[Illustration]
Uncle William Boles' war-battered old Geest gun gave the impression that
at some stage of its construction it had been pulled out of shape and
then hardened in that form. What remained of it was all of one piece.
The scarred and pitted twin barrels were stubby and thick, and the
vacant oblong in the frame behind them might have contained standard
energy magazines. It was the stock which gave the alien weapon its
curious appearance. Almost eighteen inches long, it curved abruptly to
the right and was too thin, knobbed and indented to fit comfortably at
any point in a human hand. Over half a century had passed since, with
the webbed, boneless fingers of its original owner closed about it, it
last spat deadly radiation at human foemen. Now it hung among Uncle
William's other collected oddities on the wall above the living room
fireplace.
And today, Phil Boles thought, squinting at the gun with reflectively
narrowed eyes, some eight years after Uncle William's death, the old war
souvenir would quietly become a key factor in the solution of a colonial
planet's problems. He ran a finger over the dull, roughened frame, bent
closer to study the neatly lettered inscription: GUNDERLAND BATTLE
TROPHY, ANNO 2172, SGT. WILLIAM G. BOLES. Then, catching a familiar
series of clicking noises from the hall, he straightened quickly and
turned away. When Aunt Beulah's go-chair came rolling back into the
room, Phil was sitting at the low tea table, his back to the fireplace.
The go-chair's wide flexible treads carried it smoothly down the three
steps to the sunken section of the living room, Beulah sitting jauntily
erect in it, for all the ninety-six years which had left her the last
survivor of the original group of Earth settlers on the world of Roye.
She tapped her fingers here and there on the chair's armrests, swinging
it deftly about, and brought it to a stop beside the tea table.
"That was Susan Feeney calling," she reported. "And _there_ is somebody
else for you who thinks I have to be taken care of! Go ahead and finish
the pie, Phil. Can't hurt a husky man like you. Got a couple more baking
for you to take along."
Phil grinned. "That'd be worth the trip up from Fort Roye all by
itself."
Beulah looked pleased. "Not much else I can do for my great-grand nephew
nowadays, is there?"