Regulations provide

"And what a wicked thing that is! Eh?" said Joe. "We've been over this before. I know when I'm licked, but when will that obsolete monstrosity get its official bowels in gear and give out with the data? I've had a crew standing by since yesterday."

O'Conners didn't answer. He looked speculatively around the plush, luxurious office that was Joe's one vice and his only indulgence. He looked out at the vast properties that represented as much as a small nation might have once possessed. The great shops and laboratories rivaled a government facility.

"We'll be taking you over one of these days," said the inspector. "A government can't tolerate a private enterprise of this scope. This should belong to the people."

"Like the Tyrannosaurus," muttered Joe in a cloud of smoke, "He must have kicked and jumped and squealed to the last, too. And you've got just about as much chance now as he had. As long as there is space, you bureaucrats will never be on top again. It took a civil world war to get your kind off the top of the heap once, and you're off for good. In an expanding economy civilization simply passes by while you fuss and holler. It's only in a shrinking world that people think they need bureaucrats and socialists to tell them what to do."

O'Conners shook his head sadly, "The government needs men like you. It's tragic that the organising and technical ability you possess should be coupled with such atavism."

He turned to the door. "I'll send yon an official clearance to bring them in as soon as — and if — the sorter verifies the data given by the disabled craft, and central confirms it."

He left.

Every time, Joe thought. Every time it was like this. Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. He went to the window and looked out upon the hundred or so craft from every part of the universe that lay on the landing field. That they represented genius incredibly far removed from his comprehension troubled O'Conners not at all. One of them, a huge vessel a mile and a half long and fifteen hundred feet in diameter had come almost three million light-years out of space, the farthest communication that men of Earth had yet had with other sentient beings.

But O'Conners was not impressed. He'd kept them in an orbit above Earth's barrier screen for three days while he checked their credentials.

If there had turned up the slightest inconsistency in the communication between their alien minds and his primtive Earth mentality, he'd have refused entry to their crippled and nearly helpless vessel. He would probably have let them die in space rather than let them down, Joe thought bitterly. The bureaucratic mind!

He stepped back to the desk and called his repair superintendent. "Winfield, have you heard anything new from the Nerane IV?"

"Not for the last five hours. They might be dead by now if they're in any serious personnel trouble aboard."

"Yeah, they might be, mightn't they? Just like six months ago when he held the Cordomarians off until nine of them died. Nine specimens of the most brilliant intellect we've ever known — sacrificed to a regulation. We're bringing them down. It's not going to happen again."

"But O'Conners - !"

"They have an ellipsoidal hull. He couldn't tell them from a Croesan Nightwing or a Hammerlane."

"As soon as we key the screen to drop it through, some bright lad in central will pick up the data. They're watching us too closely."

"We'll take that chance. People's lives are more important than O'Conners' regulations. Better send out a boarding party if you haven't heard for that long. See if anyone can get into them. Let me know what their trouble is."

"0.K. I'll send out Perkins and his crew."

Joe moved away and stood by the window again. This out there was his, he thought savagely, and no bureaucrat was going to regulate him into murdering his customers. He'd built up this business from the modest scratch his father had started, and it was his to use. He only wished he had someone to pass it on to. There was Richard, of course, but Richard had disappeared fifteen hundred light-years away twelve years ago. It would be a vain hope to suppose that Richard would ever inherit "Joe's Service and Repair".

In the early days of intergalactic flight, when the super-cee ships were first brought out, a vessel was little more than a flying machine shop and laboratory. It had to be equipped with facilities for virtually rebuilding itself in case of failure or disaster.

That robbed the ships, especiallty the early small ones, of much of their useful load. Finally, when men made contact with other intelligent life they found it was almost the same among every other group.