PASTORAL AFFAIR
By CHARLES A. STEARNS
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No wonder Stefanik meant to fight to the last—he wasn't going to turn his kids over to an old goat like Glinka!
The seaplane cast its silhouette from aloft upon the blue Arabian Sea, left its white wake across the shallows, and taxied alongside the ancient stone jetty, clawing into the sandy bottom with its small fore and after anchors.
Colonel Glinka stepped out upon the wing, carefully measured the distance to the jetty, and sprang for it, wetting himself up to the seat of his voluminous khaki shorts.
This lonely sandspit, these barren slopes and frowning, ocher cliffs, the oceanic silence around him, broken by the plaintive cries of wheeling Caspian terns that were badly in need of laundering, were not, he thought as he clambered ashore, exactly as one pictures a tropical paradise.