Andre Norton (ed) (39 page)

Vesta, an idea begins to soak in: This used
to be nice country-blue sky, trees growing. Some of that is coming back,
Neely
. And order with it. Because, deep in our guts, that's
what we all want. And fresh vegetables'll help . . . Have another tomato,
Neely
. Or should we call it enough, guys?"

"Neely,
you ain't gonna quit now?" somebody guffawed. "You're doin' almost
good. Haw-hawl"

Neely's
face was purple. His eyes were bloodshot. His mouth hung partly open.
"Gawd—no—please!" he croaked.

An
embarrassed hush fell over the crowd. Back home on Earth, they had all been
more-or-less average men. Finally someone said, expressing the intrusion among
them of the better dignity of man:

"Aw—let the poor dope go
. .

Then
and there, John Endlich sold what was left of his first bushel of tomatoes. One
of his customers—the once loud-mouthed Schmidt—even said, rather stiffly,
"Pun'kins—you're all right."

And these guys were the
real roughnecks of the mining camp.

Is
it necessary to mention that, as they were leaving,
Neely
lost his pride completely, soiling the inside of his helmet's face-window so
that he could scarcely see out of it?
That, amid the raucous
laughter of his companions, which still sounded slightly self-conscious and
pitying.
Thus Alf
Neely
sank at last to the
level of helpless oblivion and nonentity.

A week of Vestal days later, in the
afternoon, Rose and the kids came to John Endlich, who was toiling over his
cucumbers.

"Their name is Harper,
Pop!" Bubs shouted.

"And they've got three
children!" Evelyn added.

John
Endlich straightened, shaking a kink out of his tired back.
"Who?"
he questioned.

"The people who are going to be our new
neighbors, Johnny," Rose said happily. "We just picked up the news on
the radio— from their ship, which is approaching from space right now! I hope
they're nice folks. And, Johnny—there used to be country schools with no more
than five pupils . . ."

"Sure," John Endlich said.

Something felt warm around his heart. Leave
it to a woman to think of a school—the symbol of civilization, marching now
across the void. John Endlich thought of the trouble at the mining camp, which
his first load of fresh vegetables, picked up by a small space boat, had
perhaps helped to end. He thought of the relics in this strange land.
Things that were like legends of a lost pastoral beauty.
Things that could come back.
The second family of
homesteaders was almost here. Endlich was reconciled to domesticity. He felt at
home; he felt proud.

Bees
buzzed near him. A tay-tay bug from a perished
era,
hummed and scraped out a mournful sound.

"I wonder if the Harper kids'll call you
Mr. Punldns, Pop," Bubs remarked. "Like the miners still do."

John
Endlich laughed. But somehow he was prouder than ever. Maybe the name would be
a legend, too.

A
AR
OUT
in
the
galaxy
weird
worlds
circle
still
stranger suns—suns
which
warp
climate
and
nature.
Those
from
Terra who
try
to
play
the
colonist
under
these
suns
lead
queer
lives. To
survive,
Max
Miles
discovered,
one
must
learn
to
exist under
the
natural
conditions
on
such
a
world,
and
not
in opposition
to
them.
And
because
he
digested
that
lesson
early and
thoroughly,
he
won
a
deadly
game.

JEROME
BIXBY

I

Max Miles did mysterious things to the
battered, broken-dialed control panel, and Mary the stratocoupe promptly went
into her act. The old one-man jet flipped a wing at zenith and lost three
hundred feet of altitude in six seconds. Miles sparred with the panel, got
upside up again, stared back at a cloud of dust they had whisked from a
hilltop. He gave the panel a right to the jaw. Mary sighed heavily with her
airfoils and circled in resignation toward the green and ochre valley below,
grounding at last in the meadow with jolts and scrapings.

Miles kicked off the drive with one foot,
shoved open the port with the other. He poised, a small healthy-looking man
with blue eyes and more scalp than hair, his knees bent for the short drop to
the ground; and—as usually happened—the scene outside caught him up and held
him for several delicious moments. His thoughts sidestepped into well-worn and
agreeable tracks as he looked upon the neatly furrowed fields that spread to
the encircling hills; the stone-lined irrigation ditches; the long sprawling
kanl
racks; the shining sunmill that jutted above the yard by the cottage.

There
goes
the
Babe,
he thought, and watched the tiny sun as it seemed to hesitate, then
withdraw suddenly—in a blink-behind the near horizon. The clouded sky
immediately began changing its heaped-up, and fortunately high-up, ammonia
vapors from red to purple and then to neutral grey as the upthrust arc of
sunlight narrowed and faded.

"Miles' Matchless Acres," this
valley was, in his letters to his friends on Earth; the Agricultural Registry
in Three Major listed it with less whoopdedoo as: "Sections
764-5-6
Alcron; product (s):
kanl,
linla;
owner
(s) Maxwell Julius Miles, age
41,
vol. Earth July
2691."

But Max Miles was fired with the blooded
pride of the pioneer—and the less unselfish pride of the landowner. This was
his farm. Ipso facto it was the best farm on Goran Three.

He
jumped, and Three's gravity—
.5403
Earth—socked his feet gently into the tangled
grass. Waves and eddies of stink—there's no other word for it—came at him from
all directions; stink that was a level eight-foot blanket over the Alcron
lowlands. Miles grinned and ducked under Mary's stubby wing, savoring the
heavily-laden air with the peculiar gusto of one to whom an unpleasant thing
has become pleasantly familiar. Sliding open the cargo hatch, he hoisted a box
of supplies to his shoulder and started up the path for the cottage, squinting
into the gloom of oncoming evening.

Several dark shapes seemed to materialize at
the meadow's edge, vague and hulking against the backdrop of intertwined
kanl
trees. Miles wondered, as he often had, how any critter as big as the
average Crony could move so silently and so fast. . . .

"Is
it Miles?" The sibilant whisper was beamed, by thoroughly unhuman vocal
chords, at the little Earthman.

"It
is Miles," he replied, and although he recognized the voice, courtesy
demanded that he add: "Is it Fir?"

"It is Fir, with Tos.
What is your wish?"

"
None,
save to retire. The farm is well?"

The answering whisper carried overtones of
satisfaction. "It is well, Miles. You will find an account on your
desk—" and the figures melted into the thick-hung blackness.

Miles grinned, trudged on up the path. Gone
for half a day's shopping—and his workers had kept a record of the farm's happenings.
That was Lin's work, he suspected. His big foreman enjoyed the assumption of
tasks over and above those assigned him; such as his regular trips to the
cottage, a few minutes before Grandpa, to make certain that Miles was awake
and aware.

The natives of Goran Three were certainly not
the most beautiful to look upon—although reasonably humanoid and not at all
disturbing to a human, if the human were forewarned—but he'd stack them for
common decency against any blank sapiens in the catalogued systems. And work!
They'd work their hands to the— well, no, not to the bone.
At
least so far as Miles or anyone else could know for sure.
Couple of
years ago some stiffnecked medicos from Mars General had come to Three with
ideas about examining the Cronies and placing them in the exact black and
white scheme of things. After a while they had gone back to Mars, disgruntled,
carrying fogged X-ray plates and souvenir scalpels that had blunted on
chitinous hides. One amiable Crony had signed a release, submitted to an atomic
drill—and exited laughing.

Miles himself had often wondered about the
physiological set-up of the Cronies. After all, he thought, living with equal
comfort under both the Babe and Grandpa was somewhat like breathing both air
and water. Or air and fire, more like it.

But
then, the Cronies were paradoxical from the word go. With one of the highest
racial I. Q.'s known, so far as could be determined, considering the difficulty
of establishing suitable criteria, they acted like kids, preferring to spend
much of their time romping and singing in the sunlight and working gratis as
farmhands for the Earth settlers.

Which, argued some scientists, along with the
hints occasionally dropped and the gadgets often carried but never shared by
the Cronies, was no small indication of their cultural status: highly advanced,
with the arts and technology to produce anything and everything they could
possibly want except exercise.

Other scientists argued
decadence.

All the scientists would have loved to
examine just
one
of those gadgets, to have entered just
one
of the great shining Hives that lay scattered across the face of Goran
Three, and thereby see exactly what was what.

But
after several decades of being neatly rebuffed in such attempts, Earth
scientists knew the following and little else: the Cronies were tough,
brilliant, amiable and—telepathic. They were not, however—and thank Heaven—able
to read Earth minds. This the Cronies admitted.

The
binary-meter on Miles' wrist suddenly began to agitate— buzzing
wasp-like—
and grew hot. The illuminated dial, controlled by
the master-meter in Three Minor, told him that he could expect Grandpa in
precisely an hour and a half from
now.

"Damn
crazy place to live," he confided to the meter. Then his blue eyes snapped
half-shut with annoyance as the heat increased.
"All
right, all
right!
I'm not asleep this time—!"

He
made whistling noises and thumped the box of supplies to the ground, grabbed at
the meter to click it off. Pain faded. Miles flipped the wrist around to cool
it, cussing the meter—but without enthusiasm, for he remembered the time he
had
been asleep, lying in the grass at the far end of the meadow. Good
Martian wine and a very bad book had eased him into a weighted slumber, and
the brilliance of certain death had begun to silhouette the distant hills. The
meter had all but fried his wrist in its effort to get him on his feet. He
still had the scar—and the nightmare memory of that frantic race with Grandpa.

The
box reshouldered, Miles cut away from the path and knelt. The racks were spread
with neat rows of round, soggy
kanl
leaves, all ready for Grandpa. He straightened, took a deep breath. It
was a good life. He let out the breath—if you could stand Grandpa and the
unholy stink.

n

Miles
rounded the corner of the cottage and came to a surprised halt.
  
His cheery whistle turned atonal and
perished. The big man's voice was oddly soft, almost friendly in tone.

"Does it always smell
like this?" he inquired.

He
stood by the
door,
his back leaned against the tangled
jongar.
His round face might have been weak, almost childlike, with its shallow
eyes and nubbin of a nose—but the small mouth beneath was tucked in at the
corners, stamping an ugly determination over all. And as far as smells went, he
was no peony himself—he had the horsy odor of a big man long unwashed; his
tunic was rumpled and dirty, his face stub-bled and sweat-shiny.

Miles lowered his gaze and had his first
opportunity—if you didn't count the detective thrillers he followed on the
screen of his telaudio—to study the triple nozzle of a hand-blast pointed at
him with intent to do him dirt. It did indeed command attention, and Miles
gave his to the stranger's next words.

"Is that food you're carrying?"
Hopefully.

"Some of it," Miles admitted.

The man moved backward through the doorway.
"Come in, said the spider—although it's
your
parlor."

Max
Miles followed, ducking to clear the trailing
jongar
vines, more puzzled than afraid. Strangers were uncommon on Goran Three.
One of many pioneer worlds, it bore a purely functional population. Importing
supplies was a headache, living conditions were flexible and still under
critical analysis, and space visas were proportionately hard to get. There were
only two cities on the tiny planet; one a shipping center, and the other a
glorified department store. These, along with the farms and outlying districts,
contained in aggregate exactly
964
humans,
most of whom were known to one another and one of whom, Miles was sure, this
stranger was not.

Habit
brought Miles' hand to the house-board. He inserted his key, turned the cottage
on. Coming to electronic life, it detected their presence and spilled soft,
duffuse light from the walls.

From
the center of the room the big man murmured his surprise: "Pretty fancy
for a farmer."

Miles blinked to adjust his sight.
"What'd you expect— candles?"

The
stranger's mouth tightened. "Kick the door shut." Miles did so.

The
stranger indicated the box of supplies with a wave of the hand-blast. "Set
it."

Miles
bit down on his anger and slid the box onto the table. He said mildly,
"Okay, Mister—?"

"Jord.
Henry Jo—" the stranger broke off with an appreciative grin.
"Say, aren't you the smart one? I like a smart man." He took a step
forward, the grin stiffening over his small, even teeth. "Now, put your
hands in your pants pockets and turn around."

Miles pivoted slowly to face the wall. Henry
Jord's free hand patted up and down his torso, removing his wallet, his
pocket-talkie. A moment later he heard the tiny 'tronic shatter on the floor.
Then Jord's steps retreated to the center of the room, his soft-steel voice
said, "All right, farmer.
At ease."

Miles
wheeled, picked the wallet out of mid-air as it was tossed to him. Its
thickness told him that his money was still there.

Jord put the hand-blast on the table.
"Ten to one," he said casually, "that I can pick it up and shoot
you before you get to me."

"Wouldn't
buck those odds," Miles grunted. He leaned against the wall, watching
silently as the big man unpacked the box of supplies, item by item. At one
point Jord exclaimed happily and set aside a container of Venus-Blue Garol.

"I
guess we'll have that for supper," Miles interpreted.

"I
said
you were smart, farmer—" Jord's hand explored the bottom of the
box. "I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a hand-blast mixed in here.
No reason why there should be-but wouldn't I be a fool to take the
chance?" He picked up the gun from the table and gave Miles his wide,
meaningless smile.

The little farmer bared his teeth in a
returning smile that meant a great deal—most of it nasty.

"As
long as you're my guest," he said, "suppose you call me by name—you
got it from the wallet—and tell me what in hell this is all about!"

Jord raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that
obvious? Or don't you listen to the telaudio?"

"No,
it isn't obvious," Miles snapped, "and I listen to the telaudio. But
my set isn't any government I. P. pick-up. And you're not from Goran Three,
mister!"

Something of surprise
flickered in Jord's pale gaze.

"Maybe
you're too damned smart," he said. "How did you figure that?"

"Three's like a small town—there's
nobody on this clod I can't call by his first name."

Jord's
face lost its wary tension. "Of course," he murmured, "I'd
forgotten. That's very nice—my not being known here should expedite
things." He sat down and stretched his long legs under the table, keeping
the hand-blast targeted on Miles' chest. "Well . . . since you don't know
who I am, I'll tell you. We all hope for notoriety, of course, but you must
understand that I would have preferred a different sort.
Henry
Jord, galactic explorer, perhaps—or Henry Jord, famous author.
I do
write, you know. No, I suppose you don't. At any rate, these things are not in
our hands, are they?" He flung out a casual hand, as if in demonstration.
"So I am Henry Jord, embezzler, murderer, fugitive."