The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort.
In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was -- bitter.

Raymond Zinke Gallun (1911 - 1994) was an American science fiction writer. Gallun (rhymes with "balloon") was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He left college after one year and traveled in Europe, living a drifter's existence, working a multitude of jobs around the world in the years leading up to World War II.
He was among the stalwart group of early sci-fi pulp writers who popularized the genre. He sold many popular stories to pulp magazines in the 1930s. "Old Faithful" (1934) was his first noted story. "The Gentle Brain" was published in "Science Fiction Quarterly" under the pseudonym Arthur Allport. His first book, People Minus X, was published in 1957, followed by The Planet Strappers in 1961. Gallun was honored with the I-CON Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985 at I-CON IV; the award was later renamed The Raymond Z. Gallun Award. His pen names include Dow Elstar, E.V. Raymond and William Callahan.