"It's strewn all over the landscape," he replied sleepily.
"Is there any chance of patching it up?"
He considered the question. More than anything else, he decided, he
wanted to sleep. "What?" he said.
"Is there any possibility of repairing your ship?" repeated Billy.
"Not outside the space docks."
They expelled their breath, but not for an instant did they relax
the barrage of their eyes. He shifted position in embarrassment. The
movement pulled his muscles like a rack. Furthermore, an overpowering
lassitude was threatening to pop him off to sleep before their eyes.
"You look exhausted," said Ann.
Jonathan dragged himself back from the edge of sleep. "Just tired," he
mumbled. "Haven't had a good night's rest since I left Mars." Indeed
it was only by the most painful effort that he kept awake at all. His
eyelids drooped lower and lower.
"First it's tobacco," said Olga; "now he wants to sleep. Twenty-seven
girls and he wants to sleep."
"He is asleep," said the green-eyed blonde.
* * * * *
Jonathan was slumped forward across the table, his head buried in his
arms.
"Catch a hold," said Billy, pushing back from the table. A dozen girls
volunteered with a rush. "Hoist!" said Billy. They lifted him like a
sleepy child, bore him tenderly up an incline and into a stateroom,
where they deposited him on the bed.
Ann said to Olga; "Help me with these boots." But they resisted every
tug. "It's no use," groaned Ann, straightening up and wiping her bright
yellow hair back from her eyes. "His feet have swollen. We'll have to
cut them off."
At these words, Jonathan raised upright as if someone had pulled a rope.
"_Cut off whose feet?_" he cried in alarm.
"Not your feet, silly," said Ann. "Your boots."
"Lay a hand on those boots," he scowled; "and I'll make me another pair
out of your hides. They set me back a week's salary." Having delivered
himself of this ultimatum, he went back to sleep.
Olga clapped her hand to her forehead. "And this," she cried "is what
we've been praying for during the last three years."
The next day found Jonathan Fawkes hobbling around by the aid of a
cane. At the portal of the space ship, he stuck out his head, glanced
all around warily. None of the girls were in sight. They had, he
presumed, gone about their chores: hunting, fishing, gathering fruits
and berries. He emerged all the way and set out for the creek. He
walked with an exaggerated limp just in case any of them should be
hanging around. As long as he was an invalid he was safe, he hoped.
He sighed. Not every man could be waited on so solicitously by
twenty-seven handsome strapping amazons. He wished he could carry it
off in cavalier fashion. He hobbled to the creek, sat down beneath the
shade of a tree. He just wasn't the type, he supposed. And it might be
years before they were rescued.
As a last resort, he supposed, he could hide out in the hills or join
the centaurs. He rather fancied himself galloping across the plains
on the back of a centaur. He looked up with a start. Ann Clotilde was
ambling toward him.
"How's the invalid?" she said, seating herself beside him.
"Hot, isn't it?" he said. He started to rise. Ann Clotilde placed the
flat of her hand on his chest and shoved. "_Ooof!_" he grunted. He sat
down rather more forcibly than he had risen.
"Don't get up because of me," she informed him. "It's my turn to cook,
but I saw you out here beneath the trees. Dinner can wait. Jonathan do
you know that you are irresistible?" She seized his shoulders, stared
into his eyes. He couldn't have felt any more uncomfortable had a
hungry boa constrictor draped itself in his arms. He mopped his brow
with his sleeve.
"Suppose the rest should come," he said in an embarrassed voice.
"They're busy. They won't be here until I call them to lunch. Your
eyes," she said, "are like deep mysterious pools."
"Sure enough?" said Jonathan with involuntary interest. He began to
recover his nerve.
She said, "You're the best looking thing." She rumpled his hair. "I
can't keep my eyes off you."
Jonathan put his arm around her gingerly. "Ouch!" He winced. He had
forgotten his sore muscles.
"I forgot," said Ann Clotilde in a contrite voice. She tried to rise.
"You're hurt."
He pulled her back down. "Not so you could notice it," he grinned.
"Well!" came the strident voice of Billy from behind them. "We're _all_
glad to hear that!"
* * * * *
Jonathan leaped to his feet, dumping Ann to the ground. He jerked
around. All twenty-six of the girls were lined up on the path. Their
features were grim. He said: "I don't feel so well after all."
"It don't wash," said Billy. "It's time for a showdown."
Jonathan's hair stood on end. He felt rather than saw Ann Clotilde take
her stand beside him. He noticed that she was holding her spear at a
menacing angle. She said in an angry voice: "He's mine. I found him.
Leave him alone."
"Where do you get that stuff?" cried Olga. "Share and share alike, say
I."
"We could draw straws for him," suggested the green-eyed blonde.
"Look here," Jonathan broke in. "I've got some say in the matter."
"You have not," snapped Billy. "You'll do just as we say." She took a
step toward him.
Jonathan edged away in consternation.
"He's going to run!" Olga shouted.
Jonathan never stopped until he was back in the canyon leading to the
plain. His nerves were jumping like fleas. He craved the soothing
relaxation of a smoke. There was, he remembered, a carton of cigarettes
at the wreck. He resumed his flight, but at a more sober pace.
At the spot where he and Ann had first crawled away from the centaurs,
he scrambled out of the gulley, glanced in the direction of his space
ship. He blinked his eyes, stared. Then he waved his arms, shouted and
tore across the prairie. A trim space cruiser was resting beside the
wreck of his own. Across its gleaming monaloid hull ran an inscription
in silver letters: "INTERSTELLAR COSMOGRAPHY SOCIETY."
Two men crawled out of Jonathan's wrecked freighter, glanced in
surprise at Jonathan. A third man ran from the cruiser, a Dixon Ray
Rifle in his hand.
"I'm Jonathan Fawkes," said the castaway as he panted up, "pilot for
Universal. I was wrecked."
A tall elderly man held out his hand. He had a small black waxed
mustache and Van Dyke. He was smoking a venusian cigarette in a
yellow composition holder. He said, "I'm Doctor Boynton." He had a
rich cultivated voice, and a nose like a hawk. "We are members of the
Interstellar Cosmography Society. We've been commissioned to make a
cursory examination of this asteroid. You had a nasty crack up, Mr.
Fawkes. But you are in luck, sir. We were on the point of returning
when we sighted the wreck."
"I say," said the man who had run out of the cruiser. He was a prim,
energetic young man. Jonathan noted that he carried the ray gun
gingerly, respectfully. "We're a week overdue now," he said. "If you
have any personal belongings that you'd like to take with you, you'd
best be getting them aboard."
* * * * *
Jonathan's face broke into a grin. He said, "Do any of you know how to
grow tobacco?"
They glanced at each other in perplexity.
"I like it here," continued Jonathan. "I'm not going back."
"What?" cried the three explorers in one breath.
"I'm going to stay," he repeated. "I only came back here after the
cigarettes."
"But it will be three years before the asteroid's orbit brings it back
in the space lanes," said Doctor Boynton. "You don't possibly expect to
be picked up before then!"
Jonathan shook his head, began to load himself with tools, tobacco
seed, and cigarettes.
"Odd." Doctor Boynton shook his head, turned to the others. "Though if
I remember correctly, there was quite an epidemic of hermits during
the medieval period. It was an esthetic movement. They fled to the
wilderness to escape the temptation of _women_."
Jonathan laughed outright.
"You are sure you won't return, young man?"
He shook his head. They argued, they cajoled, but Jonathan was adamant.
He said, "You might report my accident to Universal. Tell them to stop
one of their Jupiter-bound freighters here when the asteroid swings
back in the space ways. I'll have a load for them."
Inside the ship, Doctor Boynton moved over to a round transparent port
hole. "What a strange fellow," he murmured. He was just in time to see
the castaway, loaded like a pack mule, disappear in the direction from
which he had come.
Robinson Crusoe was going back to his man (?) Friday--all twenty-seven
of them.