“I’m not like Big Ears here.” Gleed jerked an indicative thumb at Harrison. “I’m a trooper and not a technician. So my choice is limited by lack of qualifications.” He rubbed his chin, looked wistful. “I was born and brought up on a farm. I still know a good deal about farming. So I’d like to get a small one of my own and settle down.”
“Think you’ll manage it?” asked Seth, watching him.
“On Falder or Hygeia or Norton’s Pink Heaven or some other undeveloped planet. But not on Terra. My savings won’t extend to that. I don’t get half enough to meet Earth costs.”
“Meaning you can’t pile up enough obs?”
“I can’t,” agreed Gleed, lugubriously. “Not even if I saved until Fd got a white beard four feet long.”
“So there’s Terra’s reward for a long spell of faithful service—forego your heart’s desire or get out?”
“Shut up!”
“I won’t,” said Seth. He leaned nearer. “Why do you think two hundred thousand Gands came to this world, Doukhobors to Hygeia, Quakers to Centauri B., and all the others to their selected haunts? Because Terra’s reward for good citizenship was the peremptory order to knuckle down or get out. So we got out.”
“It was just as well, anyway,” Elissa interjected. “According to our history books, Terra was badly overcrowded. We went away and relieved the pressure.”
“That’s beside the point,” reproved Seth. He continued with Gleed. “You want a farm. It can’t be on Terra much as you’d like it there. Terra says, ‘No! Get out!’ So it’s got to be someplace else.” He waited for that to sink in, then, “Here, you can have one for the mere taking.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that!”
“You can’t kid me,” said Gleed, wearing the expression of one eager to be kidded. “Where are the hidden strings?”
“On this planet, any plot of ground belongs to the person in possession, the one who is making use of it Nobody disputes his claim so long as he continues to use it. All you need do is look around for a suitable piece of unused territory—of which there is plenty—and start using it. From that moment it’s yours. Immediately you cease using it and walk out, it’s anyone else’s, for the taking.”
“Zipping meteors!” Gleed was incredulous.
“Moreover, if you look around long enough and strike really lucky,” Seth continued, “you might stake first claim to a farm someone else has abandoned because of death, illness, a desire to move elsewhere, a chance at something else he liked better, or any other excellent reason. In that case, you would walk into ground already part-prepared, with farmhouse, milking shed, bams and the rest. And it would be yours, all yours.”
“What would I owe the previous occupant?” asked Gleed.
“Nothing. Not an ob. Why should you? If he isn’t buried, he has got out for the sake of something else equally free. He can’t have the benefit both ways, coming and going.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Somewhere there’s a snag. Somewhere I’ve got to pour out hard cash or pile up obs.”
“Of course you do. You start a farm. A handful of local folks help you build a house. They dump heavy obs on you. The carpenter wants farm produce for his family for the next couple of years. You give it, thus killing that ob. You continue giving it for a couple of extra years, thus planting an ob on him. First time you want fences mending, or some other suitable task doing, along he comes to kill that ob. And so with all the rest, including the people who supply your raw materials, your seeds and machinery, or do your trucking for you.”
“They won’t all want milk and potatoes,” Gleed pointed out.
“Don’t know what you mean by potatoes. Never heard of them.”
“How can I square up with someone who may be getting all the farm produce he wants from elsewhere?”
“Easy,” said Seth. “A tinsmith supplies you with several chums. He doesn’t want food. He’s getting all he needs from another source. His wife and three daughters are overweight and dieting. The mere thought of a load from your farm gives them the horrors.”
“Well?”
“But this tinsmith’s tailor, or his cobbler, have got obs on him which he hasn’t had the chance to kill. So he transfers them to you. As soon as you’re able, you give the tailor or cobbler what they need to satisfy the obs, thus doing the tinsmith’s killing along with your own.” He gave his usual half-smile, added, “And everyone is happy.”
Gleed stewed it over, frowning while he did it. “You’re tempting me. You shouldn’t ought to. It’s a criminal offense to try to divert a spaceman from his allegiance. It’s sedition. Terra is tough with sedition.”
“Tough my eye!” said Seth, sniffing contemptuously. “We’ve Gand laws here.”
“All you have to do,” suggested Elissa, sweetly persuasive, “is say to yourself that you’ve got to go back to the ship, that it’s your duty to go back, that neither the ship nor Terra can get along without you.” She tucked a curl away. “Then be a free individual and say, ‘I won’t!’ ”
“They’d skin me alive. Bidworthy would preside over the operation in person.”
“I don’t think so,” Seth offered. “This Bidworthy—whom I presume to be anything but a jovial character—stands with you and the rest of your crew at the same junction. The road before him splits two ways. He’s got to take one or the other and there’s no third alternative. Sooner or later hell be hell-bent for home, eating his top lip as he goes, or else he’ll be running around in a truck delivering your milk—because, deep inside himself, that’s what he’s always wanted to do.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” mourned Gleed. “He uses a lump of old iron for a soul.”
“Funny,” remarked Harrison, “I always thought of you that way—until today.”
“I’m off duty,” said Gleed, as though that explained everything. “I can relax and let the ego zoom around outside of business hours.” He stood up, firmed his jaw. “But I’m going back on duty. Right now!”
“You’re not due before sundown tomorrow,” Harrison protested.
“Maybe I’m not. But I’m going back all the same.”
Elissa opened her mouth, closed it as Seth nudged her. They sat in silence and watched Gleed march determinedly out.
“It’s a good sign,” commented Seth, strangely self-assured. “He’s been handed a wallop right where he’s weakest.” He chuckled low down, turned to Harrison. “What’s your ultimate ambition?”
“Thanks for the meal. It was a good one and I needed it.” Harrison stood up, manifestly embarrassed. He gestured toward the door. “I’m going to catch him up. If he’s returning to the ship, I think I’ll do likewise.”
Again Seth nudged Elissa. They said nothing as Harrison made his way out, carefully closing the door behind him.
“Sheep,” decided Elissa, disappointed for no obvious reason. “One follows another. Just like sheep.”
“Not so,” Seth contradicted. “They’re humans animated by the same thoughts, the same emotions, as were our forefathers who had nothing sheeplike about them.” Twisting round in his chair, he beckoned to Matt. “Bring us two shemaks.” Then to Elissa. “My guess is that it won’t pay that ship to hang around too long.”
The battleship’s caller-system bawled imperatively, “Fanshaw, Folsom, Fuller, Garson, Gleed, Gregory, Haines, Harrison, Hope—” and down through the alphabet.
A trickle of men flowed along the passages, catwalks and alleyways toward the fore chartroom. They gathered outside it in small clusters, chattering in undertones and sending odd scraps of conversation echoing down the corridor.
“Wouldn’t say anything to us but, ‘Myob!’ Got sick and tired of it after a while.”
“You ought to have split up, like we did. That show place on the outskirts didn’t know what a Terran looks like. I just walked in and took a seat.”
“Hear about Meakin? He mended a leaky roof, chose a bottle of double dith in payment and mopped the lot. He was dead flat when we found him. Had to be carried back.”
“Some guys have all the luck. We got the brush-off wherever we showed our faces. It gets you down.”
“You should have separated, like I said.”
“Half the mess must be still lying in the gutter. They haven’t turned up yet.”
“Grayder will be hopping mad. He’d have stopped this morning’s second quota if he’d known in time.”
Every now and again First Mate Morgan stuck his head out of the chartroom door and uttered a name already voiced on the caller. Frequently there was no response.
