made it that much worse. Against an Earthman, their rage was far from impotent.

Nobody understood why the book was funny, of course. The joke was over their heads, and that made human beings even angrier.

He remembered a quotation from a book he had read once. A member of some tribal-taboo culture—African or South Pacific, he forgot which—had been treated at a missionary hospital for something or other and had described his experience.

"The white witch doctor protects himself by wearing a little round mirror on his head which reflects back the evil spirits."

Could that savage have possibly understood what was humorous about that remark? No. Not even if you explained to him why the doctor used the mirror that way.

Now what? McLeod thought. He was out of a job and his bank account was running low. His credit rating had dropped to zero.

McLeod heard a key turn in the lock. The door swung open and Jackson entered with his squad of U.B.I. men.

"Hey!" said McLeod, jumping to his feet. "What do you think this is?"

"Shut up, McLeod," Jackson growled. "Get your coat. You're wanted at headquarters."

McLeod started to say something, then thought better of it. There was nothing he could say. Nobody would care if the U.B.I. manhandled him. Nobody would protest that his rights were being ignored. If McLeod got his teeth knocked in, Jackson would probably be voted a medal.

McLeod didn't say another word. He followed orders. He got his coat and was taken down to the big building on the East River which had begun its career as the United Nations Building.

He was bundled up to an office and shoved into a chair.

Somebody shoved a paper at him. "Sign this!"

"What is it?" McLeod asked, finding his voice.

"A receipt. For two thousand dollars. Sign it."

McLeod looked the paper over, then looked up at the burly man who had shoved it at him. "Fifty thousand Galactic credits! What is this for?"

"The royalty check for your unprintably qualified book has come in, Funny Man. The Government is taking ninety-eight per cent for income taxes. Sign!"

McLeod pushed the paper back across the desk. "No. I won't. You can confiscate my money. I can't stop that, I guess. But I won't give it legal sanction by signing anything. I don't even see the two thousand dollars this is supposed to be a receipt for."

Jackson, who was standing behind McLeod, grabbed his arm and twisted. "Sign!" His voice was a snarl in McLeod's ear.

Eventually, of course, he signed.

"'Nother beer, Mac?" asked the bartender with a friendly smile.

"Yeah, Leo; thanks." McLeod pushed his quarter across the bar with one hand and scratched negligently at his beard with the fingers of the other. Nobody questioned him in this neighborhood. The beard, which had taken two months to grow, disguised his face, and he had given his name as McCaffery, allowing his landlord and others who heard it to make the natural assumption that he was of Irish descent.

He was waiting. He had been forced to move from his apartment; nobody wanted that dirty so-and-so, Professor McLeod, around. Besides, his money was running short. He had never seen the two thousand. "You'll get that when the Galactic bank cashes your royalty check," he had been told. He was waiting.

Not hiding. No. That wasn't possible. The U.B.I. could find him easily when they wanted him. There was no place he could have hidden from them for very long. A man needs friends to stay hidden from an efficient police organization for very long, and John Hamish McLeod had no friends. "Jack McCaffery" had, since he was a pleasant kind of fellow who made friends easily when he wanted them. But he had no illusions about his new friends. Let them once suspect, however faintly, that Good Old Jack McCaffery was really that Professor McLeod, and the game would be up.

The U.B.I. would find him again all right, whenever it wanted him. And McLeod hoped it would be soon because he was down to his last hundred bucks.

So he waited and thought about fifty thousand Galactic credits.

The mathematics was simple, but it conveyed an awful lot of information. To make fifty thousand credits from one thousandth of one percent royalties on a book selling at five credits the copy, one must needs sell a billion copies. Nothing to it.

     5X·10^-5 = 5·10⁴
Ergo:        X = 10⁹

McLeod drew the equations on the bar with the tip of a wet forefinger, then rubbed them out quickly.

A billion copies in the first year. He should have seen it. He should have understood.

How many planets were there in the galaxy?

How many people on each planet?

Communication, even at ultralight velocities, would be necessarily slow. The galaxy was just too big to be compassed by the human mind—or even by the mind of a Galactic, McLeod suspected.

How do you publish a book for Galactic, for galaxy-wide, consumption? How long does it take to saturate the market on each planet? How long does it take to spread the book from planet to planet? How many people were there on each planet who would buy a good book? Or, at least, an entertaining one.

McLeod didn't know, but he suspected that the number was huge. McLeod was a zoologist, not an astronomer, but he read enough on astronomy to know that the estimated number of Earth-type planets alone—according to the latest theory—ran into the tens of millions or hundreds of millions. The—

A man sat down on the stool next to McLeod and said something loud enough and foul enough to break the zoologist's train of thought.

"Gimme a shot, Leo," he added in an angry voice.

"Sure, Pete," the bartender said. "What's the trouble?"

"Tourists," Pete said with a snarl. "Laffin' attus alla time like we was monkeys inna zoo! Bunch 'em come inta day." He downed his whiskey with a practiced flip of the wrist and slammed it on the bar. Leo refilled it immediately. "I shunt gripe, I guess. Gotta haffa credit offen 'em." He slapped down a five dollar bill as though it had somehow been contaminated.

The bar became oddly quiet. Everyone had heard Pete. Further, everyone had heard that another shipload of Galactics had landed and were, at the moment, enjoying the sights of New York. A few of them knew that Pete was the bell-captain in one of the big midtown hotels.

McLeod listened while Pete expounded on the shame he had had to undergo to earn half a credit—a lousy five bucks.

McLeod did some estimating. Tourists—the word had acquired an even more pejorative sense than it had before, and now applied only to Galactics—bought nothing, but they tipped for services, unless the services weren't wanted or needed. Pete had given them information that they hadn't had before—where to find a particular place. All in all, the group of fifteen Galactics had given out five or six credits in such tips. Say half a credit apiece. There were, perhaps, a hundred Galactics in this shipload. That meant fifty credits. Hm-m-m.

They didn't need anyone to carry their bags; they didn't need anyone to register them in hotels; they didn't need personal service of that kind. All they wanted to do was look. But they wouldn't pay for looking. They had no interest in Broadway plays or the acts in the night-clubs—at least, not enough to induce them to pay to see them. This particular group had wanted to see a hotel. They had wandered through it, looking at everything and laughing fit to kill at the carpets on the floor and the electric lighting and such. But when the management had hinted that payment for such services as letting them look should be forthcoming, they had handed half a credit to someone and walked out. Then they had gone to the corner of Fifty-first and Madison and looked for nothing.

Fifty credits for a shipload. Three shiploads a year. Hell, give 'em the benefit of the doubt and say ten