ned out another on the same model, a younger simpler
duplicate of himself. Pierce was doing exactly what he said, offering
service to Bryce as he would offer him a sword, simply for the risk
and delight of being an instrument in a power game with stakes as high
as he had guessed Bryce's game to be. There was no danger of him being
a plant, and no danger of him squealing under pressure: the risk of
death or arrest was part of his pay.

* * * * *

"Okay," Bryce said. He gestured with his head to a corner of the room
behind him. "Sit over there. You're my cousin from Montehedo, and I'm
showing you the town." He turned to his appointment pad again and
read. After Pierce had placed a chair in the indicated position, Bryce
said without turning. "This week I can use a bodyguard. Someone's
hiring killers for me."

There was no sound of motion for a moment. Bryce got the idea that
Pierce was more surprised than the fact warranted. But his question
was gentle and deadly. "Any idea who?"

"The line forms to the left." Bryce said dryly, "Put away that needle
gun and buy something legal that kills." He handed back a sheaf of
letters, memos and graphs. "Read these and learn." For some reason he
felt exhilarated.

He turned back to work, routing shipments, shifting rates to balance
shifting costs, lowering rates for preliminary incentive on lines that
could run at lower cost with a heavier load, occasionally using the
Bell communication load analyzer and Kesby's formula analysis for a
choice of ways of averting bottlenecks and overload slow-down points,
sometimes consulting the solar system maps on the walls.

Good service built up customer demand and dependency on good service.
Producers manufacturing now on Earth with the new materials shipped in
from space could not be cut off from access to the new materials
without ruin to the manufacturers. Earth was becoming dependent on
space transport.

Once the customers were given it, they grew to need it. He smiled at
the thought. It was another kind of drug traffic, and wielded the
same kind of potentially infinite power over the customers.

One thing he had learned from the Economics tome he had struggled with
four nights ago, a simple inexorable principle he had recognized dimly
before--that since it was difficult and more expensive to ship out
goods from Earth to space than it was to drop goods into Earth from
space, eventually spacepeople might