Baggage included a tossed salad of books as well as hundreds of the more usual film spools. The entire family, save the twins, tended to be old-fashioned about books; they liked books with covers, volumes one could hold in the lap. Film spools were not quite the same.
Roger Stone required his sons to submit lists of what they proposed to carry to Mars for trade. The first list thus submitted caused him to call them into conference. ‘Castor, would you mind explaining this proposed manifest to me?’
‘Huh? What is there to explain? Pol wrote it up. I thought it was clear enough.’
‘I’m afraid it’s entirely too clear. Why all this copper tubing?’
‘Well, we picked it up as scrap. Always a good market for copper on Mass.’
‘You mean you’ve already bought it?’
‘Oh, no. We just put down a little to hold it.’
‘Same for the valves and fittings I suppose?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s good. Now these other items — cane sugar, wheat, dehydrated potatoes, polished rice. How about those?’
Pollux answered. ‘Cas thought we ought to buy hardware; I favored foodstuffs. So compromised.’
‘Why did you pick the foods you did?’
‘Well, they’re all things they grow in the city’s air-conditioning tanks, so they’re cheap. No Earth imports on the list, you noticed.’
‘I noticed.’
‘But most of the stuff we raise here carries too high a percentage of water. You wouldn’t want to carry cucumbers to Mars, would you?’
‘I don’t want to carry anything to Mars; I’m just going for the ride.’ Mr Stone put down the cargo list, picked up another. ‘Take a look at this.’
Pollux accepted it gingerly. ‘What about it?’
‘I used to be a pretty fair mechanic myself. I got to wondering just what one could build from the ‘hardware’ you two want to ship. I figure I could build a fair-sized still. With the “foodstuffs” you want to take a man would be in a position to make anything from vodka to grain alcohol. But I don’t suppose you two young innocents noticed that?’
Castor looked at the list. ‘Is that so?’
‘Hmm — Tell me: did you plan to sell this stuff to the government import agency, or peddle it on the open market?’
‘Well, Dad, you know you can’t make much profit unless you deal on the open market.’
‘So I thought. You didn’t expect me to notice what the stuff was good for — and you didn’t expect the customs agents on Mars to notice, either.’ He looked them over. ‘Boys, I intend to try to keep you out of prison until you are of age. After that I’ll try to come to see you, each visiting day.’ He chucked the list back at them. ‘Guess again. And bear in mind that we raise ship Thursday — and that I don’t care whether we carry cargo or not.’
Pollux said, ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Dad! Abraham Lincoln used to sell whiskey. They taught us that in history. And Winston Churchill used to drink it.’
‘And George Washington kept slaves,’ his father agreed. ‘None of which has anything to do with you two. So scram!’
They left his study and passed through the living room; Hazel was there. She cocked a brow at them. ‘Did you get away with it?’
‘No.’
She stuck out a hand, palm up. ‘Pay me. And next time don’t bet that you can outsmart your Pop. He’s my boy.’
Cas and Pol settled on bicycles as their primary article of export. On both Mars and Luna prospecting by bicycle was much more efficient than prospecting on foot; on the Moon the old-style rock sleuth with nothing but his skis and Shank’s ponies to enable him to scout the area where he had landed his jumpbug had almost disappeared; all the prospectors took bicycles along as a matter of course, just as they carried climbing ropes and spare oxygen. In the Moon’s one-sixth gravity it was an easy matter to shift the bicycles to one’s back and carry it over any obstacle to further progress.
Mars’ surface gravity is more than twice that of Luna, but it is still only slightly more than one-third Earth normal, and Mars is a place of flat plains and very gentle slopes; a cyclist could maintain fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The solitary prospector, deprived of his traditional burro, found the bicycle an acceptable and reliable, if somewhat less congenial, substitute. A miner’s bike would have looked odd in the streets of Stockholm; over-sized wheels, doughnut sand tires, towing yoke and trailer, battery trickle charger, two-way radio, saddle bags, and Geiger-counter mount made it not the vehicle for a spin in the park — but on Mars or on the Moon it fitted its purpose the way a canoe fits a Canadian stream.