Farmer in the Sky (13 page)

No lumber. No sheet metal. No insulation. No wires, No glass. No pipe. The settlers in North America built log cabins—no logs.

The big hydroponics sheds, the Receiving Station and a few other public buildings had been built with materials lifted a half a billion miles from Earth. The rest of Leda and every homesteader's farm house had been built the hard way, from country rock. They had done their best for us, with what they had.

Only we didn't appreciate it.

Of course we should not have complained. After all, as George pointed out, the first California settlers starved, nobody knows what happened to the Roanoke Colony, and the first two expeditions to Venus died to the last man.
We
were safe.

Anyhow, even if we had to put up with barracks for a while, there was all that free land, waiting for us.

On close inspection, it looked as if it would have to wait quite a while. That was why George had given in and taken a staff engineering job. The closest land to town open to homesteading was nine miles away. To find enough land for six thousand people meant that most of them would have to go about eighteen to twenty miles away.

“What's twenty miles? A few minutes by tube, an up-and-down hop for a copter—brother, have you ever
walked
twenty miles? And then walked back again?

It wasn't impossible to settle six thousand people that far from town; it was just difficult—and slow. The pioneer explorer used to set out with his gun and an axe; the settler followed by hitching his oxen to a wagonload of furniture and farm tools. Twenty miles meant nothing to them.

They weren't on Ganymede.

The colony had two tractor trucks; another had come in the
Mayflower.
That's all the transportation there was on the whole planet—not just to settle six thousand people but for the daily needs of thirty thousand people who were there ahead of us.

They explained it all to us at a big meeting of heads of families. I wasn't supposed to be there but it was held outdoors and there was nothing to stop me. The chief ecologist and the chief engineer of the planet were there and the chairman of the colony council presided. Here was the proposition:

What Ganymede really needed was not more farmers, but manufacturing. They needed prospectors and mines and mills and machine shops. They needed all the things you can make out of metal and which they simply could not afford to import from Earth. That's what they wanted us to work on and they would feed any of us who accepted, not just for a year, but indefinitely.

As for any who insisted on homesteading—well, the land was there; help ourselves. There wasn't enough processing machinery to go around, so it might be two or three years before any particular immigrant got a chance to process his first acre of ground.

Somebody stood up near the front of the crowd and yelled, “We've been swindled!”

It took Mr. Tolley, the chairman, quite a while to calm them down. When they let him talk again, he said, “Maybe you have been swindled, maybe you haven't. That's a matter of opinion. I'm quite willing to concede that conditions here are not the way they were represented to you when you left Earth. In fact—”

Somebody yelled. “That's mighty nice of you!” only the tone was sarcastic.

Mr. Tolley looked vexed. “You folks can either keep order, or I'll adjourn this meeting.”

They shut up again and he went on. Most of the present homesteaders had processed more land than they could cultivate. They could use hired hands to raise more crops. There was a job waiting for every man, a job that would keep him busy and teach him Ganymede farming—and feed his wife and family-while he was waiting his turn to homestead.

You could feel a chill rolling over the crowd when the meaning of Mr. Tolley's words sunk in. They felt the way Jacob did when he had labored seven years and then was told he would have to labor another seven years to get the girl he really wanted. I felt it myself, even though George had already decided on the staff job.

A man spoke up. “Mr. Chairman!”

“Yes? Your name, please.”

“Name of Saunders. I don't know how the rest of them feel, but I'm a farmer. Always have been. But I said 'farmer,' not sharecropper. I didn't come here to hire out to no boss. You can take your job and do what you see fit with it. I stand on my rights!”

There was scattered applause and the crowd began to perk up. Mr. Tolley looked at him and said, “That's your privilege, Mr. Saunders.”

“Huh? Well, I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Chairman. Now let's cut out the nonsense. I want to know two things: what piece of land am I going to get and when do I lay hands on some machinery to start putting it into condition?”

Mr. Tolley said, “You can consult the land office about your first question. As to the second, you heard the chief engineer say that he estimates the average wait for processing machinery will be around twenty-one months.”

“That's too long.”

“So it is, Mr. Saunders.”

“Well, what do you propose to do about it?” Mr. Tolley shrugged and spread his hands. “I'm not a magician. We've asked the Colonial Commission by urgent message going back on the
Mayflower
not to send us any more colonists on the next trip, but to send us machinery. If they agree, there may be some relief from the situation by next winter. But you have seen—all of you have already seen—that the Colonial Commission makes decisions without consulting us. The first trip of the
Mayflower
should have been all cargo; you folks should have waited.”

Saunders thought about it. “Next winter, eh? That's five months away. I guess I can wait—I'm a reasonable man. But no sharecropping; that's outl”

“I didn't say you could start homesteading in five months, Mr. Saunders. It may be twenty-one months or longer.”

“No, indeedy!”

“Suit yourself. But you are confronted with a fact, not a theory. If you do have to wait and you won't work for another farmer, how do you propose to feed yourself and your family in the mean time?”

Mr. Saunders looked around and grinned, “Why, in that case, Mr. Chairman, I guess the government will just have to feed us until the government can come through on its end of the deal. I know my rights.”

Mr. Tolley looked at him as if he had just bitten into an apple and found Saunders inside. “We won't let your children starve,” he said slowly, “but as for you, you can go chew rocks. If you won't work, you won't eat.”

Saunders tried to bluster. “You can't get away with it! I'll sue the government and I'll sue you as the responsible government official You can't—”

“Shut up!”
Mr. Tolley went on more quietly, speaking to all of us. “We might as well get this point straight. You people have been enticed into coming out here by rosy promises and you are understandably disappointed. But your contract is with the Colonial Commission
back on
Earth.
But you have no contract with the common council of Ganymede, of which I am chairman, and the citizens of Ganymede owe you nothing. We are trying to take care of you out of common decency.

“If you don't like what we offer you, don't start throwing your weight around with me; I won't stand for it. Take it up with the representative of the Immigration Service. That's what he is here for. Meeting's adjourned!”

But the immigration representative wasn't there; he had stayed away from the meeting.

We had been swindled all right. It was equally clear that there was no help for it. Some of the immigrants did see the Colonial Commission representative, but they got no comfort out of him. He had resigned, he said, fed up with trying to carry out impossible instructions five hundred million miles from the home office. He was going home as soon as his relief arrived.

That set them off again; if he could go home so could they. The
Mayflower
was still in orbit over us, taking on cargo. A lot of people demanded to go back in her.

Captain Harkness said no, he had no authority to let them deadhead half way across the system. So they landed back on the Commission representative, squawking louder than ever.

Mr. Tolley and the council finally settled it. Ganymede wanted no soreheads, no weak sisters. If the Commission refused to ship back those who claimed they were gypped and didn't want to stay, then the next shipload wouldn't even be allowed to land. The representative gave in and wrote Captain Harkness out a warrant for their passage.

We held a family powwow over the matter, in Peggy's room in the hospital—it had to be there because the doctors were keeping her in a room pressurized to Earth normal

Did we stay, or did we go back? Dad was stuck in a rut. Back Earthside he at least had been working for himself; here he was just an employee. If he quit bis job and elected to homestead, it meant working two or three G-years as a field hand before we could expect to start homesteading.

But the real rub was Peggy. In spite of having passed her physical examination Earthside she hadn't adjusted to Ganymede's low pressure. “We might as well face it,” George said to Molly. “We've got to get Peg back to the conditions she's used to.”

Molly looked at him; his face was as long as my arm. “George, you don't want to go back, do you?”

“That's not the point, Molly. The welfare of the kids comes first.” He turned to me and added, “You're not bound by this, Bill. You are big enough to make up your own mind. If you want to stay, I am sure it can be arranged.”

I didn't answer right away. I had come into the family get-together pretty disgusted myself, not only because of the run-around we had gotten, but also because of a run-in I had had with a couple of the Colonial kids. But you know what it was that swung me around? That pressurized room. I had gotten used to low pressure and I liked it. Peggy's room, pressurized to Earth normal, felt like swimming in warm soup. I could hardly breath. “I don't think I want to go back,” I said.

Peggy had been sitting up in bed, following the talk with big eyes, like a little lemur. Now she said, “I don't want to go back, eitherl”

Molly patted her hand and did not answer her, “George,” she said, “I've given this a lot of thought You don't want to go back, I know. Neither does Bill But we don't all have to go back. We can—”

“That's out, Molly,” Dad answered firmly. “I didn't marry you to split up. If you have to go back, I go back.”

“I didn't mean that. Peggy can go back with the O'Farrells and my sister will meet her and take care of her at the other end. She wanted me to leave Peggy with her when she found I was determined to go. It will work out all right.” She didn't look at Peggy as she said it.

“But, Molly!” Dad said.

“No George,” she answered, “I've thought this all out. My first duty is to you. It's not as if Peggy wouldn't be well taken care of; Phoebe will be a mother to her and—”

By now Peggy had caught her breath. “I don't
want
to go live with Aunt Phoebe!” she yelled and started to bawl.

George said, “It won't work, Molly.”

Molly said, “George, not five minutes ago you were talking about leaving Bill behind, on his own.”

“But Bill is practically a man!”

“He's not too old to be lonesome. And I'm not talking about leaving Peggy alone; Phoebe will give her loving care. No, George, if the womenfolk ran home at the first sign of trouble there never would be any pioneers. Peggy has to go back, but I stay.”

Peggy stopped her blubbering long enough to say, “I
won't
go back! I'm a pioneer, too—ain't I, Bill?”

I said, “Sure kid, sure!” and went over and patted her hand. She grabbed onto mine.

I don't know what made me say what I did then. Goodness knows the brat had never been anything but a headache, with her endless questions and her insistence that she be allowed to do anything I did. But I heard myself saying, “Don't worry, Peggy. If you go. back, I'll go with you.”

Dad looked at me sharply, then turned to Peggy. “Bill spoke hastily, Baby. You mustn't hold him to that.”

Peggy said, “You did so mean it, didn't you, Bill?”

I was regretting it already. But I said, “Sure, Peggy.”

Peggy turned back to Dad. “See? But it doesn't matter; we're not going back, not any of us. Please Daddy —I'll get well, I promise you I will. I'm getting better every day.”

Sure, she was—in a pressurized room. I sat there, sweating, and wishing I had kept my big mouth shut. Molly said, “It defeats me, George. What do you think?”

“Mmmm—”

“Well?”

“Uh, I was thinking we could pressurize one room in our quarters. I could rig some sort of an impeller in the machine shop.”

Peggy was suddenly all over her tears. “You mean I can get out of the hospital?”

“That's the idea, Sugar, if Daddy can work it.”

Molly looked dubious. “That's no answer to our problems, George.”

“Maybe not.” Dad stood up and squared his shoulders. “But I have decided one thing; we all go, or we'll all stay. The Lermers stand together. That's settled.”

Homesteading wasn't the only thing we had been mistaken about. There was Scouting on Ganymede even if the news hadn't gotten back to Earth. There hadn't been any meetings of the
Mayflower
troops after we landed; everybody had been just too busy to think about it. Organized Scouting is fun, but sometimes there just isn't time for it.

There hadn't been any meetings of the Leda Troop, either. They used to meet in their town hall; now we had their town hall as a mess hall, leaving them out in the cold. I guess that didn't tend to make them fee! chummy towards us.

I ran into this boy over in the Exchange. Just as he was passing me I noticed a little embroidered patch on his chest. It was a homemade job and not very good, but I spotted it. “Hey!” I said.

He stopped. “ 'Hey' yourself! Were you yelling at me?”

“Uh, yes. You're a Scout, aren't you?”

“Certainly.”

“So am I. My name's Bill Lermer. Shake.” I slipped him the Scout grip.

He returned it. “Mine's Sergei Roskov.” He looked me over. “You're one of the Johnny-Come-Latelies, aren't you?”