was fine training in self-reliance.
* * * *
Six weeks later, the three of them stood on the bridge of the space freighter Beautiful Joe, watching Sugar Plum as the vessel entered an orbit around it.
But Charles Edward Button didn’t feel at all masterful, or even adventurous.
They stood next to Possett, the skipper, a great, hairy man with gold teeth, a bad squint, and an air of gloomy cunning about him. After her first look at Possett, Cousin Aurelia had locked herself in her cabin, allowing no one but Betty to approach her, and threatening to subsist on the half-dozen cases of Dr. Stringfellow’s Vegetable Remedy she kept under her berth. Charles, however, had been sure that Possett’s heart was both kindly and chivalrous.
“Take those tall stories of his,” he said more than once. “Betty, they don’t mean a thing. Old spacedogs love to kid tenderfeet. Imagine trying to make me believe that it’s dangerous out here! And all that malarkey about Captain Burgee being a pirate or something!”
They stared at Sugar Plum, at its small polar ice caps, its seas, its continents greener than Earth’s, its wandering white clouds. Not many hours before, it had been only a dust mote, a pinpoint of light in the void. Now it filled half the sky. And suddenly Charles understood the immensities, the unspeakable stretches of space in which Boston had vanished.
Shivering, he wished he were home, stiffly safe in a curlicued chair, with Solomon dialing his dinner for him.
“Nice piece of property,” grunted Possett around his cigar. “Too bad about—” He broke off with a shrug.
“About what?” asked Charles, alarmed.
“I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if Burgee comes around and finds you’d run off with his planet.”
“Burgee? He was lost out in space!”
“His kind don’t stay lost. Chances are he’s hiding out from the law. But it’s none of my business. Just thought I’d warn you.”
Charles laughed weakly. “You c-can’t frighten me. I’m sure there aren’t any pirates in space any more.”
Possett turned to his weasel-faced mate. “Loopy, call the New Texas spaceport. Get Mac on the screen.”
The mate nodded. He twiddled a dial and punched at a switch. The screen glowed. After some seconds, the face of a red-haired person appeared, looking rather disgusted.
“New Texas, New Texas,” came a voice. “I hear you, Beautiful Joe. What the hell do you want?”
“Dude aboard wants some info,” said Possett. “Wants to know what Burgee did for a living—Alexander Burgee. Also, are the coppers still trying to find him?”
The face frowned. “Possett, you know damn well Burgee was a pirate. You know he’s been listed as lost. Now quit wasting my time. New Texas out.”
The face vanished. The mate snickered nastily. And Charles just stood there gaping.
“A real pirate!” squeaked Cousin Aurelia. “Wh-what would he do? Would he kill us?”
“Might do anything. But—” eying her, Possett leered—“he’s like me. Likes ’em well fattened up. Lady, you needn’t worry.”
Cousin Aurelia paled. She started to sway. Then, perhaps recalling the uncarpeted deck, she recovered and looked haughty instead.
“I am going right back to my cabin,” she proclaimed, and stalked off the bridge.
“Cousin Aurelia is very genteel,” Betty snapped at the captain. “You had no right to insult her. Besides, she’s only twenty pounds overweight.”
“Don’t mind me. I go for her type.” Possett shook his head darkly and turned toward Charles. “Button, man to man, a back-country planet’s no place for the ladies. Look, I’ll take the thing off your hands. I can handle Burgee. Twelve thousand cold cash for your stuff and the deed, and I’ll throw in a lift to New Texas. There’s a liner from there.”
Charles thought of the comfortable Earth and was tempted. “But I paid thirty-five,” he protested uncertainly. “I mean, twelve is—”
“Take it or leave it. I’m trying to do you a favor.”
“No, I guess we’ll leave it,” answered Betty.
Charles looked around in surprise. Her lips were compressed, her blue eyes narrowed with astonishing determination.
“We’ve come all this way,” she declared, “so we might as well keep it. I think it has—well, possibilities. We’ve had the whole house done over and the servants remodeled. And we’ll have all the DoItAll services—teleprojection, medical care, and everything else—from the New Texas substation. I’m sure we’ll get along nicely.”
The skipper of the Beautiful Joe wasn’t pleased. “It’s your necks. Don’t be blaming me for what happens,” he growled. “Well, where do you want to set down?”
“Set down?” gulped Charles. “R-right now?”
“Land and unload, it says in the contract. I ain’t got all day. I’ll dump you at Burgee’s old landing, load up with fresh water, and blast off for New Texas.”
Charles had no other spot in mind.
“Okay,” Possett said to the two robot crewmen at the main controls, “take her down.”
* * * *
At the waterfall’s edge, flowering trees twisted their roots in the cliffside, and a fresh wind scattered plumes of its spray through their leaves. Taller trees, bell-blossomed, fanned out from the pool, gave way to a meadow, and followed the course of the stream down a broadening valley—among faceted boulders of translucent quartz, rose-pink, green, and golden, sheltering small, lustrous spires of fragile fungi.
On the meadow stood the house, the latest in Second Victorian, complete with carved plastic false-front in early Schenectady Gothic. The Buttons themselves, with Cousin Aurelia, stood in front of it. They wore long linen dusters and sun helmets with heavy mosquito veils. They were going exploring.
Cousin Aurelia was sputtering: “Do you know what he said when he left? ‘Kid, you come along with Mike Possett. You don’t want no part of that planet. I’ll show you a ripsnorting time!’ Then he gave me a look that—that was positively lecherous.” She shuddered. “At least we’ll have no more of that nonsense. Your planet is uninhabited.”
Betty looked worried. “I’ve the funniest feeling,” she said. “As if someone was watching.”
“That’s absurd!” snapped Cousin Aurelia. “You must be imagin—” She stopped in her tracks. “Wh-what’s that?”
They looked. A large, soft, fuzzy beast had come out from under the trees. It was reddish and had very big feet. It blinked at them brightly, climbed a transparent green rock, and started to whistle, not too tunefully, through its long Roman nose.
Almost instantly, another emerged, a size smaller. Lowering
