Picnic BY MILTON LESSER ILLUSTRATED BY EBERLE Burt was tired of taking his family out to the asteroids for a picnic every week-end. But with a wife and two spoiled brats to goad him into the regular routine, what could a man do? Only, as it turned out, this particular picnic wasn't quite regular routine! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Rocket Stories, July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Burt reached out for the stud that would fire the fore-rockets, but a small white hand already rested on the button. "Let me, Daddy. You promised--" When he wanted something, Johnny's voice took on that wailing quality. He wanted something now; Burt had promised him that he could land the ship. "Okay," Burt said. "Press it--now. Now!" Johnny took his hand off the stud. "Don't holler at _me_," he told his father severely. Burt swore under his breath and jammed down on the stud. A red light overhead winked on and off furiously, and he knew that if he had waited another moment they would have plowed into the asteroid like a battering ram into a tub of soft butter. "Marcia, oh Marcia!" he turned and called over his shoulder to his wife. She stuck her head in through the galley door. "Dear," she said, "let me make these sandwiches, will you? I don't tell you how to pilot the ship, but I'll never get this lunch all packed unless you let me alone." Burt scowled. "That's the general idea. I want to be let alone, too. So if you'll just take your darling little son the devil out of here--" "Why, Burt Rogers! Johnny's only eight, and he's quite harmless. If I had known ten years ago that you didn't like children--" Burt shook his head. "Joan's fine. Joan is two years younger than Johnny, but she doesn't bother anyone. She just sits in the galley and--" "Hah!" Marcia snorted. "She sits in the galley and digs her arms into the mayonnaise tub up to the elbows, that's all." "Well, then they're both brats." "Burt!" "They are, and it's your fault, Marcia. You always say let the children express themselves, we can't frustrate them or cut them short in any way--so look what happens." "You look what happens," Marcia declared dramatically. "If we don't pull out of the dive in a couple of seconds, we'll splatter all over that planetoid." "Let me land it, let me land it!" wailed Johnny. Burt spun to the controls, and his fingers flicked rapidly over the buttons. He was sweating when he brought the ship down with a none-too-gentle dump. He heard Joan's whimper from inside the galley, and Marcia began to tell him what a lousy pilot he was. Johnny was playing cops and robbers with the topography through the foreport. "This," Burt said, "is the last week-end picnic for me. Definitely the last."