Authors: Space Pioneers
Under
ideal conditions, the inside of the great bubble was soon a mass of growing
things. Rose had planted flowers—to be admired, and to help out the hive of
bees, which were essential to some of the other plants, as well. Nor was the
flora limited to the Earthly. Some seeds or spores had survived, here, from the
mother world of the asteroids. They came out of their eons of
suspended animation, to become root and
tough, spiky stalk, and to mix themselves sparsely with vegetation that had
immigrated from Earth, now that livable conditions had been restored over this
little piece of ground. But whether they were fruit or weed, it was difficult
to say.
Sometimes
John Endlich was misled. Sometimes, listening to familiar sounds, and smelling
familiar odors, toward the latter part of his reprieve, he almost imagined that
he'd accomplished his basic desires here on Vesta—when he had always failed on
Earth.
There was the smell of warm soil, flowers,
greenery. He heard irrigation water trickling. The sweetcorn rustled in the
wind of fans he'd set up to circulate the air. Bees buzzed. Chickens, approaching
adolescence, peeped contentedly as they dusted themselves and stretched
luxuriously in the shadows of the cornfield.
For
John Endlich it was all like the echo of a somnolent summer of his boyhood.
There was peace in it: it was like a yearning fulfilled.
An
end of wanderlust for him, here on Vesta.
In contrast to the airless
desolation outside, the interior of this five-acre greenhouse was the one most
desirable place to be. So, except for the vaguest of stirrings sometimes in his
mind, there was not much incentive to seek fun elsewhere.
If
he ever had time.
And there was a lot of the legendary, too, in
what his family and he had accomplished. It was like returning a little of the
blue sky and the sounds of life to this land of ruins and roadways and the
ghosts of dead beauty. Maybe there'd be a lot more of all that, soon, when the
rumored major influx of homesteaders reached Vesta.
"Yes, Johnny," Rose said once.
" 'Legendary'
is a lot nicer word than 'ghostly'. And
the ghosts are changing their name to legends."
Rose had to teach the kids their regular
lessons. That children would be taught was part of the agreement you had to
sign at the A. H. O. before you could be shipped out with them. But the kids
had time for whimsy, too. In make-believe, they took their excursions far back
to former ages. They played that they were "Old People."
Endlich, having repaired his atomic battery,
didn't draw power anymore from the unit that had supplied the ancient buildings.
But the relics remained. From a device like a phonograph, there was even a
bell-like voice that chanted when a lever was pressed.
And
it was the kids who found the first "tay-tay bug," a day after its
trills were heard from among the new foliage.
"Ta-a-a-ay-y-y—ta-a-a-a-ay-y-yy-y—" The sound was like that of a
little wheel, humming with the speed of rotation, and then slowing to a
scratchy stop.
A one-legged hopper, with a thin but rigid
gliding wing of horn.
Opalescent in its colors.
It had evidently
hatched from a tiny egg, preserved by the cold for ages.
Wise
enough not to clutch it with his bare hands, Bubs came running with it held in
a leaf.
It proved harmless. It was ugly and
beautiful. Its great charm was that it was a vocal echo from the far past.
Sure. Life got to be fairly okay, in spite of
hard work. The Endlichs had conquered the awful stillness with life-sounds.
Growing plants kept the air in their greenhouse fresh and breathable by
photosynthesis. John Endlich did a lot of grinning and whistling. His temper
never flared once. Deep down in him there was only a brooding certainty that
the calm couldn't last. For, from all reports, trouble seethed at the mining
camp. At any time there might be a blowup, a reign of terror that would roll
over all of Vesta.
A thing to release pent-up forces in men
who had seen too many hard stars, and had heard too much stillness.
They
were like the stuff inside a complaining volcano.
The
Endlichs had sought to time their various crops, so that they would all be
ready for market on as nearly as possible the same day. It was intended as a
trick of advertising—a dramatically sudden appearance of much fresh produce.
So, one moming, in a
jet-equipped spacesuit, Endlich arced
out
for the mining camp. Inside the suit he
carried samples from his garden.
Six tomatoes.
Beauties.
"Have
luck with them, Johnny! But watch out!" Rose flung after him by helmet
phone.
With a warm laugh.
Just for a moment he felt
maybe a little silly. Tomatoes! But they were what he was banking on, and had
forced toward maturity, most. The way he figured, they were the kind of fruit
that the guys in the camp—gagged by a diet of canned and dehydrated stuff,
because they were too busy chasing mineral wealth to keep a decent hydroponic
garden going—would be hungriest for.
Well—he was rather too right, in some ways,
to be fortunate. Yeah—they still call what happened the Tomato War.
Poor Johnny Endlich.
He was headed for the commissary dome to display his wares. But vague
urges sidetracked him, and he went into the recreation dome of the camp,
instead.
And
into the bar.
The
petty sin of two drinks hardly merits the punishing trouble which came his way
as, at least partially, a result. With his face-window open, he stood at the
bar with men whom he had never seen before. And he began to have minor
delusions of grandeur. He became a little too proud of his accomplishments. His
wariness slipped into abeyance. He had a queer idea that, as a farmer with
concrete evidence of his skills to show, he would win respect that had been
denied him. Dread of consequences of some things that he might do, became
blurred. His hot temper began to smolder, under the spark of memory and the
fury of insult and malicious tricks, that, considering the safety of his loved
ones, he had had no way to fight back against. Frustration is a dangerous
force. Released a little, it excited him more. And the tense mood of the camp—a
thing in the very air of the domes—stirred him up more. The camp—ready to
explode into sudden, open barbarism for days—was now at a point where nothing
so dramatic as fresh tomatoes and farmers in a bar was needed to set the
fireworks off.
John
Endlich had his two drinks. Then, with calm and foolhardy detachment, he set
the six tomatoes out in a row before him on the synthetic mahogany.
He didn't have to wait at all for results.
Bloodshot eyes, some of them belonging to men who had been as gentle as lambs
in their ordinary lives on Earth, turned swiftly alert. Bristly faces showed
swift changes of expression: surprise, interest, greed for possession—but most
of all, aggressive and Satanic humor.
"Jeez—tamadasl"
somebody growled, amazed.
Under
the circumstances, to be aware of opportunity was to act. Big paws, some bare and
calloused, some in the gloves of space suits, reached out, grabbed. Teeth bit.
Juice squirted, landing on hard metal shaped for the interplanetary regions.
So
far, fine. John Endlich felt prouder of himself—he'd expected a certain
fierceness and lack of manners. But knowing all he did know, he should have
taken time to visualize the inevitable chain-reaction.
"Thanks, pal . . .
You're a prince . . ."
Sure—but the thanks were more of a mockery
than a formality. "Hey!
None for me?
Whatsa idea?
. . ."
"Shuddup,
Mic . . .
Who's
dis guy? . . . Say, Friend—you
wouldn't be that pun'kin-head we been hearin' about, would you? . . . Well—my
gracious—bet you are! Dis'll be nice to watchl . . ."
"Where's Alf Neely,
Cranston? What we need is excitement."
"Seen him out by the slot-machines.
The bar is still out of bounds for him. He
can't come in here."
"Says who?
Boss Man
Mahoney?
For dis much sport
Neely
can go
straight to hell! And take Boss Man with him on a pitchfork . . . Hey-y-y! . .
. Ne-e-e-e-l-y-y-y! . . ."
The
big man whose name was called lumbered to the window at the entrance to the
bar, and peered inside. During the last couple of months he'd been in a
perpetual grouch over his deprivation of liberty, which had
rankled
him more as an affront to his dignity.
Neely let out a yell of sheer glee. His huge
shoulders hunched, his pendulous nose wobbled, his squinty eyes gleamed and he
charged into the bar.
John Endlich's first
reaction was curiously similar to
Neely's
.
He felt a flash of savage triumph under the
stimulus of the thought of immediate battle with the cause of most of his
troubles. Temper blazed in him.
Belatedly,
however, the awareness came into his mind that he had started an emotional
avalanche that went far beyond the weight and fury of one man like Neely. Lord,
wouldn't he ever learn? It was tough to crawl, but how could a man put his wife
and kids in awful jeopardy at the hands of a flock of guys whom space had
turned into gorillas?
Endlich
tried for peace. It was to his credit that he did so quite coolly. He turned
toward his charging adversary and grinned.
"Hi, Neely," he
said. "Have a drink—on me."
The
big man stopped short, almost in unbelief that anyone could stoop so low as to
offer appeasement. Then he laughed uproariously.
"Why,
I'd be delighted, Mr. Pun'kins," he said in a poisonous-sweet tone.
"Let bygones be bygones. Hey, Charlie! Hear what Pun'kins says? The drinks
are all on him!"
With
a sudden lunge
Neely
gripped Endlich's hand, and gave
it a savage if momentary twist that sent needles of pain shooting up the
homesteader's arm. It was a goading invitation to battle, which grim knowledge
of the sequel now compelled Endlich to pass up.
"Don't
call him Pun'kins, Neely!" somebody yelled. "It ain't polite to
mispronounce a name. It's Mr. Tomatoes. I just saw. Bet he's got a million of
'em, out there on the farm!"
The whole crowd in the bar broke into coarse
shouts and laughs and comments. ". . . We ain't good neighbors—neglecting
our social duties. Let's pay 'em a visit . . . Pun'kins! What else you got
besides tamadas? Let's go on a picnic! . . . Hell with the Boss Man! . . .
Yah-h-h—
We
need some diversion . . . I'm not goin' on
shift. . . Come on, everybody! There's gonna be a fight— a moider! . . . Hell
with the Boss Man . . ."
Like the flicker of flame flashing through
dry gunpowder, you could feel the excitement spread.
Out of
the bar.
Out of the
recrióme.
It would soon ignite the whole tense camp.
John Endlich's heart was in his mouth, as his
mind pictured the part of all this that would affect him and his.
A bunch of men gone wild, kicking over the
traces, arcing around Vesta, sacking and destroying in sheer exuberance, like
brats on Hallowe'en. They would stop at nothing.
And Rose
and the kids . . .
This was it. What he'd been so scared of all
along. It was at least partly
his own
fault. And there
was no way to stop it now.
T love tomatoes, Mr. Pun'kins," Neely
rumbled at Endlich's side, reaching for the drink that had been set before him.
"But first I'm gonna smear you all over the camp . . . Take my time-do a
good job . . . Because y'didn't give me any tomatoes . . ."
Whereat,
John Endlich took the only slender advantage at hand for him—surprise. With all
the strength of his muscular body, backed up by dread and pent-up fury, he sent
a gloved fist crashing straight into
Neely's
open
face-window. Even the pang in his well-protected knuckles was a
satisfaction—for he knew that the damage to
Neely's
ugly features must be many times greater.
The blow, occurring under the conditions of
Vesta's tiny gravity, had an entirely un-Earthly effect. Neely, eyes
glazing,
floated gently up and away. And Endlich, since he
had at the last instant clutched Neely's arm, was drawn along with the miner
in a graceful, arcing flight through the smoky air of the bar. Both armored
bodies, lacking nothing in inertia, tore through the tough plastic window, and
they bounced lightly on the pavement of the main section of the rec-dome.
Neely
was as limp as a wet rag, sleeping peacefully, blood all over his crushed face.
But that he was out of action signified no peace, when so many of his buddies
were nearby, and beginning to seethe, like a swarm of hornets.
So there was an element of despair in
Endlich's quick actions as he slammed Neely's face-window and his own shut,
picked up his enemy, and used his jets to propel him in the long leap to the
airlock of the dome. He had no real plan. He just had the ragged and all but
hopeless thought of using
Neely
as a hostage— as a
weapon in the bitter and desperate attempt to defend his