_is_ your assignment?"

"He wants me to go looking for some firebrand nicknamed Tommy Paine. I'm
supposed to arrest him. The commissioner said you'd give me details."

-------------------------------------

Sid Jakes' face went serious. He puckered up his lips. "Wow, that'll be a
neat trick to pull off," he said. He flicked the order-box switch again.
Irene's voice snapped something before he could say anything and Sid Jakes
grinned and said, "O.K., O.K., darling, but if this is the way you're
going to be I won't marry you. Then what will the children say? Besides,
that's not what I called about. Have ballistics do up a model H gun for
Ronny, will you? Be sure it's adjusted to his code."

He flicked off the order box and turned back to Ronny. "I understand
you're familiar with hand guns. It's in this report on you."

Ronny nodded. He was just beginning to adjust to this free-wheeling
character. "What will I need a gun for?"

Jakes laughed. "Heavens to Betsy, you babe in the woods. Do you realize
this Tommy Paine character has supposedly stirred up a couple of score
wars, revolutions and revolts? Not to speak of having laid in his lap two
or three dozen assassinations. He's a quick lad with a gun. A regular
Nihilist."

"Nihilist?"

Jakes chuckled. "When you've been in this Section for a while, you'll be
familiar with every screwball outfit man has ever dreamed up. The
Nihilists were a European group, mostly Russian, back in the Nineteenth
Century. They believed that by bumping off a few Grand Dukes and a Czar or
so they could force the ruling class to grant reforms. Sometimes they were
pretty ingenious. Blew up trains, that sort of thing."

"Look here," Ronny said, "what motivates this Paine fellow? What's he get
out of all this trouble he stirs up?"

"Search me. Nobody seems to know. Some think he's a mental case. For one
thing, he's not consistent."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he'll go to one planet and break his back trying to overthrow, say,
feudalism. Then, possibly after being successful, he goes to another
planet and devotes his energies to establishing the same socio-economic
system."

Ronny assimilated that. "You're one of those who believes he exists?"

"Oh, he exists all right, all right," Sid Jakes said happily. "Matter of
fact, I almost ran into him a few years ago."

Ronny leaned forward. "I guess I ought to know about it. The more
information I have, the better."

"Su