see as much as possible as quickly as possible, and he knew he wouldn’t be seeing anything at all while riding in a conveyor tube. The ’bus was a sturdy, tracked conveyance, and a glance at it told a traveler all he needed to know about travel in the deserts of Llayless. Mountains loomed on all sides, providing a distant haze of superb beauty. The desert was a disaster of sand dunes and slag heaps. Crossing the former, the ’bus left a cloud of sand behind. With slag heaps, it was a cloud of dust.
Pummery, the principal commercial city of the world of Llayless, had been almost invisible when the spaceship was settling in for a landing. It was a complex of massive domes enclosing business buildings, residences, smelters, and the immense nuclear power plant, with tubes for the network of railway lines that extended in all directions like spreading tentacles. Domes and tubes were more than half buried in the shifting sands of a narrow, elongated desert. The spaceport, unfortunately, had to be kept cleared of sand, and a platoon of dozers worked full time at the task.
The domes and tubes were an afterthought engendered by necessity. In its remote past, which could have been as long ago as three or four decades, the municipality of Pummery had been a struggling desert mining town calling itself Struth. Then someone struck it rich, and the manipulators took over. After the usual period of underhanded contrivance and downright chicanery, Old Albert emerged triumphant.
When he died, his widow hired a factor, one Jeffrey Wallingford Pummery, to manage the world for her, after which she shook the sands of Llayless from her heels forever. One of the factor’s first acts was to manipulate a name change. Llayless’s principal commercial center, Struth, became Pummery, thus splashing the factor’s own name prominently on the world’s map. No one objected. As long as Pummery operated efficiently and honestly and kept her royalties coming, the widow didn’t bother herself with minor things like name changes. The factor was, for all that Dantler had heard, a shrewd and honest operator who built for the future.
The Llayless desert was a terrible place for a world’s commercial center, but Pummery was perfectly situated to serve mining operations in the mountains on all sides. The narrow-gauge electric railway lines bringing ore to the smelters from the mines were able to coast down the mountain slopes, thus hauling their loads at a profit because they generated electricity in the process. The only cost was for replacing their frequently worn-out brakes.
Those mines were rich enough to occupy the Llayless Mining Corporation for years to come. Until they played out, the remainder of the world would remain untouched.
The ’bus stopped in front of the Llayless Mining Corporation’s world headquarters. Dantler climbed out along with several others who had come to Llayless on business, left his space trunk to be delivered to a sprawling, dilapidated, one-story building farther along the town’s central street—its faded sign bore the message “ … OTEL” —and stood regarding the headquarters building with puzzled scrutiny. Apparently Jeffrey Wallingford Pummery did not go in for luxury, as he was using the same ramshackle three-story building that had been Old Albert’s headquarters. It hadn’t even been treated to a new coat of paint for years.
Dantler’s fellow passengers entered the building ahead of him. Either they were directed at once to the departments that concerned them or they already knew the way because they had vanished by the time Dantler entered. He approached the receptionist, a pert, overalled young lady with bluish blond hair. She eyed him disdainfully. The lobby proctor took in Dantler’s appearance with a snort and decided not to like his looks. He took a step forward.
Dantler proffered a letter to the young lady—the same he had shown the clerk at the port. She glanced at it, glanced at Dantler again, and suddenly decided to read it slowly and with care. The proctor came forward and read over her shoulder. When the young lady had finished her reading and made a copy of the letter, the proctor took it and read it a second time.
His attitude had flip-flopped. “Mr. Pummery’s personal offices occupy the third floor,” he said politely. “If you will follow me, please, I’ll show you to the tubes.” The levitation tubes were J. Wallingford Pummery’s one concession to modern comfort. Probably he became tired of negotiating three flights of stairs to and from his office several times a day.
The receptionist must have warned everyone that Dantler was coming. He moved as if by magic through the various barricades that Pummery had erected to protect himself from unwanted intruders. Five minutes later, having been shown into a cramped office that was as spartan as Dantler expected, Dantler was settled comfortably in a guest chair and scrutinizing the great man himself while a scowling Pummery scrutinized him. He might have been a retired university professor—tall, slender, neatly bearded, scholarly. The beard was gray, but Pummery looked young and energetic.
Dantler passed a letter across the desk. It was not the letter he had shown the receptionist—that one had functioned merely to get him into Pummery’s presence. This one was highly confidential. Pummery read it with obvious astonishment.
“You’re a Galactic Bureau of Investigation Officer?” he asked.
“Officer Dantler, at your service,” Dantler murmured politely.
“Nonsense. The GBI doesn’t serve anyone unless by doing so it forwards it’s own interests. You’re here on a special inspection trip to reevaluate the world’s status?”
Dantler nodded diffidently.
“The letter says you are also here to conduct an investigation. The Inter-World Council has something it wants investigated on Llayless?”
“It does.”
Pummery tilted back in his chair and regarded him with puzzled interest. “This is a world without a government. For that reason, people call it a totally lawless world, and they couldn’t be more wrong. The fact that a world has no government doesn’t mean it has no laws. Humankind brings its own laws with it wherever it goes— sometimes like unwanted baggage it can’t get rid of, but it always has them. They are an expression of the deep- seated customs and attitudes it must live by. Is the Inter-World Council trying to introduce its own brand of law and order here?”
“Surely you have read the Federation’s constitution,” Dantler murmured. “I’m here to evaluate the world’s status as the constitution provides and to conduct an investigation of something that has already occurred. If my investigation confirms information the Bureau has received, then I will see that proper action is taken.”
“What is it that they want investigated?”
“A murder.”
“There has been a murder on Llayless?”
“There has. After I have confirmed that the murder has taken place and that the identity of the murderer has been reported to the GBI correctly, I intend to apprehend the murderer and bring him to justice.”
Pummery took the time to read the letter through again, slowly. Then he touched a button and spoke in a normal tone of voice. “Mr. Jabek, please.”
While they waited, Dantler amusedly counted the seconds. He had reached six when the door opened. As he expected, Pummery kept everyone who worked for him on his toes.
Pummery did not bother to introduce Jabek. Instead, he introduced Dantler. He said, “This is Birk Dantler, an officer of the GBI, the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. The GBI is the investigative arm of the Inter-World Council. He has been sent here on a confidential mission of inspection and investigation. Do you know what that means?”
“No, sir,” Jabek answered apologetically.
“The Inter-World Council has a stranglehold on every world in the galaxy—if it chooses to apply it. At this moment, Officer Dantler is the most powerful man on the world of Llayless. If he finds this organization or any organization or individual on the world less than completely cooperative, he can express his dissatisfaction, and an absolute embargo will be placed on us. No ship will arrive; no ship will leave.
“You will prepare the necessary credentials for him. He can go wherever he likes, and transportation is to be arranged for him whenever he needs it; he is to see whatever he wants to see; he is to talk with whomever he wants to talk with. Any person who fails to cooperate fully will find him or herself on the next outbound spaceship. The credentials you give him should make that clear.”
Pummery turned to Dantler. “I can order everyone on the world of Llayless to cooperate with you, but I have no control over what they say, and I can’t make them tell the truth. Neither can I tell you anything about this murder myself because I have no knowledge about it.
“I want to make one thing clear. We may have no government here, but as I already mentioned, we are not without laws—though we don’t call them that. We have rules of conduct that we impose on ourselves, and they
