel
of green peas--not frozen--in the small coil.
Lon took it out. The device hummed more loudly again. Immediately there
was another parcel of green peas in the small coil. He took them out.
When he had six parcels of green peas instead of one, the mass of
foliage in the large coil collapsed abruptly. Lon disconnected the
wires and removed the debris. The native foliage looked shrunken,
somehow, dried-out. Lon tossed it through the window.
* * * * *
He put a parcel of unfrozen green peas on to cook and sat down and held
his head in his hands. He knew what had happened. He knew how.
The local flora on Cetis Gamma Two naturally contained the same
chemical elements as the green peas imported from Earth. Those elements
were combined in chemical compounds similar, if not identical to, those
of the Earth vegetation. The new gadget simply converted the compounds
in the large coil to match those in the sample--in the tin can--and
assembled them in the small coil according to the physical structure of
the sample. In this case, as green peas.
The device would take any approximate compound from the large coil and
reassemble it--suitably modified as per sample--in the small coil.
It would work not only for green peas, but for roots, barks, herbs,
berries, blossoms and flowers.
It would even work for _thanar_ leaves.
When that last fact occurred to him, Lon Simpson went quietly loony,
trying to figure out how he had come to think of such a thing. He was
definitely crocked, because he picked up the beamphone and told Cathy
all about it. And he was not loony because he told Cathy, but because
he forgot his earlier suspicions of why there was a central station
for beamphones in Cetopolis, instead of a modern direct-communication
system.
In fact, he forgot the system in operation on Cetis Gamma Two--the
Company's system. It had been designed to put colonists through the
wringer and deposit them at its own farm to be day-laborers forever
with due regard to human law. But it was a very efficient system.
It took care of strokes of genius, too.
That night, Carson, listening boredly to the record of all the
conversations over the beamphone during the day, heard what Lon had
told Cathy. He didn't believe it, of course.
But he made a memo to look into it.
Rhadampsicus stretched himself. Out on the ninth planet, the weather
was slightly warmer--almost six degrees Kelvin, two hundred and
sixty-odd degrees centigrade below zero--and he was inclined to be
lazy. But he was very handsome, in Nodalictha's eyes. He was seventy
or more feet from his foremost eye stalk to the tip of his least
crimson appendage, and he fluoresced beautifully in the starlight. He
was a very gallant young bridegroom.
When he saw Nodalictha looking at him admiringly, he said with his
customary tenderness:
"It was fatiguing to make him go through it, darling, but since you
wished it, it is done. He now has food to share with the female."
"And you're handsome, too, Rhadampsicus!" Nodalictha said irrelevantly.
She felt as brides sometimes do on their honeymoons. She was quite
sure that she had not only the bravest and handsomest of husbands, but
the most thoughtful and considerate.
Presently, with their eye stalks intertwined, he asked softly:
"Are you weary of this place, darling? I would like to watch the rest
of this rather rare phenomenon, but if you're not interested, we can go
on. And truly I won't mind."
"Of course we'll stay!" protested Nodalictha. "I want to do anything
you want to. I'm perfectly happy just being with you."
And, unquestionably, she was.
* * * * *
Carson, though bored, was a bit upset by the recorded conversation he'd
listened to. Lon Simpson had been almost incoherent, but he obviously
meant Cathy to take him seriously. And there were some things to back
it up.
He'd reported his generator hopelessly useless--and hadn't bought a new
one. He'd reported all his food spoiled--and hadn't bought more. Carson
thought it over carefully. The crop inspection helicopter reported
Simpson's fields in much better shape than average, so his tractor was
obviously working.
Carson asked casual, deadpan questions of other colonists who came
into the Company store. Most of them were harried, sullen and bitter.
They were unanimously aware of the wringer they were being put
through. They knew what the Company was doing to them and they hated
Carson because he represented it. But they did answer Carson's casual
questions about Lon Simpson.
Yes, he'd tried to borrow food from them. No, they couldn't lend it to
him. Yes, he was still eating. In fact he was offering to swap food.
He was short on fruit and long on frozen green peas. Then he was long
on fruit and frozen green peas and short on frozen sweet corn and
strawberries. No, he didn't want to trade on a big scale. One package
of frozen strawberries was all he wanted. He gave six packages of
frozen peas for it. He gave six packages of frozen strawberries for one
package of frozen sweet corn. He'd swapped a dozen parcels of sweet
corn for one of fillet of flounder, two dozen fillet of flounder for
cigarettes, and fifty cartons of cigarettes for a frozen roast of beef.
It didn't make sense unless the conversation on the beamphone was
right. If what Lon had told Cathy was true, he'd have his frozen
food locker filled up again by now. He had some sort of device which
converted the indigestible local flora and fauna into digestible
Earth products. To suspect such a thing was preposterous, but Carson
suspected everyone and everything.
As representative of the Company, Carson naturally did its dirty work.
New colonists bought farms from the central office on Earth and happily
took ship to Cetis Gamma Two. Then Carson put them through their
instruction course, outfitted them to try farming on their own, and
saw to it that they went bankrupt and either starved or took jobs as
farmhands for the Company, at wages assuring that they could never take
ship away again.
It was a nasty job and Carson did it very well, because he loved it.
While he still debated Lon's insane boasts to Cathy over the beamphone
system, he prepared to take over the farm of another colonist. That
man had been deeper in debt than Lon, and he'd been less skilled
at repairs, so it was time to gather him in. Carson called him to
Cetopolis to tell him that the Company regretfully could not extend
further credit, would have to take back his farm, house, and remaining
food stores, and finish the cultivation of his _thanar_ leaf crop to
repay itself for the trouble.