Money is the Root of All Good

BY PATRICK WILKINS
Urgent! Class AA emergency for Universal Relief! Stock market crash on planet Lyrane, where people live by economy based on good deeds. Cause unknown. Suspect galactical manipulators of watering stock.
Kalgor, capital of the Galactic Empire, is not, as one would expect, one solid city. As a matter of fact, it is more suburban and rural than many farming planets.
The reason is obvious if but considered. The galactic government and the equally large galactic businesses are so immense that they must be distributed throughout the whole galaxy, with only the very cream of the hierarchy located on Kalgor. Thus, each company would have only one small building—but with a communication web that enfolded macroscopic enterprises.
Universal Relief Incorporated was typical of this arrangement. Although its warehouses and offices throughout the Empire could form a megalopolis in themselves, the fountainhead on Kalgor was a two story building.
In that building there was excitement. People were rushing frantically—the teletypes chattered in a frenzy—the air was static with urgency. It manifested itself in the quick jerky motions, in the voices held just below the cracking point.
Universal Relief served the function that used to be handled by the Red Cross. They were disaster rectifiers, succor and reconstruction was their business. But they were a business—declaring annual, taxable profits and dividends and, in general, a profit-seeking firm.
They received regular payments from planetary governments, much like premiums with insurance, and in case of emergency they were to provide complete relief as swiftly as possible. There was no chance for graft in their business, for they were closely checked by the government and competing organizations like Galactic Aid, their closest rival.
This business was now apparently faced with a crisis and its staff was feverishly trying to cope with it.
Roald Gibbons, President of Universal Relief, was the only person not affected—at least not apparently. His indolent posture, his quiet grey eyes reflected nothing of the hectic activity.