The Project Gutenberg EBook of Join Our Gang?, by Sterling E. Lanier

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Title: Join Our Gang?

Author: Sterling E. Lanier

Illustrator: Douglas

Release Date: September 14, 2009 [EBook #29987]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Analog Science Fact &
Fiction, May, 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

JOIN
OUR GANG?

By STERLING E. LANIER

_They didn't exactly hold a gun at anybody's
head; all they offered was help. Of course,
they did sort of encourage people to ask for
help...._

Illustrated by Douglas

Commander William Powers, subleader of Survey Group Sirian Combine--1027798
and hence first officer of its ship, the _Benefactor_, stared coldly
out of his cabin port. The _Benefactor_ was resting on the bedrock of
Island Twenty-seven of the world called Mureess by its natives. Like
all the other such names, it meant "the world," just as the natives'
name for themselves, Falsethsa, meant "the people," or "us," or "the
only race." To Commander Powers, fifty years old, with eleven of them
in Survey work, the world was Planet Two of a star called something
unpronounceable in the nebula of something else equally pointless. He
had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven,
because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six
islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island
Twenty-seven, to him, had only one importance, and that was its being
the site of the largest city on the planet.

Around the island's seven square miles, a maze of docks, buildings,
sheds, breakwaters, and artificial inlets made a maze stretching a mile
out to sea in every direction. The gray sea, now covered with fog
patches, rolled on the horizon under low-lying cloud. Numerous craft,
some small, some large, moved busily about on the water, which in its
components was identical with that of Terra, far di