Life on other planets -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
"A fool," retorted the elected captain and he slammed the crowbar
against the oxidation on the fin.
Above this continuing racket, Paul shouted: "A smart guy could get
richer here than on one of those damned rocks."
The old man's voice came between blows. "You won't get rich anywhere."
He said something Paul couldn't hear. "--not the type." He smiled as
though it were a compliment. "But if you're thinking of watching
peaches ripen--" The hammering drowned him out. "--and the drooling lip
because that's what men get all alone on alien planets."
"Not me. Hey Cap, lay off for a minute. My folks homesteaded Syrtis
Major. Before they shipped Harry and me off to school, I had the
proverbial green thumb," he grinned. "Sure, get rich here and spend it
for psycho treatments," the captain laughed. He was not familiar with
what is called in small children at least, the negativistic reaction.
* * * * *
The old man, who still felt uncomfortable from what he might have seen
on the hill, reinforced this with a mutter: "Only man in a world, with
a hole for a belly and a spook for a shoulder."
To his own surprise almost as much as theirs, Paul set his feet firmly.
"I'm going to cash in my sixteenth of this space coffin for supplies we
got for the Mormon colony on Smith. I'll get rich here!"
The captain grew patient, then he grew angry. The rest gathered around,
fifteen shareholders to one. But Paul would not pull in his neck. In
a brawl on Mars while they were loading for the Outer Systems, the
fifteen had seen him nearly kill a Guardsman with his feet and fists.
Since Harry's death he was a terror. Also they would have only fifteen
ways to split if he stayed here. Like all spacebums, they knew THIS
time they would hit it rich.
Afterward, Paul stowed the seeds and hatching eggs in the dead freeze
boxes where the mice could not get at them, reclimbed the hill to
the peach tree, at least he thought it was peach, and made a little
hole for the bones. A libation to the dead colonists he poured on the
leaves, then swigged one for Harry, a third for himself, wondering what
the old man had started to tell him when he slipped him the bottle.
Probably that he would never get rich.
Blinking, he lazed on his back. When his face nuzzled the leaves, bean
rows sprang higher than a man, leghorns were scratching everywhere
and the spacemen came with bright sheaves of credits in their fists.
The bean rows spread beyond the horizon and the dust of plowing
tractors rose like smoke against the sky, while Paul and Harry, hardly
distinguishable, for Paul was only three minutes older, proudly led a
ragged old man and a slack-jawed captain through the flowering avenue
of peach trees.
"Now you must meet my wife," said Paul, and he squirmed uncomfortably
on the leaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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