The old Kraylen spoke without moving. He still stood in the doorway,
watching the trees sway in the slow wind.
"The Nahali live there. Besides, there is no clean water and no earth
for crops. We are not lizard eaters."
"I've seen it happen," said Campbell somberly. "On Earth, and Mars,
and Mercury, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Little people driven
from their homes, robbed of their way of life, exploited and for the
gaping idiots in the trade centers. Little people who didn't care about
progress, and making money. Little people who only wanted to live, and
breathe, and be let alone."
He got up in a swift savage rush and hurled a gourd of water crashing
into a corner and sat down again. He was shivering. The old Kraylen
turned.
"Little people like you, my son?"
Campbell shrugged. "Maybe. We'd worked our farm for three hundred
years. My father didn't want to sell. They condemned it anyhow. It's
under water now, and the dam runs a hell of a big bunch of factories."
"I'm sorry."
Campbell looked up, and his face softened. "I've never understood," he
said. "You people are the most law-abiding citizens I ever met. You
don't like strangers. And yet I blunder in here, hot on the lam and
ugly as a swamp-dragon, and you...."
He stopped. It was probably the excitement that was making his throat
knot up like that. The smoke from the lamp stung his eyes. He blinked
and bent to trim it.
"You were wounded, my son, and in trouble. Your quarrel with the police
was none of ours. We would have helped anyone. And then, while you had
fever and your guard was down, you showed that more than your body
needed help. We gave you what we could."
"Yeah," said Campbell huskily. He didn't say it, but he knew well
enough that what the Kraylens had given him had kept him from blowing
his top completely.
Now the Kraylens were going the way of the others, straws swept before
the great broom of Progress. Nothing could stop it. Earth's empire
surged out across the planets, building, bartering, crashing across
time and custom and race to make money and the shining steel cage of
efficiency.
A cage wherein a sheep could live happily enough, well-fed and opulent.
But Campbell wasn't a sheep. He'd tried it, and he couldn't bleat in
tune. So he was a wolf, now, alone and worrying the flock.
Soon there wasn't going to be a place in the Solar System where a man
could stand on his own feet and breathe.
He felt stifled. He got up and stood in the doorway, watching the trees
stir in the hot indigo gloom. The trees would go. Wells and mines, slag
and soot and clattering machinery, and men in sweat-stained shirts
laboring night and day to get, to grow, to produce.
Campbell's mouth twisted, bitter and sardonic. He said softly:
"God help the unconstructive!"