and led
quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they had to hide their
booty where investigators would not find it. They couldn't really
benefit by it. They had to build their own houses and make their own
garments and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was
not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply
wasn't a trade for a man like Hoddan.

So he'd abandoned it. He'd studied electronics in books from looted
passenger-ship libraries. Within months after arrival on a law-abiding
planet, he was able to earn a living in electronics as an honest trade.

And that was unsatisfactory. Law-abiding communities were no more
thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then didn't
make up for the tedium of labor. Even when one had money there wasn't
much to do with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was
so high that many people needed psychiatric treatment to stand it, and
neurotics vastly outnumbered more normal folk. And on Walden electronics
was only a trade like piracy, and no more fun.

He should have known it would be this way. His grandfather had often
discussed this frustration in human life.

"Us humans," it was his grandfather's habit to say, "don't make sense!
There's some of us that work so hard they're too tired to enjoy life.
There's some that work so hard at enjoying it that they don't get no fun
out of it. And the rest of us spend our lives complainin' that there
ain't any fun in it anyhow. The man that over all has the best time of
any is one that picks out something he hasn't got a chance to do, and
spends his life raisin' hell because he's stopped from doing it.
When"--and here Hoddan's grandfather tended to be emphatic--"he
wouldn't think much of it if he could!"

What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement, of doing
things worth doing, and doing them well. Technically there were
opportunities all around him. He'd developed one, and it would save
millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But nobody wanted it.
He'd tried to force its use, he was in trouble, and now he could
complain justly enough, but despite his grandfather he was not the
happiest man he knew.

* * * * *

The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.

"Things move fast," he said cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour
before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an
exce