The birds provided more than ample fertilizer and Uncle Izzy had apparently trained at least one of them to cultivate the soil under the trees.

I climbed out of the crater to see that I was indeed in the regions of snow. To the north were huge drifts, and far off loomed towering glaciers.

To the south, the hills tapered off from white to spotted brown.

That was the reason for Uncle Izzy's crazy setup. Rene and I would never have come across this crater in an ordinary search. Of course, the setup needn't have been quite so crazy. That was the personal equation of which Uncle Izzy was so fond.

The trees would, I assumed, poke their heads up over the crater as they grew, reaching toward the cold, and finally getting the frostbite to fill their pods properly.

At two thousand dollars an ounce.

I had neglected to ask Rene how many pods a tree could be expected to produce or how big the pods were. But, say, half an ounce in each pod and a conservative fifty pods on each tree.

A hundred thousand dollars.

I slid back into the crater, sat leaning against a somnolent dodo and ate a lunch package with a cupful of melted snow.

All sorts of thoughts were jostling my brain.

But I was bone-weary. I hadn't slept since we hit Alvarla and the ride last night had been a tremendous strain, because I wasn't in the habit of getting any exercise at all.

Therefore, I fell asleep in mid-thought.

It was the noon sun that woke me. I wasn't just warm. I was hot.

And I was very reluctant to let go of my dream; I kept grabbing at the tag ends of it with both hands. It was the most exciting dream I'd had since the one about succeeding Mr. Picks. Only very different.

I'd made a fortune cultivating perfume trees. My dream was full of perfume. Some of it came from the exotic plants of my African estate. Some of it was from a long-legged, pink-haired girl, the kind African millionaires have.

It was the sort of dream, I mused, unable to keep it in mood any longer, as large-minded men have. Men like—Uncle Isadore!

I 

 Prev. P 20/24 next