FARMER By MACK REYNOLDS Illustrated by RITTER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Someone out there didn't like trees. He wanted to wreck the Sahara Project--and he was willing to murder in the process! I One of the auto-copters swooped in and landed. Johnny McCord emptied his pipe into the wastebasket, came to his feet and strolled toward the open door. He automatically took up a sun helmet before emerging into the Saharan sun. He was dressed in khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, wool socks and yellow Moroccan babouche slippers. The slippers were strictly out of uniform and would have been frowned upon by Johnny's immediate superiors. However, the Arabs had been making footwear suitable for sandy terrain for centuries before there had ever been a Sahara Reforestation Commission. Johnny was in favor of taking advantage of their know-how. Especially since the top brass made a point of staying in the swank air-conditioned buildings of Colomb-Bechar, Tamanrasset and Timbuktu, from whence they issued lengthy bulletins on the necessity of never allowing a Malian to see a Commission employee in less than the correct dress and in less than commanding dignity. While they were busily at work composing such directives, field men such as Johnny McCord went about the Commission's real tasks. It was auto-copter 4, which Johnny hadn't expected for another half hour. He extracted the reports and then peered into the cockpit to check. There were two red lights flickering on the panel. Work for Reuben. This damned sand was a perpetual hazard to equipment. Number 4 had just had an overhaul a few weeks before and here it was throwing red lights already. He took the reports back into the office and dumped them into the card-punch. While they were being set up, Johnny went over to the office refrigerator and got out a can of Tuborg beer. Theoretically, it was as taboo to drink iced beer in this climate, and particularly at this time of day, as it was to go out into the sun without a hat. But this was one place where the Commission's medics could go blow. By the time he'd finished the Danish brew, the card-punch had stopped clattering so he took the cards from the hopper and crossed to the sorter. He gave them a quick joggling--cards held up well in this dry climate, though they were a terror further south--and sorted them through four code numbers, enough for this small an amount. He carried them over to the collator and merged them into the proper file. He was still running off a report on the Alphabetyper when Derek Mason came in. Johnny drawled in a horrible caricature of a New England accent, "I say, Si, did the cyclone hurt your barn any?"