The only real solution was to have somebody else keep them for a while, Grant thought, and that was a discouraging thought, for whom could he trust in The Pass even if he could reach them? For that matter, who in The Pass would risk his life to help out Grant Russell, the Hard-Luck Man of the Swamp?

He’d been known as a hard-luck man as far back as he could remember. His parents had been killed in a rocket crash on a trip to Mars; he’d been raised by one relative after another and they’d each one gotten rid of him as soon as they could. Finally he had married a nice girl and they had been happy until their daughter was born. Then the mother had died.

Grant had gone to pieces for a while. When he came to, he was broke, hungry, ragged. Then when it was too late he had become frantic over the safety of his small daughter, Beth. He found that she was safe in a child welfare home in New Jersey, but they would not release her to him until he could pay what he owed for her care and have enough left over to establish himself as a substantial citizen.

He had told her goodbye. She was the image of her mother, and she had held onto his hand as long as she could and said between sobs, “Daddy, can we have a farm some day, and raise strawberries, and have just us two? I don’t want to be an orphan.” He had gulped and said, “Sure,” and then he had come to Venus. It was a new planet, largely unexplored, full of opportunity.

That had been three years ago. Things had been tough at times but now he could afford to smile. He’d hit the jackpot⁠—a million-year-old nest of the echindul, with sixteen pairs of stones. He put the one stone safely back in his watch-pocket. He was keeping that one. When he sold the others he would have the dealer pick out the mate to this one, and he and Beth would keep this pair. They would be well able to afford it.