unusually warm night. They walked along the plank sidewalks of the little frontier town—as a new colony, Cetis Gamma Two was a frontier—and Lon talked extravagantly.
He had meant to explain painfully to Cathy that there was no use in their being romantic about each other. He’d expected to have to tell her bitterly that he was doomed to spend the rest of his life adding to the profits of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company, with all the laws of the human race holding him in peonage. He’d thought of some very elegant descriptions of the sort of people who’d worked out the system in force on Cetis Gamma Two.
But he didn’t. As they strolled under the shiver trees that lined the small town’s highways, and smelled the chanel bushes beyond the town’s limits, and listened to the thin violinlike strains of what should have been night birds—they weren’t; the singers were furry instead of feathered, and they slept in burrows during the day—as they walked with linked fingers in the warm and starlit night, Lon told Cathy about his invention.
He explained in detail just why wires wound in just that fashion, and combined with bits of sheet iron twisted in just those shapes, would produce power for free and forever. He explained how it had to be so. He marveled that nobody had ever thought of it before. He explained it so that Cathy could almost understand it.
“It’s wonderful!” she said wistfully. “They’ll run spaceships on your invention, won’t they, Lon? And cities? And everything! I guess you’ll be very rich for inventing it!”
He stopped short and stared at her. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Then he said blankly:
“But I’ll have to get back to Earth to patent it! And I haven’t got the money to pay one fare, let alone two!”
“Two?” asked Cathy hopefully. “Why two?”
“You’re going to marry me, aren’t you?” he demanded. “I sort of hope that was all settled.”
Cathy stamped her foot.
“Hadn’t you heard,” she asked indignantly, “that such things aren’t taken for granted? Especially when two people are walking in the starlight and are supposed to be thrilled? It isn’t settled—not until after you’ve kissed me, anyhow!”
He remedied his error.
Out on the ninth planet, very far away, Nodalictha blushed slightly. As a bride, she was in that deliciously embarrassing state of becoming accustomed to discussions which would previously have been unconventional.
“They are so quaint!” Then she hesitated and said awkwardly, “The idea of putting their—their lips together as a sign of affection—”
Rhadampsicus was amused, as a bridegroom may be by the delightful innocences of a new wife. He evinced his amusement in a manner no human being could conceivably have recognized as the tender laugh it was.
“Little goose!” he said fondly. Of course, instead of a fowl, he thought of a creature that had thirty-four legs and scales instead of feathers and was otherwise thoroughly ungooselike. “Little goose, they do that because they can’t do this!”
And he twined his eye stalks sentimentally about hers.
Days passed on Cetis Gamma Two. Lon Simpson cultivated his thanar fields. But he began to worry. His new power source was more than a repair for a broken-down tractor. It was valuable. It was riches! He had in it one of those basic, overwhelmingly important discoveries by which human beings have climbed up from the status of intelligent Earthbound creatures to galactic colonists—And a lot of good it had done them!
It was a basic principle for power supply that would relieve mankind permanently of the burden of fuels. The number of planets available for colonization would be multiplied. The cost of every object made by human beings would be reduced by the previous cost of power. The price of haulage from one planet to another would be reduced to a fraction. Every member of the human race would become richer as a result of the gadget now attached to Lon Simpson’s tractor. He was entitled to royalties on the wealth he was to distribute. But....
He was a thanar farmer on Cetis Gamma Two. His crop was mortgaged. He could not possibly hope to raise enough money to get back to Earth to arrange for the marketing of his invention. Especially, he could not conceivably raise money enough to take Cathy with him. He had riches, but they weren’t available. And something else might happen to ruin him at any time.
Something else did. The freezer element of his deep-freeze locker broke down. He didn’t notice it. He had a small kitchen locker in which food for week-to-week use was stored. He didn’t know anything about the deep-freeze unit that held a whole growing season’s supply of food. The food in it—all imported from Earth and very expensive—thawed, fermented, spoiled, developed evil smelling gases, and waited for an appropriate moment to reveal itself as a catastrophe.
There were other things to worry about at the time. A glacier up at Cetis Gamma Two’s polar region began to retreat, instead of growing as was normal for the season. There was a remarkable solar prominence of three days’ duration swinging around the equator of the local sun. There was a meeting of directors of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company, at which one of the directors pointed out that the normal curve of increase for profits was beginning to flatten out, and something had to be done to improve the financial position of the company. Ugly sun-spots appeared on the northern hemisphere of Cetis Gamma. If there had been any astronomers on the job, there would have been as much excitement as a four alarm fire. But there were no astronomers.
The greatest agitation on the second planet of Cetis Gamma Two was felt by Lon Simpson. Cathy had made friends with a married woman colonist who would chaperon her on a visit to Lon’s farm, and was coming out to visit and see the place that was to be the scene of the ineffable, unparalleled happiness she and Lon would know after they were married.
She came, she saw, she was captivated. Lon blissfully opened the door of the house she was to share. He had spent the better part of two days cleaning up so it would be fit for her to look at. Cathy entered. There was a dull, booming noise, a hissing, and a bubbling, and then a rank stench swept through the house and strangled them.
The boom, of course, was the bursting open of the deep-freeze locker from the pressure of accumulated gases within it. The smell was that of the deep-freeze contents, ten days thawed out without Lon knowing it. There are very few smells much worse than frozen fish gone very, very bad in a hot climate. If there are worse smells, they come from once-frozen eggs bursting from their shells when pressure outside them is relieved. In this case, trimmings were added by fermenting strawberries, moldy meat and badly decayed vegetables, all triumphantly making themselves known at the same instant.
Cathy gasped and choked. Lon got her out of doors, gasping himself. It was not difficult to deduce what had happened.
He opened the house windows from the outside, so the smell could go away. But he knew despair.
“I—can’t show you the house, Cathy,” he said numbly. “My locker went bad and all the food followed suit.”
“Lon!” wailed Cathy. “It’s terrible! How will you eat?”
Lon began to realize that the matter was more serious than the loss of an opportunity for a sentimental inspection of the house. He had dreamed splendidly, of late. He didn’t quite know how he was going to manage it, but since his tractor was working magnificently he had come to picture himself and Cathy in the rôle of successful colonists, zestfully growing thanar
