The Dominant created fuming noises. The guards searched futilely. In
frustration, the Dominant said, "Where is the weapon she gave? Speak."
I said, "I have no weapons, but I'd like to tell you how Galactic
Government will react when--"
They walked out and rolled down the door. I flopped on the bed and
perspired and brooded.
On Henderson's Globe of Spica, I had planned to terminate my present
career with this hunt. I had never especially enjoyed the hazards of
hunting, which had cost me a hand, much blood, and large areas of skin.
Doreen, Laurinda, Celestine, and I had decided to emigrate to Mother
Earth. Game wardens, foresters, and gardeners were needed for the
century-old project of reclaiming that world. There I would find work
more pleasant than pursuing things with tentacles, fangs, and maws. Of
course, if I failed to earn a large fee from this hunt, we would be
unable to go.
My principal difficulty was that Maggie was private. GG had no
authority except to send inspection parties. A private planet could not
attempt inter-planetary or interstellar flight without GG supervision,
nor could it own weapons other than those required for defense against
native life. Most private planets had been settled two centuries
before, when there were individuals wealthy enough to undertake stellar
colonization. Few who tried succeeded. The fifteen or twenty private
planets in the Explored Galaxy were all eccentric. Some even advocated
capital punishment, an archaic system of killing mental defectives.
The one factor on my side was that no GG citizen could be punished by a
private planet--or so Galactic law specified.