hands behind his head.

"Let's see, Don, you're almost twenty now. Right?"

"That's right, Dad."

"Uh huh. And you were born here on Khloris. Means I've been out of
active duty for quite a while, at that." He smiled.

"Got papers upstairs. They say I retired a little more than twenty-one
years ago. Got official permission to live on an outworld and joined
the first group of colonists here. Of course, they don't say anything
about the people that told me to do all that."

Don stared at him. "What are you getting at, Dad?"

His father smiled. "Man retires, he's supposed to be all through with
duty. Not subject to recall except in case of galaxy-wide emergency."
He nodded thoughtfully.

"True. But a lot of people never really retire from the Guard. Things
keep coming up, and that pension begins to look more like a retainer
fee."

He held up a hand.

"Suppose I give you a little go-around on some history that isn't in
the books--at least not in the books they use in these schools.

"Of course, you know about the arrival of the _Stellar Queen_. You've
read all about the original trade contracts here in Oredan. And you've
read a lot about the immigrations. And the border settlements.

"Yes, and you know about the accession of Daniel Stern, first to the
Ministry of Finance, then to the Prime Ministry, then to the Regency.
Quite a success story, that. And you have read about the mixup in the
royal succession." He smiled.

"It all went about that way. Oh, sure, it wasn't quite as peaceable and
orderly as the books make it look, but no history bothers with the
minor slugfests. What they're concerned in is the big picture.

"Well, when the king agreed to colonization of the outer provinces,
quite a few people came crowding out here. And there was more than a
little thievery and brawling and rioting. Naturally, the Federation
Council was interested. And the Stellar Guard was more directly
interested.

[Illustration]

"So, they encouraged a lot of retired guardsmen to come out here,
weapons and all. And they assigned a few more people to ... well, sort
of keep an eye on things. They set some people up with reasonably
decent claims, saw to it that the rest of us got a good start, and left
us to take it from there." He smiled.

"We had some fun, now and then. Got the border pacified. Got the crooks
and the tough boys calmed down. And we got the hill tribes cooled off
some, too. Even made friends with them--after