nomic system. Hoddan, indeed, could remember him saying
precisely, snipping off the ends of his words as he spoke:

"I tell y', piracy's what keeps the galaxy's business thriving!
Everybody knows business suffers when retail trade slacks down. It backs
up the movement of inventories. They get too big. That backs up orders
to the factories. They lay off men. And when men are laid off they don't
have money to spend, so retail trade slacks off some more, and that
backs up inventories some more, and that backs up orders to factories
and makes unemployment and hurts retail trade again. It's a feed-back.
See?" It was Hoddan's grandfather's custom, at this point, to stare
shrewdly at each of his listeners in turn.

"But suppose somebody pirates a ship? The owners don't lose. It's
insured. They order another ship built right away. Men get hired to
build it and they're paid money to spend in retail trade and that moves
inventories and industry picks up. More'n that, more people insure
against piracy. Insurance companies hire more clerks and bookkeepers.
They get more money for retail trade and to move inventories and keep
factories going and get more people hired.... Y'see? It's piracy that
keeps business in this galaxy goin'!"

Hoddan had known doubts about this, but it could not be entirely wrong.
He'd put a good part of the proceeds of his piracy in risk-insurance
stocks, and he counted on them to make all his actions as benevolent to
everybody concerned as his intentions had been, and were. But it might
not be true enough. It might be less than ... well ... sufficiently true
in a particular instance. And therefore--

Then he saw how things could be worked out so that there could be no
doubt. He began to work out the details. He drifted off to sleep in the
act of composing a letter in his head to his grandfather on the pirate
planet Zan.

When morning came on Krim, catawheel trucks came bringing gigantic
agricultural machines of a sort that would normally never be shipped by
space freight. There came generators and turbines and tanks of plastic,
and vision-tape instructors and great boxes full of tape for them. There
were machine tools and cutting tips--these last in vast quantity--and
very many items that the emigrants of Colin probably would not expect,
and might not even recognize. The cargo holds of the liner filled.

[Illustration]

He went to the office of his attorneys. He read and signed papers, in an
atmosphe