"Yeah," Tom puffed his pipe. "Looks like your idea of seeds drifting through space is as good as any to explain it. Sure is an odd place. Full grown plants, but no decay and no sign of evolution."
"This is a wonderful place," Willie said as he leaned back against the rock. "I'd like to stay here for ten years."
"Why?" Tom asked. The red of the sunset was fading from the high clouds, turning them dark grey.
"Because it's so quiet." Willie smiled at him. "This is the quietest place I've ever been in. Does something to you."
"You should have been a colonist," Tom said, "then you could live on a place like this and farm it."
"I'm going to, someday," Willie answered. "I'm saving my pay to buy a charter and I'm going to buy a place like this."
Tom blew out a cloud of smoke. Seems like every guy working on crowded Earth had the same dream. A little farm on a distant planet. But few of them ever did anything about it. It was a nice dream to relieve the monotony of working, but a hell of a lot of hard work if you actually did it.
"I've even got seeds I saved when I was working on the truck farms of the West," Willie talked on, more to himself than Tom, "I saved them from some of the biggest and heaviest producing plants. I've got tomatoes, beans, corn, squash. They'll make a fine beginning."
Tom thought of Willie leaving the safety and comfort of living that was found only in the crowded cities of Earth. "Think you'd like the loneliness of farming?" he asked.
Willie spoke with conviction. "There's nothing I'd like more. That's why I started star mapping, to get out of the mobs. That's why I'm out here."