e, they
joined up."

"Where does Tommy Paine come in?" Ronny said. He signaled to a waiter for
more beer.

"He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on Goshen,
understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and Two of the UP
Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that if their people ever
came to know about more advanced socio-economic systems it'd be the end of
Goshen's Golden Age. So they allowed practically no intercourse. No
contact whatsoever between UP personnel and anyone outside the upper
class, understand? All right. That's where Tommy Paine came in. It
couldn't have taken him more than a couple of months at most."

Ronny Bronston was fascinated. "What'd he do?"

"He introduced the steam engine, and then left."

Ronny was looking at him blankly. "Steam engine?"

"That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny," the Nigerian said.
"That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them."

Ronny was still blank. The waiter came up with the steins of beer, and
Ronny took one and drained half of it without taking his eyes from the
storyteller.

The other agent took it up. "Don't you see? Their system was based on
chattel slavery, hand labor. Given machinery and it collapses. Chattel
slavery isn't practical in a mechanized society. Too expensive a labor
force, for one thing. Besides, you need an educated man and one with some
initiative--qualities that few slaves possess--to run an industrial
society."

Ronny finished his beer. "Smart cooky, isn't he?"

"He's smart all right. But I've got a still better example of his fouling
up a whole planetary socio-economic system in a matter of weeks. A friend
of mine was working on a planet with a highly-developed feudalism. Barons,
lords, dukes, counts and no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles
and fortresses up on the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the
work in the fields, provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the
continual fighting that the aristocracy carried on. Very similar to Europe
back in the Dark Ages."

"So?" Ronny said. "I'd think that'd be a deal that would take centuries to
change."

The Section G agent laughed. "Tommy Paine stayed just long enough to
introduce gunpowder. That was the end of those impregnable castles up on
the hills."

"What gets me," Ronny said slowly, "is his motivation."

The other two both grunted agreement to that.

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