Part 2

"In water," he offered, "cook them in water."

He was awakened by a burning hot potato trying to get in his mouth. He pulled it apart with his hands, forced himself to down it with a smile although it was like a rock in the center and he was woozy to begin with. Raising his head, he saw she had wrapped his foot in a sheet.

He grinned as he felt her hand on his cheek. "Next you'll be lecturing me on Pasteur."

She chirped happily.

Later when he heard her smiling, he twisted his head and realized she was trying to thread a needle; of course she had watched him sew. He did not offer to help since his hands were trembling like an old man's, and finally she gave it up and began boiling peas without shelling them.

"And I always suspected you were an idiot," he laughed. He suspected, no, he had to admit to himself, that he was nearer the idiot. Apparently you do not train a girl the same way you train an animal; that should be obvious, yet he had given her no more responsibility and less incentive than he would have given a dog. "From now on, strategy will be my middle name."

He stretched and grinned as though something wonderful had been accomplished.

But with morning, rocket deceleration thundered overhead.

He sent her running into the hills until he could see who the rocket contained. It was not the _Doric_, and he was relieved, for suddenly they seemed a villainous, lecherous bunch. He could never have sent her to Earth with them.

Slipping his automatic into his waistband, he hobbled, with his double shadows lurching before him, toward the lowering cloud of dust that obscured the rocket at the watering place.

When the people flowed out, he saw it was the Mormons and was not pleased, although it would be safe enough to turn the girl over to their women, he supposed. If they intended to stay, they could try the other side of the planet, he'd tell them that. This land was staked.

When they reached him, the one who was a doctor pounced on his ankle the way the nameless girl would pounce on a mouse.

When he enquired for the _Doric_, they shook their heads. Their farming supplies had never arrived, but it made no difference now. They were being forced out of the system, which was not the first time they had been pushed around, their bearded leader said.

"You are lucky we paused here to fill the water tanks for the long trip in. We are the last ship. Unless they have been lying to us about the New System, I doubt if ships will bother with these planets for generations. You see, they found heavy metals there and the Government has decreed all colonization must be in that system to support development of mining colonies. They would not have forced us from Smith in a military sense, but we are not yet prepared for isolation; we must trade for many things. Six light years is a long way to be cut off. How lucky you are. You would have been the last man in this solar system. I shiver at the thought."

"Oh?" said Paul calmly enough. "I have vegetables in the ground, your people are welcome to them."

They spread over the field, pulling carrots and potatoes and chewing them raw, for they had been a month now on concentrates.

"We will repay you," the leader assured.

Paul shrugged: "Just so you leave enough for seed."

The doctor chuckled at this. "Come on man. Put your arm about my shoulder, we will take you home."

Paul stood back with his thumb hooked in his belt.

"I wonder if you could pay me for the vegetables now, in books."

"Certainly, we have a first class library. Come aboard."

"You misunderstand, I want to read them here. Not trash; medical books, teachers' training, how-to-do-it manuals."

"You have been alone too long. You need not be afraid of our ways. We do not try to convert spacemen in any case." The doctor took a forward step but stopped, off balance, when Paul's hand slapped the automatic.

"My wife--," Paul had a perplexed, embarrassed look.

The old man was right about him never getting rich. "We have decided to stay here. This is our home."

He saw the doctor raise an eyebrow: no doubt he had run across spacemen who dreamed that convincingly of women many times before. It was difficult when they awoke. Paul had seen a guy in a cage once that had had that happen to him. Very disconcerting, unbearable in fact, when you woke up after a year or two of love and affection and couldn't find her again.

The leader and the doctor made a triangle of glances between each other and the gun, but Paul forestalled any ideas with a backward step, coupled with a deft extraction of what men do not like to look in the muzzle of.

The leader opened his hands. "Get him some books." He smiled rather gently at Paul. "Will you have children?"

"A lot of them, I hope." He wondered if he should take the man to see her tracks, but it was a windy day. They might not find any and the men might take him off guard. He had no intention of calling her down; he was afraid to, somehow.

The doctor set down a double armload of books. On top, with a crooked smile he laid a thick treatise: WELTY'S CARE OF THE EXPECTANT MOTHER-AND CHILD CARE--ONE VOLUME EDITION.

But he began telling Paul about Earth, the great railyachts and gay cities, the chic girls and cool drinks, plumbing, radiant heat, libraries, dancing, Feelies, Tellies, everyone lived well since the thirty-hour work week.

"Then what are you people pioneering around for?" retorted Paul.

When that last manmade sun was lost in the sky and the loud sound was the blowing of the leaves, Paul limped back up the hill, whistling. But she did not come. And he did not find her or her tracks.

The leaves fluttered with amazement, flew up in familiar patterns that frightfully burst. The hill surged red as the sun found the horizon. Down through the alien treetops, across the leaf-shrouded peaches, its bent rays javelinned the mouse on the trunk of the tree. Chittering, it vanished.

Paul cried out and ran. Down the hill toward the shed, the leaves were rattling together.

He didn't see her till she giggled.

For a long moment he stared, breathing, as she struggled guiltily into her dress. She was watching him so intently she could not seem to find her hand into the armhole. A leaf flitted between them.

Paul smiled; her elbow was sticking out of the armhole.

"Leave it off," he breathed. "That sack isn't necessary any more." He held out his hand. "We'll go look at our peach tree."