"How ... did you do it?"
"With peach pits," I said.
"Peach pits!"
"Peach pits. They like apricot pits too, and sometimes prune seeds."
"What in the world are you talking about, Prescott? Have you lost your
mind?"
I opened the humidor on his desk, took out a cigar, smelled it, bit off
the end, lit it, and took a deep puff before answering him. I settled
down into a comfortable chair and pointed the lighted end of the cigar
in his direction.
"Between one or the other of us we had tried everything, everything.
I realized finally that it would have to be an entirely different
approach."
* * * * *
I took another satisfying drag on the cigar, then went on. "I tried
lettuce, cabbage, corn, string-beans--everything in fact that the
hydroponic tanks on Mars could supply in the way of earth type food.
None of it worked."
"What in hell are you talking about?" Marks blurted.
I ignored him. "Finally it came to me. Lettuce and the other vegetables
I offered would be too _light_ for them. I tried walnut hulls and then
peach pits, and that worked like a charm."
"You must be insane."
"You don't seem to understand, Marks," I told him. "There was no other
way of getting a zloor on board an earth bound rocket, so I made pets
of a couple of them. They love peach pits--regular delicacy for them."
I added reflectively. "You'd be surprised how well trained I've got
Frankie and Johnny; I'll hate to give them up."
I tapped the ash of the cigar off on his heavy carpet and said,
"However, business is business. Let's see, by our contract you owe me
five credits for each month I've been gone, plus a seven hundred credit
bonus for bringing back two live zloors, then there's that thousand
credit wager we made."
He snapped on his inter-office communicator and growled instructions to
his secretary to find whether or not I had brought back two live zloors
in the Mars rocket. We sat there silently while she checked. I puffed
on the cigar with appreciation and dropped the ashes, pointedly, on
the floor. He was irritated, but wouldn't give me the satisfaction of
complaining.