He backed away and said, "Hey! You stop that! Watch what you are doing with that rake!"
I said, "Git!"
He got.
The house was a problem. Ganymede has little quakes all the time. It has to do with "isostasy" which doesn't mean a thing but "equal-pressure" when you get right down to it, but it's the science of how the mountains balance the seas and the gravitation of a planet all comes out even.
It has to do with tidal strains, too, which is odd, since Ganymede doesn't have any tides; the Sun is too far away to matter and Ganymede always keeps the same face toward Jupiter. Oh, you can detect a little tide on Laguna Serenidad when Europa is closest to Ganymede and even a trifle from Callisto and lo, but what I mean is it doesn't have tides—notlike the Pacific Ocean.
What it does have is a frozen tidal strain. The way Mr. Hooker, the chief meteorologist, explains it is that Ganymede was closer to Jupiter when it cooled off and lost its rotation, so that there is a tidal bulge in the planet itself—sort of a fossil tidal bulge. The Moon has one, you know.
Then we came along and melted off the ice cap and gave Ganymede an atmosphere. That rearranged the pressures everywhere and the isostatic balance is readjusting. Result: little quakes all the time.
I'm a California boy; I wanted a quakeproof house. Schultzes had aquakeproof house and it seemed like a good idea, even though there had never been a quake heavy enough to knock a man down, much less knock a house down. On the other hand most of the colonists didn't bother; it is hard to make a rock house really quakeproof.
Worse than that, it's expensive. The basic list of equipment that a 'steader is promised in his emigration contract reads all right, a hoe, a spade, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a hand cultivator, a bucket, and so forth down the list—but when you start to farming you find that is only the beginning and you've got to go to the Exchange and buy a lot of other stuff. I was already in debt a proved acre and a half, nearly, before the house ever went up.
As usual we compromised. One room had to be quake proof because it had to be air tight—Peggy's room. She was getting better all the time, but she still couldn't take low pressure for any length of time. If the family was going to move out to the farm, her bedroom had to be sealed, it had to have an air lock on it, and we had to have an impeller. All that runs into money.
Before I was through I had to pledge two more acres. Dad tried to sign for it but they told him bluntly that while a 'steader's credit was good, his wasn't. That settled the matter. We planned on one reinforced room and hoped to build on to it later. In the mean time the house would be a living room, ten by twelve, where I would sleep, a separate bedroom too small to swing a cat for George and Molly, and Peggy's room. All but Peggy's room would be dry wall rock with a patent roof.
Pretty small, eh? Well, what's wrong with that? Abe Lincoln started with less.
I started in cutting the stone as soon as the seed was in. A vibro-saw is like a vibro-drill, except that it cuts a hair line instead of drilling a hole. When the power is on you have to be durned careful not to get your fingers or anything into the field, but it makes easy work of stone cutting. By the contract you got the use of one for forty-eight hours free and another forty-eight hours, if you wanted it, at a reduced rate. I got my work lined up and managed to squeeze it into the two free days. I didn't want to run up any more debt, because there was another thing I was hankering for, come not later than the second spring away—flicker flood lights. Papa Schultz had them for his fields and they just about doubled his crops. Earth plants aren't used to three and half days of darkness, but, if you can tickle them during the dark phase with flicker lights, the old photosynthesis really gets in and humps itself.
But that would have to wait.
The patrol got the house up—the patrol I was in, I mean, the Auslanders. It was a surprise to me and yet it wasn't, because everybody has a house raising; you can't do it alone. I had already taken part in six myself—not just big-heartedness, don't get me wrong. I had to learn how it was done.
But the patrol showed up before I had even passed the word around that I was ready to hold a house raising. They came swinging down our road; Sergei marched them up to where the house was to be, halted them, and said to me, "Bill, are your Scout dues paid up?" He sounded fierce. I said, "You know they are."
"Then you can help. But don't get in our way." Suddenly he grinned and I knew I had been framed. He turned to the patrol and shouted, "House raising drill! Fall out and fall to."
Suddenly it looked like one of those TV comedies where everything has been speeded up. I never saw anybody work the way they did. Let me tell you it doesn't take Scout uniforms to make Scouts. None of us ever had uniforms; we couldn't afford special clothes just for Scouting.
Besides the Auslanders there was Vic Schultz and Hank Jones, both from the Hard Rock patrol and Doug Okajima, who wasn't even of our troop but still with the Baden-Powell. It did my heart good. I hadn't seen much of the fellows lately; during light phase I always worked too late to get in to meetings; during dark phase a cold nine miles into town after supper is something to think twice about.
I felt sheepish to realize that while I might have forgotten them, they hadn't forgotten me, and I resolved to get to meetings, no matter how tired I was. And take the tests for those two merit badges, too—the very first chance I got.
That reminded me of another item of unfinished business, too—Noisy Edwards. But you can't take a day off just to hunt somebody up and poke him in the snoot, not when you are making a farm. Besides it wouldn't hurt anything for me to put on another ten pounds; I didn't want it to be a repetition of the last time.
Dad snowed up almost immediately with two men from his office and he took charge of bracing and sealing Peggy's room. The fact that he showed up at all let me know that he was in on it—which he admitted. It had been Sergei's idea and that was why Dad had put me off when I said it was about time to invite the neighbors in.
I got Dad aside. "Look, George," I said, "how in nation are we going to feed 'em?"
"Don't worry about it," he said.
"But I do worry about it!" Everybody knows it's the obligation of the 'steader whose house is being raised to provide the victuals and I had been taken by surprise.
"I said not to," he repeated. And presently I knew why; Molly showed up with Mama Schultz, Gretchen, Sergei's sister Marushka, and two girls who were friends of Peggy—and what they were carrying they couldn't have carried on Earth. It was a number one picnic and Sergei had trouble getting them back to work after lunch.
Theoretically, Molly had done the cooking over at the Schultz's but I know Mama Schultz—anyhow, let's face it, Molly wasn't much of a cook.
Molly had a note for me from Peggy. It read: "Dearest Billy, Please come into town tonight and tell me all about it. Pretty please!" I told Molly I would.
By eighteen o'clock that afternoon the roof was on and we had a house. The door wasn't hung; it was still down at the 'Change. And the power unit wasn't in and might not be for a week. But we had a house that would keep off the rain, and a pint-sized cow barn as well, even if I didn't own a cow.
15. Why Did We Come?
According to my diary we moved into the house on the first day of spring.
Gretchen came over and helped me get ready for them. I suggested that we ask Marushka as well, since there would be lots of work to do. Gretchen said, "Suit yourself!" and seemed annoyed, so I didn't. Women are funny. Anyhow Gretchen is a right good worker.
I had been sleeping in the house ever since the raising and even before the technicians from the engineer's office had come and installed the antenna on the roof and rigged the lights and heat—but that was done before winter was started and I passed a comfortable month, fixing up the inside of the place and getting in a crop of ice for the summer. I stored the ice, several tons of it, in the gully at the side of the house, where I meant to plant apple trees just as soon as I could get fixed for it. The ice would keep there until I could build a proper cold cellar.