Grego hesitated for a moment, then dropped his cigarette to the ground and heeled it out. He leaned toward Rainsford in his chair.
“Governor, you know, yourself, that as things stand you can’t build a second spaceport here,” he said. “Ingermann knows that, too. He’s making that issue to embarrass you and to attack the CZC at the same time. He has no expectation that your Government would build any spaceport facilities here. He certainly hopes not; he wants to do that himself.”
“Where the devil would he get the money?”
“He could get it. Unless I miss my guess, he’s getting it now, or as soon as a ship can get in, on Marduk. There are a number of shipping companies who would like to get in here in competition with Terra-Baldur-Marduk Spacelines, and there are quite a few import-export houses there who would like to trade on Zarathustra in competition with CZC. Inside six months somebody will be trying to put in a spaceport here. If they can get land to set it on. And due to a great error in my judgment eight years ago, the land’s available.”
“Where?”
“Right here on Alpha Continent, less than a hundred miles from where we’re sitting. A wonderful place for a spaceport. You weren’t here, then, were you, Governor?”
“No. I came here, I blush to say, on the same ship that brought Ingermann, six and a half years ago.”
“Well, you got here, and so did he, after it was over, but just before that we had a big immigration boom. At that time, the company wasn’t interested in local business, just offplanet trade in veldbeest meat. A lot of independent concerns started, manufacturing, food production, that sort of thing that we didn’t want to bother with. We sold land north of the city, in mile and two-mile square blocks, about two thousand square miles of it. Then the immigrants stopped coming, and a lot of them moved away. There simply wasn’t employment for them. Most of the companies that had been organized went broke. Some of the factories that were finished operated for a while; most of them were left unfinished. The banks took over some of the land; most of it got into the hands of the shylocks; and since the Fuzzy Trial Ingermann has been acquiring title to a lot of it. Since the Fuzzy Trial, nobody else has been spending money for real-estate; everybody expects to get all the free land they want.”
“Well, he’ll probably make some money out of that, but the people who come in here with the capital will be the ones to control it, won’t they?”
“Of course they will, but that’s honest business; Ingermann isn’t interested. He’s expecting an increase of about two to three hundred percent in the planetary population in the next five years. With eighty percent of the land-surface in public domain, that’s probably an underestimate. Most of them will be voters; Ingermann’s going to try to control that vote.”
And if he did… His own position was secure; Colonial Governors were appointed, and it took something like the military intervention which had put him into office to unseat one. But a Colonial Governor had to govern through and with the consent of a Legislature. He wasn’t looking forward happily to a Legislature controlled by Hugo Ingermann. Neither, he knew, was Grego.
He’d have to be careful, though. Grego wanted to put the company back in its old pre-Fuzzy position of planetary dominance. He was still violently opposed to that.
It was almost dark, now. The Fuzzies had put the final touches to the lacy trellis they had built, and came crowding over, wanting Pappy Ben and Pappy Vic to come look. They went and examined it, and spoke commendation. Grego picked up Diamond; Flora and Fauna were wanting him to go and sit down and furnish them a lap to sit on.
“I’ve been worrying about just that,” he said, when he was back in his chair, with the Fuzzies climbing up onto him. “A lot of the older planets are beginning to overpopulate, and there’s never room enough for everybody on Terra. There’ll be a rush here in about a year. If I can only get things stabilized before then…”
Grego was silent for a moment. “If you’re worried about all those public-health and welfare and service functions, forget about them for a while,” he said. “I know, I said the company would discontinue them in ninety days, but that was right after the Pendarvis Decisions, and nobody knew what the situation was going to be. We can keep them going for a year, at least.”
“The Government won’t have any more money a year from now,” he said. “And you’ll expect compensation.”
“Of course we will, but we won’t demand gold or Federation notes. Tax-script, bonds, land script…”
Land-script, of course; the law required a Colonial Government to make land available to Federation citizens, but it did not require such land to be given free. That might be one way to finance the Government.
It could also be a way for the Zarathustra Company, having gotten the Government deeply into debt, to regain what had been lost in the aftermath of the Fuzzy Trial.
“Suppose you have Gus Brannhard talk it over with Leslie Coombes,” Grego was suggesting. “You can trust Gus not to stick the Government’s foot into any bear trap, can’t you?”
“Why, of course, Mr. Grego. I want to thank you, very much, for this. That public services takeover was worrying me more than anything else.”
Yet he couldn’t feel relieved, and he couldn’t feel grateful at all. He felt discomfited, and angry at himself more than at Grego.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GERD VAN RIEBEEK crouched at the edge of the low cliff, slowly twisting the selector-knob of a small screen in front of him. The view changed; this time he was looking through the eye of a pickup fifty feet below and five hundred yards to the left. Nothing in it moved except a wind-stirred branch that jiggled a spray of ragged leaves in the foreground. The only thing from the sound-outlet was a soft drone of insects, and the tweet-twonk, tweet-twonk of a presumably love-hungry banjo-bird. Then something just out of sight scuffled softly among the dead leaves. He turned up the sound-volume slightly.
“What do you think it is?”
Jack Holloway, beside him, rose to one knee, raising his binoculars.
“I can’t see anything. Try the next one.”
Gerd twisted the knob again. This pickup was closer the ground; it showed a vista of woods lit by shafts of sunlight falling between trees. Now he could hear rustling and scampering, and with ultrasonic earphone, Fuzzy voices:
“This way. Not far. Find hatta-zosa.”
Jack was looking down at the open slope below the cliff.
“If that’s what they call goofers, I see six of them from here,” he said. “Probably a dozen more I can’t see.” He watched, listening. “Here they come, now.”
The Fuzzies had stopped talking and were making very little noise; then they came into view; eight of them, in single file. The weapons they carried were longer and heavier than the prawn killers of the southern Fuzzies, knobbed instead of paddle-shaped, and sharp-pointed on the other end. All of them had picked up stones which they carried in their free hands. They all stopped, then three of them backed away into the brush again. The other five spread out in a skirmish line and waited. He shut off the screen and crawled over beside Jack to peep over the edge of the cliff.
There were seven goofers, now; rodent-looking things with dark gray fur, a foot and a half long and six inches high at the shoulder, all industriously tearing off bark and digging at the roots of young trees. No wonder the woods were so thin, around here; if there were any number of them it was a wonder there were any trees at all. He picked up a camera and aimed it, getting some shots of them.