single contract on a single planet was enough to
transform a fly-by-night outfit into a major concern.

So that was the basis of the Open Planet, but there the real story has
only begun. Winning the race did not always mean winning the contract.
It was what you found when you got down that made the job of a Contact
Man one of the most hazardous occupations in history. Each new planet
was wholly and completely new, there were no rules, and what you
learned on all the rest meant nothing. You went from a matriarchy
which refused absolutely to deal with men (the tenth ship to arrive
had a lady doctor and therefore got the contract) to a planet where
the earth was sacred and you couldn't dig a hole in it so mining was
out, to a planet which considered your visit the end of the world and
promptly committed mass suicide. The result of this was that a
successful Contact Man had to be a remarkable man to begin with: a
combined speed demon, sociologist, financier, diplomat and geologist,
all in one. It was a job in which successful men not only made
fortunes, they made legends. It was that way with Pat Travis.

Sitting at the viewscreen, watching the clouds whip by and the first
dark clots of towns beginning to shape below, Travis thought about the
legend. He was a tall, frail, remarkably undernourished looking man
with large soft brown eyes. He did not look like a legend and he knew
it, and, being a man of great pride, it bothered him. More and more,
as the years went by, his competitors blamed his success on luck. It
was not Pat Travis that was the legend, it was the luck of Pat Travis.
Over the years he had learned not to argue about it, and it was only
during these past few months, when his luck had begun to slip, that he
mentioned it at all.

Luck no more makes a legend, he knew, than raw courage makes a
fighter. But legends die quick in deep space, and his own had been
a-dying for a good long while now, while other lesser men, the luck
all theirs, plucked planet after planet from under his nose. Now at
the viewscreen he glanced dolefully across the room at his crew: the
curly-headed young Dahlinger and the profound Mr. Trippe. In contrast
to his own weary relaxation, both of the young men were tensed and
anxious, peering into the screen. They had come to learn under the
great Pat Travis, but in the last few months what they seemed to have
learned most was Luck: if you happened to be close you were lucky and
if you weren