"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 asymmetrical. When he had finished, he looked at it doubtfully. A long time later he had made a new gadget. It consisted of two open coils, one quite large and one quite small. Their resemblance to each other was plain, but they did not at all resemble any other coils that had been made for any other purpose whatsoever. If they looked like anything, it was the "mobiles" that some sculptors once insisted were art.