“I’m the_government in town, you might say … mayor, sheriff, judge, notary, and so on.” He smiled.

“Nice to have met you, Mr. Finch.”

“Nice to have met you, Mr. Heber,” said Junior. And he meant it Heber was a pleasant man, but Junior wondered why he had taken so much time to explain the TerranVanek situation to him. Politics, maybe. If enough outsiders could be turned against the pending Integration Bill, maybe it wouldn’t pass. Whatever his reasons, Heber had been very informative.

Junior walked across the dusty street to the general store. A land-rover passed close behind him as he crossed. Ground transportation was common here, possibly because flitters were too expensive to buy, run and service. It was hard work living off the land on Jebinose and the rewards were minimal. The farmlands were a depressed area as far as economics went. That would help explain a part of the poor TerranVanek relations; the Terrans were in control as far as numbers and technology were concerned and they owned all the businesses. But the Vanek held a superior economic position through the sale of their crude little statuettes. The Terrans broke their backs to keep their heads above water, while the Vanek did quite well by merely sitting around and whittling. The situation was tailor-made to generate resentment.

He approached the general store-restaurant building. The foodstuffs and supplies piled out front in their shiny, colorful plastic, or alloy, containers struck an odd contrast to the weather-beaten wood of the store. All the buildings in Danzer were handmade of local wood; prefab probably cost too much.

A hand-lettered sign proclaiming that Bill Jeffers was the proprietor hung over the doorway and Junior’s nostrils were assailed by a barrage of smells as he passed under it. Everything from fertilizer to frying food vied for the attention of his olfactory nerve.

His retinas had not yet adjusted to the diminished light of the store interior and Junior bumped into someone just inside the door. Straining his eyes and blinking, he saw that it was a young Vanek.