ets. In any given century every member in the
organization threatens to resign at least once. Even Earth. And then
what'd happen? You'd have interplanetary war before you knew it. What'd
you want, Ronny?"

"I'm about set to take up my search for this Tommy Paine."

"Ah, yes, Tommy Paine. If you catch him, there are a dozen planets where
he'd be eligible for the death sentence."

Ronny cleared his throat. "There must be. What I wanted was the file on
him, sir."

"File?"

"Yes, sir. I've got to the point where I want to cram up on everything we
have on him. So far, all I've got is verbal information from individual
agents and from Supervisor Jakes."

"Don't be silly, Ronny. There isn't any file on Tommy Paine."

Ronny just looked at the other.

Ross Metaxa said impatiently, "The very knowledge of the existence of the
man is top secret. Isn't that obvious? Suppose some reporter got the story
and printed it. If our member planets knew there was such a man and that
we haven't been able to scotch him, why they'd drop out of UP so fast the
computers couldn't keep up with it. There's not one planet in ten that
feels secure enough to lay itself open to subversion. Why some of our
planets are so far down the ladder of social evolution they live under
primitive tribal society; their leaders, their wise men and witch-doctors,
whatever you call them, are scared someone will come along and establish
chattel slavery. Those planets that have a system based on slavery are
scared to death of developing feudalism, and those that have feudalism are
afraid of _creeping capitalism_. Those with an anarchistic basis--and we
have several--are afraid of being subverted to statism, and those who have
a highly developed government are afraid of anarchism. The socio-economic
systems based on private ownership of property hate the very idea of
socialism or communism, and vice versa, and those planets with state
capitalism hate them both."

[Illustration.]

He glared at Ronny. "What do you think the purpose of this Section is,
Bronston? Our job is to keep our member planets from being afraid of each
other. If they found that Tommy Paine and his group, if he's got a group,
were buzzing through the system subverting everything they can foul up,
they'd drop out of UP and set up quarantines that a space mite couldn't
get through. No sir, there is no file on Tommy Paine and there never will
be. And if any news of h