"Frankie," I told him, "is at the spaceport right now. Johnny will be down on the next shuttle. As you can imagine, the shuttle was pretty well strained to capacity to bring even one at a time. It was no trouble in space of course, since they were weightless in free fall, but entering the gravitational—"

He put his hands on the top of the desk and half came to his feet. His eyes were wide. "Who are Frankie and Johnny?"

I feigned surprise. "Frankie and Johnny are sweethearts—a couple of zloors, in this case. Remember? You sent me for them. I thought a male and a female would be best."

He slumped back in his chair. "You aren't lying?"

I didn't say anything.

"How ... did you do it?"

"With peach pits," I said.

"Peach pits!"

"Peach pits. They like apricot pits too, and sometimes prune seeds."

"What in the world are you talking about, Prescott? Have you lost your mind?"

I opened the humidor on his desk, took out a cigar, smelled it, bit off the end, lit it, and took a deep puff before answering him. I settled down into a comfortable chair and pointed the lighted end of the cigar in his direction.

"Between one or the other of us we had tried everything, everything. I realized finally that it would have to be an entirely different approach."

I took another satisfying drag on the cigar, then went on. "I tried lettuce, cabbage, corn, string-beans—everything in fact that the hydroponic tanks on Mars could supply in the way of earth type food. None of it worked."

"What in hell are you talking about?" Marks blurted.

I ignored him. "Finally it came to me. Lettuce and the other vegetables I offered would be too light for them. I tried walnut hulls and then peach pits, and that worked like a charm."

"You must be 

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