They sat in Cap Barlow’s house on the lonely planet, Straba. It was early evening and Straba’s twin moons were slowly rising from behind the magenta hills. Outside the window lay Cap’s golf course, a study in toadstool cubism, while opposite the flag of the eighteenth hole squatted the kid’s ship.
The kid had landed there an hour ago. He had introduced himself as Clarence Raine, field man for Tri-Planet Pharmaceutical, and had announced urbanely he had come to make a botanical survey. All of which mildly amused Cap Barlow.
The kid was amused too. From the Pilot Book he had learned that Cap was the sole inhabitant of Straba, and he regarded him—and rightly so—as just another hermit nut who preferred the spacial frontiers to the regular walks of civilization.
Pilot BookThe old man packed
