The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fee of the Frontier, by Horace Brown Fyfe

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Title: Fee of the Frontier

Author: Horace Brown Fyfe

Illustrator: Emsh

Release Date: January 9, 2010 [EBook #30901]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Amazing Stories August 1960. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

_They didn't think of themselves as
pioneers. They simply had a job to
do. And if they had to give up
money, or power, or love--or life
itself--that was the_

FEE OF THE
FRONTIER

By H. B. FYFE

ILLUSTRATOR EMSH

* * * * *

From inside the dome, the night sky is a beautiful thing, even though
Deimos and Phobos are nothing to brag about. If you walk outside,
maybe as far as the rocket field, you notice a difference.

Past the narrow developed strip around the dome, the desert land lies
as chilled and brittle as it did for eons before Earthmen reached
Mars. The sky is suddenly raw and cruel. You pull your furs around
your nose and check your oxygen mask, and wish you were _inside_
something, even a thin wall of clear plastic.

I like to stand here, though, and look out at it, just thinking about
how far those ships grope out into the dark nowadays, and about the
men who have gone out there on a few jets and a lot of guts. I knew a
bunch of them ... some still out there, I guess.

[Illustration]

There was a time when nearly everything had to be rocketed out from
Earth, before they organized all those chemical tricks that change the
Martian crops to real food. Domes weren't fancy then. Adequate, of
course; no sense in taking chances with lives that cost so much fuel
to bring here. Still, the colonies kept growing. Where pe