ppointing
the local governors, but aside from that the newly-opened worlds of the
Edge were completely under their own rule. Some of the more vocal
critics of the Local Autonomy System had dubbed it instead the
Indigenous Corruption System; it was by now a fairly standard nickname
in the outworlds.

The system made for a wide-open frontier--bustling, wild, hectic, and
rich. For the worlds of the Edge were untamed worlds, raw and
forbidding, and the policy of the Councils was calculated to attract the
kind of men who not only could but would open these frontiers. The
roustabouts, the low drifters of the spaceways ... men who were hard and
strong from repeated knocks, who were looking for a way to work or fight
their way up. The lean and hungry of the outworlds.

Rynason glanced across the table at Manning. He was neither lean nor
hungry, but he had that look in his eyes. Rynason had been around the
Edge for years--his father had travelled the spacers in the commercial
lines--and he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines,
in the spaceports, in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up
almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on
Manning despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression.

"You don't have to worry about the colonists here," Manning was saying
to the girl. "I'll treat 'em decently. There'll be money to be made
here, and I can make it without stepping on too many toes."

Mara seemed amused. "And what would happen if you _had_ to step on them
to make your money? What if Hirlaj doesn't turn out to have any natural
resources worth exploiting--a whole civilization has been here for
thousands of years? What if the colony here starts to falter, and the
men move on?"

Manning frowned at her for a moment, then gave a grunting laugh. "No
chance of that. It's like Lee was just saying--this planet is an
important discovery--we've got tame aliens here, intelligent horsefaces
that you can lead around with a rope on their necks. That alone will
draw tourists. Maybe well set up an official Restricted Ground, a sort
of reservation."

"A zoo, you mean," Rynason interrupted.

Manning raised an amused eyebrow at him. "A reservation, I said. You
know what reservations are like, Lee."

Rynason glared at the heavier man, then subsided. There was no point in
getting into a fight over if's and maybe's; in the outworlds you learned
quickly to confine your clashes to tangib