On the Trail of the Space Pirates_ A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure - Carey Rockwell [261]
"Quiet, please!"
The men became silent.
"You will have to purchase the necessary material for farming from me. You will sign over one-half of your future profits to the treasurer of the Roald City Fund, or you don't farm."
"What's the Roald City Fund?" demanded Isaac Tupin, a short, thin man with an uncanny knack for farming. He had been very successful on Mars and had been asked to institute his methods of desert farming on the dusty satellite.
"The Roald City Fund," said Vidac coldly, "is an organization dedicated to the good and welfare of the citizens of Roald."
"Who's the treasurer?" asked Logan.
"I am," said Vidac. "Governor Hardy is now in the process of setting up Roald currency. Each of you will be allowed to borrow against future yields, a maximum amount of five thousand Roald credits. This will be your beginning. If your crops fail"—Vidac shrugged his shoulders—"you will forfeit your land holdings!"
There was a storm of protest from the assembled farmers. They stood up in their chairs and hooted and howled. Vidac faced them coldly. At last they fell silent and Vidac was able to speak again.
"I would advise you to consider carefully the proposal I've made here. Your equipment—the equipment given to you by the Solar Alliance—has been lost. The chemicals which you are now being offered are the property of the official governing body of Roald. We cannot give you the material. We can loan it to you, providing that you guarantee the loan with your future profits. All those interested may draw the necessary supplies from Tad Winters and Ed Bush in the morning."
He turned and walked out of the hall.
"We'll go to the governor!" shouted Logan. "We won't be treated like this. We're free citizens of the Solar Alliance and under their jurisdiction. We know our rights!"
Suddenly Tad Winters and Ed Bush appeared, seemingly from nowhere. A sneering smile on his face, Winters held two paralo-ray guns and covered the group of farmers while Bush slipped up behind Logan and hit him on the back of the neck. The elderly man sank to the floor.
"Now get this!" snarled Winters to the colonists. "The joy ride is over! You take orders, or else!"
CHAPTER 12
"What do you want?" growled Ed Bush. He stood at the air lock of the Polaris, a brace of paralo-ray guns strapped to his side. "Why ain't you out growing corn?"
Hyram Logan smiled. He held out the books and study spools the cadets had given him on the trip out. "I wanted to return these to the cadets. They lent them to my son. He wants to be a Space Cadet when he's old enough."
"I can think of a lot better things he could be," sneered Bush. He jerked his thumb toward the entrance port of the giant spaceship. "All right, get aboard. You got a half-hour."
Logan entered the cruiser quickly and made his way to the cadets' quarters. Tom was asleep. Roger and Astro were playing a game of checkers. When Logan entered, the two cadets quickly forgot their game and turned to greet the farmer.
"Hiya, Mr. Logan!" said Astro. "You saved me from doing a wicked deed."
Logan stared at the big cadet, puzzled. "How's that again, Astro?"
Roger laughed. "He's joking, sir. I was about to clean him out in a game of checkers."
Logan sat wearily on the side of the nearest bunk. "I wish all I had to lose was a game of checkers."
He quickly filled in the details of the meeting between Vidac and the farmers. Tom had awakened by this time and heard the last of the older man's story. He turned to his unit mates.
"Well, it looks as though we're right back where we started," he said. "And here I thought Vidac was O.K. after the way he worked during the past ten days setting up Roald City."
"I've been talking to some of the other men," said Logan bitterly. "They feel the same way I do. Something's got to be done about this!"
"But what?" asked Roger.
"And how?" chimed in Astro.
"Force, by the stars!" yelled Logan. "And when I say force, I mean