"Ah, you have returned, faster than I expected. You have the stones?" Jayt tensed and held out the small hessian sack that held the small pile of stones they'd managed to collect. "About a double handful sir, it took us almost three days, but we got what you wanted." The toad inspected the bag as if it were full of dirt, then tipped several of the stones into his hand and held them up to the light critically. For a second Jayt tensed, perhaps the toad had been mislead? Told that skystones were valuable? Or some sort of useable mineral? What if he though he'd been fooled? What would he do? Instead the toad gave an enormous grin and pocketed the stones. "Excellent, far better than I expected. Very well, you have somewhere I can pipe this I suspect?"

Jayt helped the toad attach a pipe tot he tanks, then dragged it out of the ship to the spare waste tank out back, watching his family as they stared nervously at his antics and the sweating, heavy breathing stranger accompanying him. The pipe was attached; the toad's pumps started and the tank began to fill. The inlet valve showed that the tank did indeed contain what was promised and indeed the toad's supply proved too much for it, needing to be piped into the main waste tank and the biotank as well. Then he and the toad disconnected the pipe, the toad waved goodbye and returned to his ship. Even then Jayt tensed, surely the toad could kill them all take back his bounty and leave? But the attack never came; the ship lifted of, paused for a few seconds, then blasted into the sky.

Jayt watched where it had been for a long time, until he felt a tugging at his sleeve, it was his youngest, he picked her up and walked over to the tank to check. It was still full, containing a lifetime's supply; if carefully hoarded and traded it could buy anything, they truly were richer than their wildest dreams. He realized someone was speaking, it was his wife "Jay, what can we do?

Jayt took a deep breath, paused and then spoke in a hushed voice. "We don't tell those (-) snooping Joneses for a start..."


* * *

Rejaik sat back in the pilots chair and reached again for the small bag of diamonds he'd acquired. They gleamed in the flickering light from the status monitor, each one a perfect sky blue hue, each one a fortune in itself. Together they would make him rich, he could do anything he wanted now, anything. The first thing he'd do of course was to destroy the star maps; they were the only copies left, digitally transcribed onto his computer from the old archives he'd been sorting and updating back on Muckamuck. He smiled when they were gone it could take a world, any world, a thousand years to find the place again; the badlands of Deserto, rich in rocks and little else, where you could trade a few tons of the organic rich sediment from his home planet for a handful of diamonds.

.