3
doing!"
Phil shook his head helplessly, laughed. "After all, working a tupa ranch--"
"Nonsense. The ranch is just enough bother to be interesting. The appliances do everything anyway, and Susan is down here every morning for a chat and to make sure I'm still all right. She won't admit that, of course, but if she thinks something should be taken care of, the whole Feeney family shows up an hour later to do it. There's really no reason for you to be sending a dozen men up from Fort Roye every two months to harvest the tupa."
Phil shrugged. "No one's ever yet invented an easy way to dig up those roots. And the CLU's glad to furnish the men."
"Because you're its president?"
"Uh-huh."
"It really doesn't cost you anything?" Beulah asked doubtfully.
"Not a cent."
* * *
"Hm-m-m. Been meaning to ask you. What made you set up that ... Colonial Labor Union?"
Phil nodded. "That's the official name."
"Why did you set it up in the first place?"
"That's easy to answer," Phil said. "On the day the planetary population here touched the forty thousand mark, Roye became legally entitled to its labor union. Why not take advantage of it?"
"What's the advantage?"
"More Earth money coming in, for one thing. Of the twelve hundred CLU members we've got in Fort Roye now, seventy-six per cent were unemployed this month. We'll have a compensation check from the Territorial Office with the next ship coming in." He smiled at her expression. "Sure, the boys could go back to the tupa ranches. But not everyone likes that life as well as you and the Feeneys."
"Earth government lets you get away with it?" Beulah asked curiously. "They used to be pretty tight-fisted."
"They still are--but it's the law. The Territorial Office also pays any CLU president's salary, incidentally. I don't draw too much at the moment, but that will go up automatically with the membership and my responsibilities."
"What responsibilities?"