Maybe he was thinking that if I went back, I could take Peggy with, me and she would be willing to go. Maybe I should have said something about it. But didn't; I said, "Are you going back?"
"No."
"Neither am I." At the moment is was mostly stubbornness. I had to admit that our "farm" wasn't flowing with milk and honey; in fact it looked grim. Nobody but a crazy hermit would want to settle down in such a spot.
"Think it over, Bill."
"I've thought it over."
We sat there a while longer, not saying anything, just thinking long thoughts. Suddenly we were almost startled out of our boots by somebody yodelling at us. A moment before I had been wishing to hear just anything, but when it came it was like unexpectedly encountering a clammy hand in the dark.
We both jumped and Dad said, "What in the—?" I looked around. There was a large man coming toward us. In spite of his size he skipped through the rocks like a mountain goat, almost floating in the low gravity. As he got closer I knew I had seen him before; he was on the Court of Honor, a Mr. Schultz.
Dad waved to him and pretty soon he reached us. He stood half a head taller than Dad and would have made the pair of us, he was so big. His chest was as thick as my shoulders were broad and his belly was thicker than that. He had bushy, curly red hair and his beard spread out over his chest like a tangle of copper springs. "Greetings, citizens," he boomed at us, "my name is Johann Schultz."
Dad introduced us and he shook hands and I almost lost mine in his. He fixed his eyes on me and said, "I've seen you before, Bill."
I said I guessed he had, at Scout meetings. He nodded and added, "A patrol leader, no?"
I admitted that I used to be. He said, "And soon again," as if the matter were all settled. He turned to Dad. "One of the kinder saw you going past on the road, so Mama sent me to find you and bring you back to the house for tea and some of her good coffee cake."
Dad said that was very kind but that we didn't want to impose. Mr. Schultz didn't seem to hear him. Dad explained what we were there for and showed him the map and pointed out the cairn. Mr. Schultz nodded four or five times and said, "So we are to be neighbors. Good, good!" He added to Dad "My neighbors call me John, or sometimes 'Johnny'." Dad said his name was George and from then on they were old friends.
Mr. Schultz stood by the cairn and sighted off to the west and then north to the mountains. Then he scrambled up on a big boulder where he could see better and looked again. We went up after him.
He pointed to a rise west of us. "You put your house so, not too far from the road, but not on it. And first you work this piece in here and next season you work back further toward the hills." He looked at me and added. "No?"
I said I guessed so. He said, "It is good land, Bill. You will make a fine farm." He reached down and picked up a piece of rock and rubbed it between his fingers. "Good land," he repeated.
He laid it down carefully, straightened up, and said, "Mama will be waiting for us."
Mama was waiting for us, all right, and her idea of a piece of coffee cake was roughly what they used to welcome back the Prodigal Son. But before we got into the house we had to stop and admire the Tree.
It was a real tree, an apple tree, growing in a fine bluegrass lawn out in front of his house. Furthermore it was bearing fruit on two of its limbs. I stopped and stared at it.
"A beauty, eh, Bill?" Mr. Schultz said, and I agreed. "Yes," he went on, "it's the most beautiful tree on Ganymede—you know why? Because it's the only tree on Ganymede." He laughed uproariously and dug me in the ribs as if he had said something funny. My ribs were sore for a week.
He explained to Dad all the things he had had to do to persuade it to grow and how deep down he had had to go to prepare for it and how he had had to channel out to drain it. Dad asked why it was bearing only on one side. "Next year we pollenate the other side," he answered, "and then we have Stark's Delicious. And Rome Beauties. This year, Rhode Island Greenings and Winesaps." He reached up and picked one. "A Winesap for you, Bill."
I said thanks and bit into it. I don't know when I've tasted anything so good.
We went inside and met Mama Schultz and four or five other Schultzes of assorted sizes, from a baby crawling around in the sand on the floor up to a girl as old as I was and nearly as big. Her name was Gretchen and her hair was red like her father's, only it was straight and she wore it in long braids. The boys were mostly blond, including the ones I met later.
The house was mainly a big living room, with a big table down the middle of it. It was a solid slab of rock, maybe four feet wide and twelve or thirteen feet long, supported by three rock pillars. A good thing it was rock, the way Mama Schultz loaded it down.
There were rock slab benches down the long sides and two real chairs, one at each end, made out of oil drums and padded with stuffed leather cushions.
Mama Schultz wiped her face and hands on her apron and shook hands and insisted that Dad sit down in her chair; she wouldn't be sitting down much, she explained. Then she turned back to her cooking while Gretchen poured tea for us.
The end of the room was the kitchen and was centered around a big stone fireplace. It had all the earmarks of being a practical fireplace—and it was, as I found out later, though of course nothing had ever been burned in it. It was really just a ventilation hole. But Papa Schultz had wanted a fireplace so he had a fireplace. Mama Schultz's oven was set in the side of it.
It was faced with what appeared to be Dutch tile, though I couldn't believe it. I mean, who is going to import anything as useless as Ornamental tile all the way from Earth? Papa Schultz saw me looking at them and said, "My little girl Kathy paints good, huh?" One of the medium-sized girls blushed and giggled and left the room.
I had the apple down to a very skinny core and was wondering what to do with it in that spotless room when Papa Schultz stuck out his hand. "Give it to me, Bill."
I did. He took out his knife and very gently separated out the seeds. One of the kids left the room and fetched him a tiny paper envelope in which he placed the seeds and then sealed it. He handed it to me. "There, Bill," he said. "I have only one apple tree, but you have eight!"
I was sort of surprised, but I thanked him. He went on, "That place just this side of where you will build your house—if you will fill that gully from the bottom, layer by layer, building your soil as you go, with only a very little 'pay dirt' you will have a place that will support a whole row of trees. When your seedlings are big, we'll bud from my tree."
I put them very carefully in my pouch.
Some of the boys drifted in and washed up and soon we were all sitting around the table and digging into fried chicken and mashed potatoes and tomato preserves and things. Mama Schultz sat beside me and kept pressing food on me and insisting that I wasn't eating enough to keep body and soul together which wasn't true.
Afterwards I got acquainted with the kids while George and Papa Schultz talked. Four of the boys I knew; they were Scouts. The fifth boy, Johann Junior —they called him "Yo"—was older than I, almost twenty, and worked in town for the chief engineer. The others were Hugo and Peter, both Cubs, then Sam, and then Vic, who was an Explorer Scout, same as I was. The girls were the baby, Kathy and Anna, who seemed to be twins but weren't, and Gretchen. They all talked at once.
Presently Dad called me over. "Bill, you know we don't rate a chance at a rock crusher for several months."
"Yes," I said, somewhat mystified.
"What are your plans in the meantime?"
"Uh, well, I don't know exactly. Study up on what I'll have to do."
"Mmrn... Mr. Schultz has very kindly offered to take you on as a farm hand in the meantime. What do you think of the idea?"