ituation."

"I'll try," I said, feeling foolish. This was no place for a
conversation--especially not with the head of the Government.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll succeed," he told me brightly. "After all, Mr.
Carboy, we've heard of your ... ah ... group. Oh, yes. Your fame is ...
ah ... universal."

"Sure," I said. "I'll do my best. But the less I'm seen talking to
you, the better."

"Nevertheless," he said. "If we need to meet--"

"If we do," I said, "there's a set of signals in the daily papers.
Your Intelligence should know all about that, Mr. President."

"Ah," he said. "Of course. Certainly. Well, Mr. Carboy, I do want to
tell you how glad I am--"

"So am I," I said. "Good-by."

The trouble with the democratic process is that a group of people
picked at random can elect some silly leaders. That's been happening
ever since ancient Greece, I imagine, and it'll go on happening. It
may not be fatal, but it's annoying.

My job, for instance, was to prop up this foolish little man. I had to
work against a group of guerrillas who were even more democratic, from
all I'd heard, and who seemed to have a great deal of common,
ordinary brains. Of course, I wasn't doing it for the President--it
was for the Comity as a whole, and it needed to be done.

But I can't honestly say that that made me feel any better about the
job.

* * * * *

I was driven out of the city right after I'd packed up my
supplies--two days' food and water in a rude knapsack, a call-radio
and some other special devices I didn't think I was going to need.
But, I told myself, you never know ... there was even a suicide
device, just in case. I packed it away and forgot about it.

The city was an oasis in the middle of jungle, with white clean
buildings and static-cleaned streets and walks. It didn't seem to have
a park, but, then, it didn't need one. There was plenty of park
outside.

The beautiful street became a poor one half a mile out of the city,
and degenerated into a rough trail for ground vehicles soon after
that. "How many people are there on this planet?" I asked my driver.

He never took his eyes from the road. "Two and a half million, last
census," he said, with great respect.

That explained things, of course. As the population grew, the cities
would expand and the forests would go under. It had happened on Earth,
and on every settled planet. As recently as 1850, for instance, large
tracts of New Yor