from one course of study to
another until I'd wound up without a decent degree in anything, and that meant
I couldn't hold a job drawing the kind of salary this girl had in mind, so I
volunteered for Zygra against the advice of what few
friends I had . . ."
He
broke off. Kynance was looking at4iim oddly. "A
bit of a romantic, hm ?" she said. "The outworlds aren't kind to romantics, as I've recently
learned."
"Call trying to buy a girl with a year
of your life romantic'?" Coberley jeered. Some
of his spirit seemed to have returned with the food he'd engulfed.
"I
didn't quite mean that," Kynance said.
"What I had in mind was this bit about skipping from subject to subject instead
of buckling down and fitting himself into the right sort of mold for Nefertiti.
You are Nefertitian ?" she added. Horst gave a nod.
"There can't be many people like that on the outworlds ,
and it's one of the things I've missed most: people who like to associate with people, spend times chatting idly, instead of
driving themselves around the clock. I'd figured out that at least some of the
volunteers for Zygra must have been like you, because
there's sc little room for them anywhere off Earth.
The outworlds don't offer them the chance for a
decent living."
"I
often thought I'd like to go to Earth," Horst admitted. "But there
was nothing I could have done—except come here —where I'd have a chance of
making the cost of the fare." He paused briefly. "And you know
something else? I guess that's why I never made any real friends at home.
Everybody else on the whole damned planet seemed to be so involved in making a
career, earning a fortune—while to me it simply didn't seem like enough to give
purpose to a man's life."
"Listen
to him!" scoffed Coberley . "He's been going
on like this ever since I first knew him, playing the same tape over and
over."
"What induced you to come to Zygra ?" Kynance inquired.
"Me?
I was stupid, same as Horst and Dickery and Victor.
Wouldn't think it to look at me now, but when I was Horst's age I had muscles
and there was a big demand for men who were built, back on Loki—which is my
home world. I didn't have too many brains to go with the muscles, though, and I
got kind of left behind by events. So I jumped at what I thought was a
snap."
" Dickery ?"
He
told her, with many sighs, about what he had planned to do with the salary he
would have collected on leaving here. It made him seem like what she had at
first guessed: a rather nice, but lazy, man not bright enough to invest twenty
years' hard work in some other job against the promise of later enjoyment.
Easy meat for the Zygra Company. All of them were,
including Victor, about whom the others reported that in a fit of deep
depression he'd decided he wanted to get the hell away from the entire human
race, and had grabbed this job as a hermitage. Of course, when his condition
had cycled back to the upward phase, he'd regretted it.
"Do
any of you know why the Zygra Company adopted this
policy of changing its supervisors annually, recruiting them on this absurd
basis and deliberately trapping them into infringing their contracts?" she
asked next.
"I
think so," Horst answered. "Victor knew the man before him, who knew
the first of these nine Shuster told you about. It
seems that there was a man called Zbygniewski who was
planted by another company to find out what he could about this place and the
life-cycle of the pelts. He must have been armored up to the roof of his skull
with post-hypnotics and drugs, because he got through the company's routine
interrogation, joined the staff, was assigned to his tour of duty here—it was
farmed out among permanent employees then, you see—and after his year's stay
he got away with information that enabled his bosses to launch the most nearly
successful of all the raids on Zygra . He'd also
planted a boobytrap for his successor, the idea being
that this would make the planet legally unoccupied so that someone else
another until I'd wound up without a decent degree in anything, and that meant
I couldn't hold a job drawing the kind of salary this girl had in mind, so I
volunteered for Zygra against the advice of what few
friends I had . . ."
He
broke off. Kynance was looking at4iim oddly. "A
bit of a romantic, hm ?" she said. "The outworlds aren't kind to romantics, as I've recently
learned."
"Call trying to buy a girl with a year
of your life romantic'?" Coberley jeered. Some
of his spirit seemed to have returned with the food he'd engulfed.
"I
didn't quite mean that," Kynance said.
"What I had in mind was this bit about skipping from subject to subject instead
of buckling down and fitting himself into the right sort of mold for Nefertiti.
You are Nefertitian ?" she added. Horst gave a nod.
"There can't be many people like that on the outworlds ,
and it's one of the things I've missed most: people who like to associate with people, spend times chatting idly, instead of
driving themselves around the clock. I'd figured out that at least some of the
volunteers for Zygra must have been like you, because
there's sc little room for them anywhere off Earth.
The outworlds don't offer them the chance for a
decent living."
"I
often thought I'd like to go to Earth," Horst admitted. "But there
was nothing I could have done—except come here —where I'd have a chance of
making the cost of the fare." He paused briefly. "And you know
something else? I guess that's why I never made any real friends at home.
Everybody else on the whole damned planet seemed to be so involved in making a
career, earning a fortune—while to me it simply didn't seem like enough to give
purpose to a man's life."
"Listen
to him!" scoffed Coberley . "He's been going
on like this ever since I first knew him, playing the same tape over and
over."
"What induced you to come to Zygra ?" Kynance inquired.
"Me?
I was stupid, same as Horst and Dickery and Victor.
Wouldn't think it to look at me now, but when I was Horst's age I had muscles
and there was a big demand for men who were built, back on Loki—which is my
home world. I didn't have too many brains to go with the muscles, though, and I
got kind of left behind by events. So I jumped at what I thought was a
snap."
" Dickery ?"
He
told her, with many sighs, about what he had planned to do with the salary he
would have collected on leaving here. It made him seem like what she had at
first guessed: a rather nice, but lazy, man not bright enough to invest twenty
years' hard work in some other job against the promise of later enjoyment.
Easy meat for the Zygra Company. All of them were,
including Victor, about whom the others reported that in a fit of deep
depression he'd decided he wanted to get the hell away from the entire human
race, and had grabbed this job as a hermitage. Of course, when his condition
had cycled back to the upward phase, he'd regretted it.
"Do
any of you know why the Zygra Company adopted this
policy of changing its supervisors annually, recruiting them on this absurd
basis and deliberately trapping them into infringing their contracts?" she
asked next.
"I
think so," Horst answered. "Victor knew the man before him, who knew
the first of these nine Shuster told you about. It
seems that there was a man called Zbygniewski who was
planted by another company to find out what he could about this place and the
life-cycle of the pelts. He must have been armored up to the roof of his skull
with post-hypnotics and drugs, because he got through the company's routine
interrogation, joined the staff, was assigned to his tour of duty here—it was
farmed out among permanent employees then, you see—and after his year's stay
he got away with information that enabled his bosses to launch the most nearly
successful of all the raids on Zygra . He'd also
planted a boobytrap for his successor, the idea being
that this would make the planet legally unoccupied so that someone else
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