AND SINCE HIS SPACESHIP, for the lack of a certain valve for which he had no replacement, was not going anywhere, he was stuck here on this planet.
If that had been all there had been to it, it might not have been so bad. But there was a final irony that under other circumstances (if it had been happening to someone else, let’s say), would have kept Sherwood in stitches of forthright merriment for hours on end at the very thought of it. But since he was the one involved, there was no merriment.
For now, when he could gain no benefit, he was potentially rich beyond even his own most greedy and most lurid dreams.
On the ridge above the camp he’d get up beside his crippled spaceship lay a strip of clay-cemented conglomerate that fairly reeked with diamonds. They lay scattered on the hillsi
