Farmer in the Sky (11 page)

I probably didn't miss anything; Barnard's satellite is only about a hundred and fifty miles in diameter. They say a man can come pretty close to jumping right off it. I asked George about it and he said, no, the escape speed was about five hundred feet per second and who had been filling me up with nonsense?

I looked it up later; he was right. Dad is an absolute mine of useless information. He says a fact should be loved for itself alone.

Callisto was behind us; we had passed her on the way in, but not very close. Europa was off to the right of our course nearly ninety degrees; we saw her in half moon. She was more than four hundred thousand miles away and was not as pretty a sight as the Moon is from Earth.

Ganymede was straight ahead, almost, and growing all the time—and here was a funny thing; Callisto was silvery, like the Moon, but not as bright; Io and Europa were bright orange, as bright as Jupiter itself. Ganymede was downright dull!

I asked George about it; he came through, as usual “Ganymede used to be about as bright as Io and Europa,” he told me. “It's the greenhouse effect—the heat trap. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to live on it.”

I knew about that, of course; the greenhouse effect is the most important part of the atmosphere project When the 1985 expedition landed Ganymede had a surface temperature a couple of hundred degrees below zero—that's cold enough to freeze the milk of human kindness! “But look, George,” I objected, “sure, I know about the heat trap, but why is it so dark? It looks like the inside of a sack.”

“Light
is
heat; heat is light,” he answered. “What's the difference? It's not dark on the ground; it goes in and doesn't come out—and a good thing, too.”

I shut up. It was something new to me and I didn't understand it, so I decided to wait and not pound my teeth about it.

Captain Harkness slowed her down again as we came up to Ganymede and we got in one good meal while she was under drive. I never did get so I could eat at free fall, even with injections. He leveled her off in a tight circular orbit about a thousand miles up from Ganymede. We had arrived—just as soon as we could get somebody to come and get us.

It was on the trip down to Ganymede's surface that I began to suspect that being a colonist wasn't as glamorous and romantic as it had seemed back on Earth. Instead of three ships to carry us all at once, there was just one ship, the
Jitterbug,
and she would have fitted into one of the
Bifrost's
compartments. She could carry only ninety of us at a time and that meant a lot of trips.

I was lucky; I had to wait only three days in free fall. But I lost ten pounds.

While I waited, I worked, helping to stow the freight that the
Jitterbug
brought up each trip. At last it came our turn and we piled into the
Jitterbug.
She was terrible; she had shelves rather than decks—they weren't four feet apart. The air was stale and she hadn't been half way cleaned up since the last trip. There weren't individual acceleration couches; there were just pads covering the deck space and
we
covered the pads, shoulder to shoulder—and foot in your eye, for that matter.

The skipper was a loud-mouthed old female they called “Captain Hattie” and she kept bawling us out and telling us to hurry. She didn't even wait to make sure that we were all strapped down.

Fortunately it didn't take very long. She drove away so hard that for the first time except in tests I blacked out, then we dropped for about twenty minutes; she gunned her again, and we landed with a terrible bump. And Captain Hattie was shouting, “Out you come, you ground hogsl This is it.”

The
Jitterbug
carried oxygen, rather than the helium-oxygen mix of the
Mayflower.
We had come down at ten pounds pressure; now Captain Hattie spilled the pressure and let it adjust to Ganymede normal, three pounds. Sure, three pounds of oxygen is enough to live on; that's all Earth has—the other twelve pounds are nitrogen. But a sudden drop in pressure like that is enough to make you gasp anyhow. You aren't suffocating but you feel as if you were.

We were miserable by the time we got out and Peggy had a nose bleed. There weren't any elevators; we had to climb down a rope ladder. And it was cold!

It was snowing; the wind was howling around us and shaking the ladder—the smallest kids they had to lower with a line. There was about eight inches of snow on the ground except where the splash of the
Jitterbugs
jet had melted it. I could hardly see, the wind was whipping the snow into my face so, but a man grabbed me by the shoulder, swung me around, and shouted, “Keep moving! Keep moving! Over that way.”

I headed the way he pointed. There was another man at the edge of the blast clearing, singing the same song, and there was a path through the snow, trampled to slush. I could see some other people disappearing in the snow ahead and I took out after them, dogtrotting to keep warm.

It must have been half a mile to the shelter and cold all the way. We weren't dressed for it. I was chilled through and my feet were soaking wet by the time we got inside.

The shelter was a big hangarlike building and it was not much warmer, the door was open so much, but it was out of the weather and it felt good to be inside. It was jammed with people, some of them in ship suits and some of them Ganymedeans—you couldn't miss the colonial men; they were bearded and some of them wore their hair long as well. I decided that was one style I was not going to copy; I'd be smooth shaven, like George.

I went scouting around, trying to find George & Co. I finally did. He had found a bale of something for Molly to sit on and she was holding Peggy on her lap. Peg's nose had stopped bleeding. I was glad to see, but there were dried tears and blood and dirt on her face. She was a sight.

George was looking gloomy, the way he did the first few days without his pipe. I came up and said, “Hi, folks!”

George looked around and smiled and said, “Well, Bill, fancy meeting you here! How is it going?”

“Now that you ask me,” I answered, “it looks like a shambles.”

He looked gloomy again and said, “Oh, I suppose they will get things straightened out presently.”

We didn't get a chance to discuss it. A colonist with snow on his boots and hair on his face stopped near us, put his little fingers to his lips, and whistled. “Pipe down!” he shouted. “I want twelve able-bodied men and boys for the baggage party.” He looked around and started pointing. “You—and you—and you—”

George was the ninth “You”; I was the tenth.

Molly started to protest. I think George might have balked if she had not. Instead he said, “No, Molly, I guess it has to be done. Come on, Bill.”

So we went back out into the cold.

There was a tractor truck outside and we were loaded in it standing up, then we lumbered back to the rocket site. Dad saw to it that I was sent up into the
Jitterbug
to get me out of the weather and I was treated to another dose of Captain Hattie's tongue; we couldn't work fast enough to suit her. But we got our baggage lowered finally; it was in the truck by the time I was down out of the ship. The trip back was cold, too.

Molly and Peggy were not where we had left them. The big room was almost empty and we were told to go on into another building through a connecting door. George was upset, I could see, from finding Molly gone.

In the next building there were big signs with arrows: MEN & BOYS-TO THE RIGHT and WOMEN & GIRLS-TO THE LEFT. George promptly turned to the left. He got about ten yards and was stopped by a stem-faced woman dressed like a colonial, in a coverall. “Back the
other way,” she said firmly. “This is the way to the ladies' dormitory.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Dad, “but I want to find my wife.”

“You can look for her at supper.”

“I want to see her
now.”

“I
haven't any facilities for seeking out any one person at this time. You'll have to wait.”

“But—” There were several women crowding past us and going on inside. Dad spotted one from our deck in the
Mayflower.
“Mrs. Archibald!”

She turned around. “Oh—Mr. Lermer. How do you do?”

“Mrs. Archibald,” Dad said intently, “could you find Molly and let her know that I'm waiting here?”

“Why, I'd be glad to try, Mr. Lermer.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Archibald, a thousand thanks!”

“Not at all.” She went away and we waited, ignoring the stern-faced guard. Presently Molly showed up without Peggy. You would have thought Dad hadn't seen her for a month.

“I didn't know what to do, dear,” she said. “They said we had to come and it seemed better to get Peggy settled down. I knew you would find us.”

“Where is Peggy now?”

“I put her to bed.”

We went back to the main hall. There was a desk there with a man behind it; over his head was a sign: IMMIGRATION SERVICE-INFORMATION. There was quite a line up at it; we took our place in the queue.

“How is Peggy?” Dad asked.

“I'm afraid she is catching a cold.”

“I hope-” Dad said. “Ah, I HOPE
-Atchoo!”

“And so are you,” Molly said accusingly.

“I don't catch cold,” Dad said, wiping his eyes. “That was just a reflex.”

“Hmm—” said Molly.

The line up took us past a low balcony. Two boys, my age or older, were leaning on the rail and looking us over. They were colonials and one was trying to grow a beard, but it was pretty crummy.

One turned to the other and said, “Rafe, will you look at what they are sending us these days?”

The other said, “It's sad.”

The first one pointed a thumb at me and went on, “Take that one, now—the artistic type, no doubt.”

The second one stared at me thoughtfully. “Is it alive?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” the first one answered.

I turned my back on them, whereupon they both laughed. I hate self-panickers.

Mr. Saunders was ahead of us in line. He was crabbing about the weather. He said it was an outrage to expose people the way we had been. He had been with us on the working party, but he had not worked much.

The man at the desk shrugged. “The Colonial Commission set your arrival date; we had nothing to say about it. You can't expect us to postpone winter to suit your convenience.”

“Somebody's going to hear about this!”

“By all means.” The man at the desk handed him a form, “Next, please!” He looked at Dad and said, “What may I do for you, citizen?”

Dad explained quietly that he wanted to have his family with him. The man shook his head. “Sorry. Next case, please.”

Dad didn't give up his place. “You can't separate a man and wife. We aren't slaves, nor criminals, nor animals. The Immigration Service surely has some responsibilities toward us.”

The man looked bored. “This is the largest shipload we've ever had to handle. We've made the best arrangements we could. This is a frontier town, not the Astor.”

“All I'm asking for is a minimum family space, as described in the Commission's literature about Ganymede.”

“Citizen, those descriptions are written back on Earth. Be patient and you will be taken care of.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow. A few days—or a few weeks.”

Dad exploded. “Weeks, indeed! Confound it, I'll build an igloo out on the field before I'll put up with this.”

“That's your privilege.” The man handed Dad a sheet of paper. “If you wish to lodge a complaint, write it out on this.”

Dad took it and I glanced at it. It was a printed form—and it was addressed to the Colonial Commission
back on Earth!
The man went on, “Turn it in to me any time this phase and it will be ultramicro-filmed in time to go back with the mail in the
Mayflower.”

Dad looked at it, snorted, crumpled it up, and stomped away. Molly followed him and said, “George! Georgel Don't be upset. We'll live through it.”

Dad grinned sheepishly. “Sure we will, honey. It's the beauty of the system that gets me. Refer all complaints to the head office—half a billion miles away!”

The next day George's reflexes were making his nose run. Peggy was worse and Molly was worried about her and Dad was desperate. He went off somewhere to raise a stink about the way things were being handled.

Frankly, I didn't have it too bad. Sleeping in a dormitory is no hardship to me; I could sleep through the crack of doom. And the food was everything they had promised.

Listen to this: For breakfast we had corn cakes with syrup and real butter, little sausages,
real
ham, strawberries with cream so thick I didn't know what it was, tea, all the milk you could drink, tomato juice, honey-dew melon, eggs—as many eggs as you wanted.

There was an open sugar bowl, too, but the salt shaker had a little sign on it; DON'T WASTE THE SALT.

There wasn't any coffee, which I wouldn't have noticed if George had not asked for it. There were other things missing, too, although I certainly didn't notice it at the time. No tree fruits, for example—no apples, no pears, no oranges. But who cares when you can get strawberries and watermelon and pineapples and such? There were no tree nuts, too, but there were peanuts to burn.

Anything made out of wheat flour was a luxury, but you don't miss it at first.

Lunch was choice of corn chowder or jellied consomme, cheese souffle, fried chicken, corned beef and cabbage, hominy grits with syrup, egg plant
au gratin,
little pearl onions scalloped with cucumbers, baked stuffed tomatoes, sweet potato surprise, German-fried Irish potatoes, tossed endive, coleslaw with sour cream, pineapple and cottage cheese with lettuce. Then there was peppermint ice cream, angel berry pie, frozen egg nog, raspberry ice, and three kinds of pudding—but I didn't do too well on the desserts. I had tried to try everything, taking a little of this and a dab of that, and by the time desserts came along I was short on space. I guess I ate too much.

The cooking wasn't fancy, about like Scout camp, but the food was so good you couldn't ruin it. The service reminded me of camp, too—queueing up for servings, no table cloths, no napkins. And the dishes had to be washed; you couldn't throw them away or burn them—they were imported from Earth and worth their weight in uranium.