"There would have to be insects," Pop said. "There could be no fruitful
vegetable life without insects. Plants need bees and crawling ants--or
their equivalent--to carry the pollen from one flower to another."
They chose a site on the riverside, a half mile or so from, above,
and overlooking the sea. They selected it because a spring of pure,
bubbling water was nearby, because the woodlands dwindled away into
lush fields. And Pop said,
"This is it. We'll build our home on yonder knoll. And who knows--"
Again there grew that strange look in his eyes. "Who knows but that
it may be the shoot from which, a time hence, there may spring many
cabins, then finer homes, and buildings, and mansions, until at last
there is a great, brave city here on this port by the delta--"
"That's it, Pop!" said Dick suddenly. "There's the name for our
settlement. Delta Port!"
* * * * *
So, swiftly, sped the next weeks, and Bobby was not able, afterward, to
tell where they had gone. Time lightens labor; labor hastens time. But
fleeing hours left in their wake tangible evidence of their passage--a
change, a growth in Delta Port.
One of Pop's first moves had been an attempted reorganization of their
work-hours on an Eros basis.
"We cannot here," he explained, "try to maintain our Earthly habit of
sleeping through night hours, working during the day. Therefore--"
And he laid out for them an intricate and elaborate "nine day week" he
had devised; broken into alternate sleep-and-labor, meal-and-recreation
periods. It was an ingenious system. But--
It didn't work.
Despite previous habits, after a short time men and women, old and
young alike, found themselves growing drowsy as dusk crept in. There
was a general quickening of life's tempo to meet the conditions
prevalent on Eros; the familiar "three meals a day" ceased to have
meaning; the old habit of sleeping eight hours at one stretch became
anomalous under a sky which waxed and waned from brightness to dark in
that length of time. Imperceptibly at first, then more and more openly,
all found themselves working into a new routine. A design for living
under which they tumbled into bed for four hours of darkness, slept
suddenly and heartily, woke again, pursued a half dozen hours of work
or play, then napped once more.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world. And Pop, never satisfied
until he could explain such things, finally found an answer.
"I remember, now, that 'way back in the early years of the Twentieth
Century a group of psychologists from one of the American universities
tried an experiment. They put two men in a sealed, walled, sound-proof
room which was neither dark nor light, but was kept constantly a dull,
twilight gray.
"They gave the men--who all their lives had lived on the accepted Early
standard--instructions to sleep when they felt drowsy, eat whenever
they felt the desire to do so. After an exceptionally short time, the
life-habits of these human guinea-pigs altered remarkably. They began
eating not thrice a way, but at intervals ranging from every three to
six hours.
"As for sleeping, the experimenters found it natural to cat-nap for
four hour stretches rather than sustain strength on one, long, tiresome
eight hour sleep-period.
"This experiment was duplicated in 1987, under John Carberry of
Columbia, with identical results. The research doctors were forced to
the conclusion that Man is, on Earth, responsive to the conditions
under which he must live. That is, he has adapted himself to Earth's
phenomena. But could his body attain its natural and normal,
uninhibited desires, it would live _precisely as we here on Eros are
living_! At a wake-sleep pace of alternate four and six hours!"
* * * * *
It was just like Pop to get excited about a problem of that nature
when there were so many other things crying to be done. But Bobby was
surprised, from time to time, to discover that in a pinch Pop could bob
up with an answer to a stumping question quite unrelated to the field
of empiric science.
It was Pop who, when Dick was having trouble making their minute supply
of nails and braces do for the construction of the cabin, offered the
suggestion that the joists be joined by hollowing. It worked. End logs
dove-tailed beautifully; the cabin walls stood firmer and looked neater
than if laboriously spliced together with metal.
It was Pop, too, who did something about the plate problem. Unable to
bring the plastics with them in their hasty flight from the sunken
_Cuchulainn_, the Moseley family had made rude shift first with large
flat, washed leaves, then with shells taken from the beach, at last
with wooden slabs planed down by Grampaw.
Pop, annoyed with these slovenly substitutes, spent several hours
wandering by the shore, through the hills, up the river; finally
returned one afternoon triumphantly bearing a lump of grayish mud as
large as his head. Ignoring all caustic queries and comments, he set
about molding this into a plate--and after much fingering, succeeded in
flattening it into a recognizable shape.
It seemed to bother him not a whit that the finished product was
deckle-edged and wobbly. He set it out in the sun to dry; a day later
carried it triumphantly to the table and demanded his meal be served in
it.
"Pottery!" he said. "From a fine clay bed up Erin River!"
Then he placed his pottery plate on the table with firm hands, and at
that imperceptible jar, it promptly fell into five pieces!
But a beginning had been made, and curiously enough it was Moira
who became interested in this obscure art of ceramics. The Moseleys
continued to eat from wooden slabs for some weeks, while Moira begrimed
her fingers with mud that invariably turned to crisp, fragile clay--and
then one day she completed a bowl made of substance from which all
sand-grains and small pebbles had been painstakingly sieved, and which
had been allowed to dry slowly under damp grass. And _this_ time it
did not crack. Within a fortnight, a complete set of crockery made its
appearance in the culinary department.
At which point Dick began talking vaguely about the construction of a
kiln, and Moira started thinking about the possibilities of decorating
her proud young chinaware.
So the weeks passed, and it was surprising how much had been
accomplished, and how complete and happy life could be, even without
the infinitude of small comforts to which they had once been
accustomed, and which, on Earth, they had expected and accepted
unthinkingly.
There was no teleo to entertain them, but somehow nobody seemed to
miss its raucous, glowing presence in the living room; not even Bobby
whose greatest interest in life had once been the nightly adventures
of _The Red Patrolman_, transmitted through the courtesy of United
Syntho Cereals. Grampaw Moseley made music with a battered banjo he
had salvaged from the _Cuchulainn_; they all sang, and sometimes they
danced, too. That was what Moira liked; she'd fix herself all up real
pretty and dance and dance, even though her partners were Dick and
Pop, who didn't dance the modern swoop-steps very well, and Bobby, who
pretended to dislike it very thoroughly, but thought it was kind of fun.
* * * * *
Grampaw carved a cribbage set, too; they played it, and chess, and card
games during storms that kept them housebound. Dick, in occasional
hours of leisure, cleared a fair athletic field outside. They had a
quoits' run, a badminton court (a little uneven, but nobody minded) and
a shuffleboard plane; also a fine sand-pit for The Pooch.
Pop had planned the house with his usual mathematical forevision. From
its first two rooms, built with an eye to offering swift shelter, soon
spread wings. Before long it had four separate bedrooms, a kitchen, a
dining-nook, and the living- or meeting-room, which Grampaw called the
"git-together" room. There was also a cisterned refreshing-room, and
another would be added as soon as Dick devised a method of supplying
the house with fresh, running water.
Meanwhile, Mom and Eleanor and Grampaw Moseley were to be thanked for
the steady improvement in their menu.
Grampaw had early set out his farm; it was a sight to see him hobbling
up and down the neat, even rows, weeding his springing crops, swearing
at insect interlopers. Luckily the sealed containers of seeds had
not suffered the fate of Mom's lamented sugar and flour supply; the
Moseleys had already nibbled tentatively at stubby radishes, tiny,
crumpled leaves of lettuce--and in another month or so there would be
more substantial root and fruit stocks. Potatoes, parsnips, beans,
turnips, beets, tomatoes, corn, salsify, onions.
And wheat! That was the crop most tenderly watched, most hopefully
awaited. Wheat meant bread; bread was life. And the wheat was rippling
up in soft, green wavelets.
Meanwhile, Eros itself supplied many--if unusual!--foodstuffs. Every
member of the family watched, carefully, the eating habits of Erosian
small-life; adapted to their own diet the fruits, seeds, berries,
eaten by native animals, and avoided those things which, no matter how
luscious to look on, the birds and beasts eschewed. Some day, when
Pop's laboratory equipment could be brought from the sunken ship, they
would find out about these questionable foods. But for now, it was best
to be on the safe side.
Artificial light remained a problem. There were tiny search batteries
in their bulgers, but they used these only in cases of necessity; they
had no oil for lamps even if they had owned lamps. Eleanor made a few
fat, greasy, ill-shapen candles out of renderings, but these spluttered
and dripped and lasted but a short time. Aboard the _Cuchulainn_ were
all sorts of books, telling how to make candles properly. But these
were, by now, water-soaked and illegible.
So they contrived to get by with little illumination, looking forward
to the day when Dick should succeed in raising the hypatomic motor from
the ship. Then they would have all the light and heat and power they
wanted. All from a cupful of water, or a handful of sand swept up from
the beach.
And all was peaceful and quiet. Until one day there came a startled
shout from the fields, the sound of excited footsteps, and Grampaw came
hobbling into the house yelling, "Where's m' gun? Marthy, drad-rat it,
where'd y' put m' gun?"
Dick grinned and winked at the others and asked, "What's the matter,
Grampaw? The moles getting into your garden?" And chuckled as Grampaw
grabbed up his pierce-gun and hobbled away. Chuckled, that is, until
the old man's answer came floating back over his shoulder.
"Moles be durned! It's hooman-bein's, that's what it is. _In_-trudin'
on our prop-pity!"
Then Dick roared, "Hey, Grampaw, wait! Put that gun down! Don't try
to--Come on, everyone!"
They all went tumbling from the house. And it was exactly as Grampaw
had said. Approaching Delta Port, some on foot, some astride animals
curiously horselike save that they had six legs and long, shaggy hair,
came a tiny group of men and women. Six in number.
Their leader was a man of Pop's age, a baldish man, heavy-set and
capable looking. Besides him rode a thin, tired looking woman of
forty-odd. Next came a short, pudgy, white-haired man; then, herding
beside him two youngsters, a boy of Bobby's age and a girl slightly
younger, came the last member of the party. A slim, tall young man with
a mop of cinnamon-colored hair.
The two groups, one nearing the house, one emerging from it, saw
each other at practically the same time. For a moment, no one spoke
on either side. Dick had taken the gun from Grampaw's hands, had
successfully concealed it. And now Pop broke the silence.
"Greetings, strangers!" he cried heartily. "You're plenty welcome to
Delta Port!"
Then came the shockingly unexpected reply, from the leader of the
newcomers.
"Greetings yourself, Mister! And what in tarnation thunder are you
doing on my land?"