ight,
John," said one, letting out his held breath and leaning back, "I'll
bite. What kind of illegal purposes?"

"I don't know much," the small man apologized, "Only that the crime
rate has risen forty percent in the average of the cities served by
UT, and in Callastro City, Callastro, and Panama City, where we just
put in a spaceport, it more than doubled."

"Funny coincidence," someone grunted.

"Very funny," said another. "If the police notice it, and the public
hears of it--"

There was no man there who would willingly have parted with his place
at that table, no one who was unaware that in fighting his way to a
place at that table he had seized some part of control of the destiny
of the solar system.

UT--Union Transport, spread the meshes of its transportation service
through almost every city of Earth and the hamlets and roads and bus
and railroad and airlines between--and even to the few far ports where
mankind had found a toehold in space. But its existence was
precariously balanced on public trust.

UT's unity from city to city and country to country, its spreading
growth had saved the public much discomfort and expense of overlapping
costs and transfers and confusion, and so the public, on the advice of
economists, grudgingly allowed UT to grow ever bigger. There was a
conservative movement to put all such outsize businesses under
government ownership as had been the trend in the last generation but
the economy was mushrooming too fast for the necessary neatness, and
the public rightly would not trust politicos in any operation too
confusing for them to be watched, and preferred to leave such
businesses to private operation, accepting the danger for the profit
of efficient and penurious operation, dividends and falling costs.

But all these advantages were barely enough to buy UT's life from year
to year. It had grown too big.

Its directors held power to make or break any city and the prosperity
of its inhabitants by mere small shifts in shipping fees, a decision
to put in a line, or a terminal, or a crossroad. The power was
indirectly recognized in the honors and higher offices, the free
entertainment and lavish privileges available to them from any chamber
of commerce and any political representative, lobbying discreetly for
a slight bias of choice that would place an airport or spaceport in
their district rather than another.

Perhaps some of the directors used their position for personal
pl