You take a harmless, useful insect, plant, or animal to Ganymede and neglect to bring along its natural enemies and after a couple of seasons you'll wish you had imported bubonic plague instead.
But that was the chief ecologist's worry; a farmer's job was engineering agronomy—making the soil and then growing things in it.
That meant taking whatever you came to—granite boulders melted out of the ice, frozen lava flows, pumice, sand, ancient hardrock—and busting it up into little pieces, grinding the top layers to sand, pulverizing the top few inches to flour, and finally infecting the topmost part with a bit of Mother Earth herself–then nursing what you had to keep it alive and make it spread. It wasn't easy.
But it was interesting. I forgot all about my original notion of boning up on the subject just to pass a merit badge test. I asked around and found out where I could see the various stages going on and went out and had a look for myself. I spent most of one light phase just looking.
When I got back to town I found that George had been looking for me. "Where in blazes have you been?" he wanted to know.
"Oh, just out and around," I told him, "seeing how the 'steaders do things."
He wanted to know where I had slept and how I had managed to eat? "Bill, it's all very well to study for your merit badges but that's no reason to turn into a tramp," he objected. "I guess I have neglected you lately—I'm sorry." He stopped and thought for a moment, then went on, "I think you had better enter school here. It's true they haven't much for you, but it would be better than running around at loose ends."
"George?"
"Yes, that's probably the best-huh?"
"Have you completely given up the idea of home-steading?"
Dad looked worried. "That's a hard question, Bill. I still want us to, but with Peggy sick—it's difficult to say. But our name is still in the hat. I'll have to make up my mind before the drawing."
"Dad, I'll prove it."
"Eh?"
"You keep your job and take care of Peggy and Molly. I'll make us a farm."
13. Johnny Appleseed
The drawing of our division took place three weeks later; the next day George and I walked out to see what we had gotten. It was west of town out through Kneiper's Ridge, new country to me; I had done my exploring east of town, over toward the power plant, where most of the proved land was located.
We passed a number of farms and some of them looked good, several acres in cultivation, green and lush, and many more acres already chewed level. It put me in mind of Illinois, but there was something missing. I finally figured out what it was—no trees.
Even without trees it was beautiful country. On the right, north of us, were the foothills of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Snow-covered peaks thrust up beyond them, twenty or thirty miles away. On the left, curving in from the south and closer than it came to Leda, was Laguna Serenidad. We were a couple of hundred feet higher than the lake. It was a clear day and I tried to see the far shore, but I couldn't be sure.
It was a mighty cheerful scene. Dad felt it, too. He strode along, whistling "Beulah Land" off key. I get my musical talent from Anne.
He broke off and said, "Bill, I envy you."
I said, "We'll all be together yet, George. I'm the advance guard." I thought a bit and said, "George, do you know what the first thing I raise is going to be–after I get some food crops in?"
"What?"
"I'm going to import some seed and raise you some tobacco."
"Oh, no, Son!"
"Why not?" I knew he was touched by it, because he called me 'Son'. "I could do it, as well as not."
"It's a kind thought, but we'll have to stick to the main chance. By the time we can afford that, I will have forgotten how to light a pipe. Honest, I don't miss it."
We slogged along a bit further, not saying anything but feeling close together and good. Presently the road played out. Dad stopped and took his sketch map out of his pouch. "This must be about it."
The sketch showed where the road stopped, with just a dotted line to show where it would be, some day. Our farm was outlined on it, with the nearest comer about half a mile further along where the road ought to be and wasn't. By the map, the edge of our property—or what would be ours if we proved it—ran along the north side of the road about a quarter of a mile and from there back toward the foothills. It was marked "Plot 117-H-2" and had the chief engineer's stamp on it.
Dad was staring at where the road ended. There was a lava flow right across it, high as my head and rough as a hard winter in Maine. "Bill," he said, "How good an Indian are you?"
"Fair, I guess."
"We'll have to try to pace it off and hold a straight line due west."
But it was almost impossible to do it. We struggled and slipped on the lava and made detours. Lava looks soft and it isn't. Dad slipped and skinned his shin and I discovered that I had lost track of how many paces we had come. But presently we were across the flow and in a boulder field. It was loose rubble, from pieces the size of a house down to stuff no bigger than your fist—stuff dropped by the ice when it melted and formed Laguna Serenidad.
George says that Ganymede must have had a boisterous youth, covered with steam and volcanoes.
The boulder field was somewhat easier going but it was even harder to hold a straight line. After a bit Dad stopped. "Bill," he said, "do you know where we are?"
"No," I admitted, "but we aren't really lost. If we head back east we are bound to come to proved ground."
"Perhaps we had better."
"Wait a minute." There was a particularly big boulder ahead of us. I picked a way and managed to scramble to the top with nothing worse than a cut on my hand. I stood up. "I can see the road," I told Dad. "We're north of where we ought to be. And I think maybe we've come too far." I marked a spot with my eye and came down.
We worked south the amount I thought was right and then headed east again. After a bit I said, "I guess we missed it, George. I'm not much of an In-
He said, "So? What's this?" He was a little ahead of me and had stopped.
It was a cairn with a flat rock on top. Painted on it was: "117-H-2, SE corner."
We had been on our farm for the past half hour; the big boulder I had climbed up on was on it.
We sat down on a fairly flat rock and looked around. Neither of us said anything for a while; we were both thinking the same thing: if this was a farm, I was my own great uncle.
After a bit Dad muttered something. I said, "What did you say?"
"Golgotha," he said out loud. "Golgotha, the place of skulls." He was staring straight ahead.
I looked where he was looking; there was a boulder sitting on top of another and the way the sun caught it, it did look like a skull. It leered at us.
It was so darn quiet you could hear your hair grow. The place was depressing me. I would have given anything to hear something or see something move. Anything—just a lizard darting out from behind a rock, and I could have kissed it.
But there were no lizards here and never had been.
Presently Dad said, "Bill, are you sure you want to tackle this?"
"Sure I'm sure."
"You don't have to, you know. If you want to go back to Earth and go to M.I.T., I could arrange it for the next trip."