 What doesn't Tunpesh seem to have less of than Earth?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951. ] Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that peaceful planet. Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration bunk. Or more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. Weltschmerz, perhaps. He was the kind who have everything to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something someday. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the status of a breakfast food testimonial. In high school and later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular, hard-working. How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left of Pendleton was a page of statistics? Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small planet with a G-type sun. Tunpesh had been inspected and certified and approved. Or maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had received something less than a thorough survey. And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment. So friendly that he had made sure that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles, needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish data and reports. "Yes?" "How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more information?" Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently at his tunic. A few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the foliage. The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage, was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and discharge cargo or make repairs. He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet.
 beautiful people
 weapons  beautiful people  illness  bad weather