“Enough to argue about it,” put in Elissa. “They are bothered about duties, who defines them, and who does them.”

“With good reason,” Harrison riposted. “You can’t escape them yourselves.”

“Meaning—?” asked Seth.

“This world runs on some strange system of swapping obligations. How will any person kill an ob unless he recognizes his duty to do so?”

“Duty has nothing to do with it,” said Seth. “And if it did happen to be a matter of duty, every man would recognize it for himself. It would be outrageous impertinence for anyone else to remind him, unthinkable to anyone to order him.”

“Some guys must make an easy living,” interjected Gleed. ‘There’s nothing to stop them that I can see.” He studied Seth briefly before he continued, “How can you cope with a citizen who has no conscience?”

“Easy as pie.”

Elissa suggested, “Tell them the story of Idle Jack.”

“It’s a kid’s yarn,” explained Seth. “All children here know it by heart. It’s a classic fable like…like—” He screwed up his face. “I’ve lost track of the Terran tales the first comers brought with them.”

“Red Riding Hood,” offered Harrison.

“Yes.” Seth seized on it gratefully. “Something like that one. A nursery story.” He licked his lips, began, “This Idle Jack came from Terra as a baby, grew up in our new world, studied our economic system and thought he’d be mighty smart. He decided to become a scratcher.”

“What’s a scratcher?” inquired Gleed.

“One who lives by taking obs and does nothing about killing them or planting any of his own. One who accepts everything that’s going and gives nothing in return.”

“I get it. I’ve known one or two like that in my time.”

“Up to age sixteen, Jack got away with it. He was a kid, see. All kids tend to scratch to a certain extent. We expect it and allow for it. After sixteen, he was soon in the soup.”

“How?” urged Harrison, more interested than he was willing to show.

“He went around the town gathering obs by the armful. Meals, clothes and all sorts for the mere asking. It’s not a big town. There are no big ones on this planet. They’re just small enough for everyone to know everyone—and everyone does plenty of gabbing. Within three or four months the entire town knew Jack was a determined scratcher.”

“Go on,” said Harrison, getting impatient.

“Everything dried up,” said Seth. “Wherever Jack went, people gave him the ‘I won’t.’ That’s freedom, isn’t it? He got no meals, no clothes, no entertainment, no company, nothing! Soon he became terribly hungry, busted into someone’s larder one night, gave himself the first square meal in a week.”

“What did they do about that?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“That would encourage him some, wouldn’t it?”

“How could it?” Seth asked, with a thin smile. “It did him no good. Next day his belly was empty again. He had to repeat the performance. And the next day. And the next. People became leery, locked up their stuff, kept watch on it. It became harder and harder. It became so unbearably hard that it was soon a lot easier to leave the town and try another. So Idle Jack went away.”

“To do the same again,” Harrison suggested.

“With the same results for the same reasons,” retorted Seth. “On he went to a third town, a fourth, a fifth, a twentieth. He was stubborn enough to be witless.”

“He was getting by,” Harrison observed. “Taking all at the mere cost of moving around.”

“No he wasn’t. Our towns are small, like I said. And folk do plenty of visiting from one to another. In town number two Jack had to risk being seen and talked about by someone from town number one. As he went on it got a whole lot worse. In the twentieth he had to take a chance on gabby visitors from any of the previous nineteen.” Seth leaned forward, said with emphasis, “He never got to town number twenty-eight.”

“No?”

“He lasted two weeks in number twenty-five, eight days in twenty-six, one day in twenty-seven. That was almost the end.”

“What did he do then?”

“Took to the open country, tried to live on roots and wild berries. Then he disappeared—until one day some walkers found him swinging from a tree. The body was emaciated and clad in rags. Loneliness and self-neglect had killed him. That was Idle Jack, the scratcher. He wasn’t twenty years old.”

“On Terra,” informed Gleed, “we don’t hang people merely for being lazy.”

“Neither do we,” said Seth. “We leave them free to go hang themselves.” He eyed them shrewdly, went on, “But don’t let it worry you. Nobody has been driven to such drastic measures in my lifetime, leastways, not that I’ve heard about. People honor their obs as a matter of economic necessity and not from any sense of duty. Nobody gives orders, nobody pushes anyone around, but there’s a kind of compulsion built into the circumstances of this planet’s way of living. People play, square—or they suffer. Nobody enjoys suffering—not even a numbskull.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” put in Harrison, much exercised in mind.

“You bet I’m dead right!” Seth assured. “But what I wanted to talk to you two about is something more important. It’s this: What’s your real ambition in life?”

Without hesitation, Gleed said, “To ride the spaceways while remaining in one piece.”

“Same here,” Harrison contributed.

“I guessed that much. You’d not be in the space service if it wasn’t your choice. But you can’t remain in it forever. All good things come to an end. What then?”

Harrison fidgeted uneasily. “I don’t care to think of it.”

“Some day, you’ll have to,” Seth pointed out. “How much longer have you got?”

“Four and a half Earth years.”

Seth’s gaze turned to Gleed.

“Three Earth years.”|

“Not long,” Seth commented. “I didn’t expect you would have much time left. It’s a safe bet that any ship penetrating this deeply into space has a crew composed mostly of old-timers getting near the end of their terms. The practiced hands get picked for the awkward jobs. By the day your boat lands again on Terra it will be the end of the trail for many of them, won’t it?”

“It will for me,” Gleed admitted, none too happy at the thought.

“Time—the older you get the faster it goes. Yet when you leave the service you’ll still be comparatively young.” He registered a faint, taunting smile. “I suppose you’ll then obtain a private space vessel and continue roaming the cosmos on your own?”

“Impossible,” declared Gleed. “The best a rich man can afford is a Moon-boat. Puttering to and fro between a satellite and its primary is no fun when you’re used to Blieder-zips across the galaxy. The smallest space-going craft is far beyond reach of the wealthiest. Only governments can afford them.”

“By ‘governments’ you mean communities?”

“In a way.”

“Well, then, what are you going to do when your space-roving days are over?”