erse peoples,
created by trade, was an economy eternally prosperous and eternally
growing, because the number of undiscovered and unexploited planets
was infinite. The steady expansion of the trade cities kept demand
always one jump ahead of supply; every merchant was assured that this
year's profits would always be larger than last. It was the financial
millennium, from which depression and recession had been forever
eliminated. At Princeton Lord had learned the practical physics
necessary for building, servicing and piloting the standard interstellar
merchant ships.

Martin Lord's tour of the trade cities completed his education. It was his
first actual contact with reality. The economy of progress, which had
seemed so clear-cut in the Chicago lecture halls, was translated into a
brawling, vice-ridden, frontier city. In the older trade cities, the
culture of man had come to dominate the occupied worlds. No trace of what
alien peoples had been or had believed survived, except as museum oddities.

This, Lord admitted to himself, was conquest, by whatever innocuous name it
passed. But was it for good or evil? In the first shock of reality, Martin
Lord had doubted himself and the destiny of the Federation. But only for a
moment. What he saw was good--he had been taught to believe that--because
the Federation was perfection.

But the doubt, like a cancer, fed and grew in the darkness of Lord's soul.

* * * * *

On the home trip a mechanical defect of the calibration of the time-power
carried the _Ceres_ off its course, light years beyond the segment of the
Galaxy occupied by the Federation.

"We've burned out a relay," Don Howard reported.

"Have we replacements?" Lord asked.

"It's no problem to fix. But repairs would be easier if we could set the
ship down somewhere."

Lord glanced at the unknown sun and three satellite planets which were
plotted electronically on his cabin scanning screen. His pulse leaped with
sudden excitement. This was his first--and last--chance for adventure, the
only interstellar flight he would command in his lifetime. When he returned
to earth, he would be chained for the rest of his days to a desk job,
submerged in a sea of statistical tables and financial statements.

"Run an atmosphere analysis on those three worlds, Mr. Howard," he said
softly.

Driven by its auxiliary nuclear power unit, the ship moved closer to the
new solar system. In half an ho