a while. And some guys
got married and made noises like real Khlorisanu--genuine Oredanu, in
fact. A few of them married Oredana girls." He laughed shortly.

"The Khlorisanu are humanoid--human to as many decimals as you need to
go. There's a little minor variation in superficial appearance between
them and the average galactic, but there's no basic difference. Quite a
few of the fellows found the local girls made good wives.

"But anyway. There wasn't any real organization among us. We just ...
well, sort of knew what the other fellow was about. Kind of kept our
own personal policy files. And things went along pretty well.

"Oh, there were some fellows who stuck to some sort of organizational
structure, I suppose. You know how that is--some guys can't draw a deep
breath unless the rest of the team is there to fill in the picture.

* * * * *

"And then, there were several people like Andy Masterson, who showed up
from nowhere. That was none of my business. Happened to know Andy, but
I've never talked to him here. Those people had complete new
backgrounds. No Guard experience--it says here. And they joined the
economy--took out Oredan citizenship. Some of them got into government
work.

"Then this guy, Daniel Stern, showed up. He started grabbing influence
with both hands. Smart young guy. Killed off a prime minister--we
think--and a king. Can't prove any of that, though." Kent shook his
head.

"Don't think we didn't try to stop him, once we realized what he was up
to. We did. About that time, a whole lot of us did get together and
organize. But he's one of those people. If he tells a man to go out and
shoot himself, the next thing you hear is the sound of a falling body."
His eyes clouded and he looked searchingly at Don.

"You should know what I mean. Like when you told that Ghar thief to
tell us all about it--remember?"

"Look, Dad, that's something I'd like to know...."

Kent Michaels waved a hand. "So would I. But I know less about it than
you do, so it's no use. All I know is that some people can tell most
anyone to do almost anything--and it gets done. As I said, Stern seems
to be one of them." He shrugged.

"Anyway, we lost a lot of good colonists before we decided to sit back
and wait this boy out.

"It's been a long wait. Some of us have gotten rich in the meantime, in
spite of Stern's trick taxes. Some of us have had a pretty rough time,
I guess. But we're