're just kidding us!
Don't listen to them! And don't, for gosh sakes, get sore...."

Rose's words were now like dim echoes of his conscience, and of his
recent grim determination to master his hot temper, his sensitiveness,
his wanderlust, and his penchant for poker and the social
glass--qualities of an otherwise agreeable and industrious nature, that,
on Earth, had always been his undoing. Recently, back in Illinois, he
had even spent six months in jail for all but inflicting murder with his
bare fists on a bullying neighbor whom he had caught whipping a horse.
Sure--but during those six months his farm, the fifth he'd tried to run
in scattered parts of North America, had gone to weeds in spite of
Rose's valiant efforts to take care of it alone....

Oh, yes--the lessons of all that past personal history should be strong
in his mind. But now will power and Rose's frightened tones of wisdom
both seemed to fade away in his brain, as jeering words from another
source continued to drive jagged splinters into the weakest portion of
his soul:

"Hi, you hydroponic pun'kin-head!... How yuh like your new claim?...
Nice, ain't it? How about some fresh turnips?... Good luck, yuh
greenhorn.... Hiyuh, papa! Tied to baby's diaper suspenders!... Let the
poor dope alone, guys.... Snooty.... Won't take our likker, hunh? Won't
take our money.... Wifey's boy! Let's make him sociable....
Haw-Haw-haw.... Hydroponic pun'kin-head!..."

It was a medley of coarse voices and laughter, matching the row of a
dozen coarse faces and grins that lined the view-ports of the ship.
These men were asteroid miners, space-hardened and space-twisted. They'd
been back to Earth for a while, to raise hell and freshen up, and spend
the money in their then-bulging pockets. Coming out again from Earth,
across the orbit of Mars to the asteroid belt, they had had the Endlichs
as fellow passengers.

John Endlich had battled valiantly with his feebler side, and with his
social inclinations, all through that long, dreary voyage, to keep clear
of the inevitable griefs that were sure to come to a chap like himself
from involvement with such characters. In the main, it had been a rather
tattered victory. But now, at the final moment of bleak anticlimax, they
took their revenge in guffaws and ridicule, hurling the noise at him
through the radiophones of the space-suit helmets that they held in
their laps--space-suits being always kept handy beneath the
traveler-seats