hanging things, even if he wanted to, and there's
no particular reason to believe he does."

Ronny growled. "From what I can learn of the guy he's anxious to stir up
trouble wherever he goes."

"I don't know. If there's any pattern at all in his activities, it seems
to be that he picks spots where things are ripe to boil over on their own.
He acts as a catalyst. In a place like Avalon he wouldn't get to first
base. Possibly fifty years from now, things will have developed on Avalon
to the point where there is dissatisfaction. By that time," she said
dryly, "we'll assume Tommy Paine will no longer be a problem to the
Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs for one reason or the other."

Ronny took up his book again. He growled, "I can't figure out his
motivation. If I could just put my finger on that."

For once she agreed with him. "I've got an idea, Ronny, that once you have
that, you'll have Tommy Paine."

-------------------------------------

They drew blank on Avalon.

Or, at least, it was drawn for them before they ever arrived.

The Section G agent permanently assigned to that planet had already
checked and double checked the possibilities. None of the four-man crew of
the UP spacecraft had been on New Delos at the time of the assassination
of the God-King. They, and their craft, had been light-years away on
another job.

Ronny Bronston couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it.

The older agent, his name was Jheru Bulchand, was definite. He went over
it with Ronny and Tog in a bar adjoining UP headquarters. He had dossiers
on each of the ten men, detailed dossiers. On the face of it, none of them
could be Paine.

"But one of them has to be," Ronny pleaded. He explained their method of
eliminating the forty-eight employees of UP on New Delos.

Bulchand shrugged. "You've got holes in that method of elimination. You're
assuming Tommy Paine is an individual, and you have no reason to. My own
theory is that it's an organization."

Ronny said unhappily, "Then you're of the opinion that there is a Tommy
Paine?"

The older agent was puffing comfortably on an old style briar pipe. He
nodded definitely. "I believe Tommy Paine exists as an organization.
Possibly once, originally, it was a single person, but now it's a group.
How large, I wouldn't know. Probably not too large or by this time
somebody would have betrayed it, or somebody would have cracked and we
would have caught th