"But—"
"Take the minerals, give me the opal. It is a fair trade."
On Seekin's face appeared a glow that was like the light of the rising sun. He clutched the bag of minerals to his chest.
"Thank you, my friend. This will be remembered." Turning, he went out the door. On the verbal level his thanks had not been profuse, but the glow on his face had exhibited another kind of thanks, to Larkin a much more important kind.
Larkin felt some of the inner glow within him that had appeared on the Martian's face. The minerals he had practically given away would be spread on some little patch of irrigated land, spread with all the care and saving thought that alert minds and hands educated for centuries in extracting the last trace of food value from unwilling soil could bestow. The grain would be eaten by Seekin and his family. They would feel a new throb of life within them as mineral-hungry tissues took up and utilized the earth elements down to the last molecule. And there would be something left over for somebody else in the time of need. Larkin especially liked that.
A warm glow flooding through him, Larkin went again to the door of his store. He lit his pipe and stood there contentedly smoking, a tall, angular Earthman who had wandered from his native planet for a reason that he considered sufficient. Except for two articles for scientific journals, dealing with the problem of supplying minerals to the top-soil of Mars and the vast need for such mineral fertilizer, he had had no contact with Earth in seven years. Nor did he anticipate that he would ever again see Earth, or anyone from that planet, except possibly a rare, far-wandering trader like himself. There was peace in Boyd Larkin.
But there was trouble in the air.
His ears caught the far-off drum-fire of rockets.
He felt his pulse pick up. A ship was coming.
Instantly he knew the source of his feeling of coming trouble. He had heard the sound of those far-off rockets long before he was aware of it as sub-liminal ranges of sound penetrated to his inner being. That sound had been the stimulus for the feeling of trouble that had arisen in him.