Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

Always too much. Grandmother used to say never to buy too many eggs for your basket Wonder where she got that? — the People never bought eggs. He had both too many baskets and too many eggs for each. And another basket every day.

Of course, in a tough spot he could always ask himself; “What would Pop do?” Colonel Brisby had phrased that — “I just ask myself, ‘What would Colonel Baslim do?’ ” It helped, especially when he had to remember also what the presiding judge had warned him about the day his parents’ shares had been turned over to him; “No man can own a thing to himself alone, and the bigger it is, the less he owns it. You are not free to deal with this property arbitrarily nor foolishly. Your interest does not override that of other stockholders, nor of employees, nor of the public.”

Thorby had talked that warning over with Pop before deciding to go ahead with Porcupine.

The Judge was right. His first impulse on taking over the business had been to shut down every Rudbek activity in that infected sector, cripple the slave trade that way. But you could not do that. You could not injure thousands, millions, of honest men to put the squeeze on criminals. It required more judicious surgery.

Which was what he was trying to do now. He started studying the unmarked folder.

Garsch stuck his head in. “Still running under the whip? What’s the rush, boy?”

“Jim, where can I find ten honest men?”

“Huh? Diogenes was satisfied to hunt for one. Gave him more than he could handle.”

“You know what I mean — ten honest men each qualified to take over as a planetary manager for Rudbek.” Thorby added to himself, “– and acceptable to ‘X’ Corps.”

“Now I’ll tell one.”

“Know any other solution? I’ll have each one relieve a manager in the smelly sector and send the man he relieves back — we can’t fire them; we’ll have to absorb them. Because we don’t know. But the new men we can trust and each one will be taught how the slave trade operates and what to look for.”

Garsch shrugged. “It’s the best we can do. But forget the notion of doing it in one bite; we won’t find that many qualified men at one time. Now look, boy, you ain’t going to solve it tonight no matter how long you stare at those names. When you are as old as I am, you’ll know you can’t do everything at once — provided you don’t kill yourself first. Either way, someday you die and somebody else has to do the work. You remind me of the man who set out to count stars. Faster he counted, the more new stars kept turning up. So he went fishing. Which you should, early and often.”

“Jim, why did you agree to come here? I don’t see you quitting work when the others do.”

“Because I’m an old idiot. Somebody had to give you a hand. Maybe I relished a chance to take a crack at anything as dirty as the slave trade and this was my way — I’m too old and fat to do it any other way.”

Thorby nodded. “I thought so. I’ve got another way — only, confound it, I’m so busy doing what I must do that I don’t have time for what I ought to do . . . and I never get a chance to do what I want to do!”

“Son, that’s universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow. Which is right now. There’s all day tomorrow ain’t touched yet . . . and you are going out with me and have a sandwich and look at pretty girls.”

“I’m going to have dinner sent up.”

“No, you aren’t. Even a steel ship has to have time for maintenance. So come along.”

Thorby looked at the stack of papers. “Okay.”

The old man munched his sandwich, drank his lager, and watched pretty girls, with a smile of innocent pleasure. They were indeed pretty girls; Rudbek City attracted the highest-paid talent in show business.

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