They carped at, gossiped about, and despised each other. They took the Corporation’s stock as part of their pay, and exploited all the more ruthlessly for it. They jockeyed for favored assignments, brought back as “souvenirs” anything valuable and sufficiently portable on the worlds they visited, and cordially hated the crews of all the rival mother ships. They weren’t pioneers—they were looters, squabbling among themselves for the biggest share, and they made Imbry’s stomach turn.

They were even worse than most of the TSN officers and men he’d known.

“Imbry.”

He looked up. Lindenhoff was standing, arms akimbo, under the schematic at the head of the briefing room.

“Yes?” Imbry answered tightly.

“You take II. It’s a rain-forest world. Humanoid inhabited.”

“I’ve studied the surveys.”

Lindenhoff’s heavy mouth twitched. “I hope so. You’re going alone. There’s nothing the natives can do to you that you won’t be able to handle. Conversely, there’s nothing much of any value on the planet. You’ll contact the natives and try to get them started on some kind of civilization. You’ll explain what the Terran Union is, and the advantages of trade. They ought to be able to grow some luxury agricultural products. See how they’d respond toward developing a technology. If Coogan turns up some industrial ores on IV, they’d make a good market, in time. That’s about the general idea. Nobody expects you to accomplish much—just push ’em in the right direction. Take two weeks. All straight?”

“Yes.” Imbry felt his jaws tightening. Something for nothing, again. First the Corporation developed a market, then it sold it the ores it found on a neighboring world.

No, he wasn’t angry about having been given an assignment that couldn’t go wrong and that wouldn’t matter much if it did. He was quite happy about it, because he intended to do as little for the Corporation as he could.