tus had been passed by the
fifty states. And--as with their liquor and divorce laws--no two of the
states had the same set of laws, and no one of them was without gaping
flaws.

By the time the off-again-on-again wars in Europe had been stilled by
the combined pressure of the United Nations--in which the United States
and the Soviet Union co-operated wholeheartedly, working together in a
way they had not done for over twenty years--the "scientific control
laws" in the United States had combined to make scientific research
almost impossible for the layman, and a matter of endless red tape,
forms-in-octuplicate, licenses, permits, investigations, delays, and
confusion for the professional.

The answer, of course, was the black market. What bootlegging had done
for the average citizen in the Twenties, the black market was doing for
scientists fifty years later.

The trouble was that, unlike the Volstead Act, the scientific
prohibitions aroused no opposition from the man in the street. Indeed,
he rather approved of them. He needed and wanted the products of
scientific research, but he had a vague fear of the scientist--the
"egghead." To his way of thinking, the laws were cleverly-designed
restrictions promulgated by that marvelous epitome of humanity, the
common man, to keep the mysterious scientists from meddling with things
they oughtn't to.

The result was that the Latin American countries went into full swing,
producing just those items which North American scientists couldn't get
their hands on, because the laws stayed on the books. During the next
ten years, they were modified slightly, but only very slightly; but the
efforts to enforce them became more and more lax. By the time the late
Seventies and early Eighties rolled around, the black marketeers were
doing very nicely, thank you, and any suggestion from scientists that
the laws should be modified was met with an intensive counterpropaganda
effort by the operators of the black market.

Actually, the word "operators" is a misnomer. It was known by the
authorities at the time that there was only one ring operating; the
market was too limited to allow for the big-time operations carried on
by the liquor smugglers and distillers of half a century before.

Sam Bending naturally was forced to deal with the black market, just as
everyone else engaged in research was; it was, for instance, the only
source for a good many technical publications which had been put o