pictured dreams in the Cetis Gamma Trading Company’s advertisements. He’d daydreamed of himself and Cathy as growing with the colony, thriving as it throve, and ultimately becoming moderately rich—in children and grandchildren, anyhow—with life stretching out before them in a sort of rosy glow. He’d negligently assumed that somehow they would also be rich from the royalties on his invention. But now he came down to reality.
His house was uninhabitable for the time being. He could continue to cultivate his fields, but he wouldn’t be able to eat. The local plant-life was not suitable for human digestion. He had to live on food imported from Earth. Now he had to buy a new stock from the Company, and it would bankrupt him.
With an invention worth more—probably—than the Cetis Gamma Company itself, if he could realize on it, he still was broke. His crop was mortgaged. If Carson learned about his substitute for a generator, the Company would immediately clamp down to get it away from him.
He took Cathy back to Cetopolis. He feverishly appealed to other colonists. He couldn’t tell them about his generator substitute. If they knew about it, in time Carson would know. If they used it, Carson would eventually get hold of a specimen, to send back to Earth for pirating by the Cetis Gamma Trading Company. All Lon could do was try desperately to arrange to borrow food to live on until his crop came in, though even then he wouldn’t be in any admirable situation.
He couldn’t borrow food in quantity. Other colonists had troubles, too. They’d give him a meal, yes, but they couldn’t refill his freezer without emptying their own. Which would compel them to buy more. Which would be charged against their crops. Which would simply hasten the day when they would become day-laborers on the Company’s thanar farm.
Lon had about two days’ food in the kitchen locker. He determined to stretch it to four. Then he’d have to buy more. With each meal, then, his hopes of freedom and prosperity—and Cathy—grew less.
Of course, he could starve....
Rhadampsicus was enormously and pleasantly interested in what went on in Cetis Gamma’s photosphere. From the ninth planet, he scanned the prominences with enthusiasm, making notes. Nodalictha tried to take a proper wifely interest in her husband’s hobby, but she could not keep it up indefinitely. She busied herself with her housekeeping. She fashioned a carpet of tufted methane fibres and put up curtains at the windows. She enlarged the garden Rhadampsicus had made, adding borders of crystallized ammonia and a sort of walkway with a hedge of monoclinic sulphur which glittered beautifully in the starlight. She knew that this was only a temporary dwelling, but she wanted Rhadampsicus to realize that she could make any place a comfortable home.
He remained absorbed in the phenomena of the local sun. One great prominence, after five days of spectacular existence, divided into two which naturally moved apart and stationed themselves at opposite sides of the sun’s equator. They continued to rotate with the sun itself, giving very much the effect of an incipient pinwheel. Two other minor prominences came into being midway between them. Rhadampsicus watched in fascination.
Nodalictha came and reposed beside him on a gentle slope of volcanic slag. She waited for him to notice her. She would not let herself be sensitive about his interest in his hobby, of course, but she could not really find it absorbing for herself. A trifle wistfully, she sent her thoughts to the female biped on the second planet.
After a while she said in distress, “Rhadampsicus! Oh, they are so unhappy!”
Rhadampsicus gallantly turned his attention from the happenings on the sun.
“What’s that, darling?”
“Look!” said Nodalictha plaintively. “They are so much in love, Rhadampsicus! And they can’t marry because he hasn’t anything edible to share with her!”
Rhadampsicus scanned. He was an ardent and sentimental husband. If his new little wife was distressed about anything at all, Rhadampsicus was splendidly ready to do something about it.
Lon Simpson looked at his kitchen locker. The big deep-freezer was repaired now. Once a season, a truck came out from Cetopolis and filled it. The food was costly. A season’s supply was kept in deep-freeze. Once in one or two weeks, one refilled the kitchen locker. It was best to leave the deep-freeze locker closed as much as possible. But now the big deep-freeze was empty. He’d cleaned out the ghastly mess in it, and he had it running again, but he had nothing to put in it. To have it refilled would put him hopelessly at the Company’s mercy, but there was nothing else to do.
Bitterly, he called the Trading Company office, and Carson answered.
“This is Simpson,” Lon told him. “How much—”
“The price for a generator,” said Carson, bored, “is the same as before. Do you want it sent out?”
“No! My food locker broke down. My food store spoiled. I need more.”
“I’ll figure it,” replied Carson over the beamphone. He didn’t seem interested. After a moment, he said indifferently, “Fifteen hundred credits for standard rations to crop time. Then you’ll need more.”
“It’s robbery!” raged Lon. “I can’t expect more than four thousand credits for my crop! You’ve got three thousand charged against me now!”
Carson yawned. “True. A new generator, fifteen hundred; new food supplies fifteen hundred. If your crop turns out all right, you’ll start the new season with two thousand credits charged up as a loan against your land.”
Lon Simpson strangled on his fury. “You’ll take all my leaves and I’ll still owe you! Then credit for seed and food and—If I need to buy more machinery, you’ll own my farm and crop next crop time! Even if my crop is good! Your damned Company will own my farm!”
“That’s your lookout,” Carson said without emotion. “Being a thanar farmer was your idea, not mine. Shall I send out the food?”
Lon Simpson bellowed into the beamphone. He heard clicking, then Cathy’s voice. It was at once reproachful and sympathetic.
“Lon! Please!”
But Lon couldn’t talk to her. He panted at her, and hung up. It is essential to a young man in love that he shine, somehow, in the eyes of the girl he cares for. Lon was not shining. He was appearing as the Galaxy’s prize sap. He’d invested a sizable fortune in his farm. He was a good farmer—hard-working and skilled. In the matter of repairing generators, he’d proved to be a genius. But he was at the mercy of the Cetis Gamma Company’s representative. He was already in debt. If he wanted to go on eating, he’d go deeper. If he were careful and industrious and thrifty, the Trading Company would take his crop and farm in six more months and then give him a job at day-labor wages.
He went grimly to the kitchen of his home. He looked at the trivial amount of food remaining. He was hungry. He could eat it all right now.
If he did—
Then, staring at the food in the kitchen locker, he blinked. An idea had occurred to him. He was blankly astonished at it. He went over and over it in his mind. His expression became dubiously skeptical, and then skeptically amazed. But his eyes remained intent as he thought.
Presently, looking very skeptical indeed, he went out of the house and unwound more copper wire from the remnant of the disassembled generator. He came back to the kitchen. He took an emptied tin can and cut it in a distinctly peculiar manner. The cuts he made were
