"I doubt this story very much," Street said to the director.
"The planet and its conditions have been verified," the director replied.
"Even better reason to doubt that Baker died there. He probably was worshipped as one of the gods."
"Why do you think that?" the director asked the xenologist.
"Think it out for yourself. Imagine the reception that would be given to a man who stepped out of a spaceship, wearing what would appear to be a black mask, and who told these people he was the loan arranger."
VII
Baker jammed the accelerator of the groundcar down until his thumbnail turned white. The eye of the ETI peepbug observed the police car of the native authorities behind Baker's vehicle, closing fast.
This is how it happens, he subvocalized. A great career in interplanetary crime ends with an arrest by hick cops for selling dirty books. Why had he ever sunk so low? That was easy—it took a stake to do anything big and he had to get a pile by selling books, after that had happened to him on Wellington I.
The Decameron, Forever Amber, Pierre Louys, all the old classics like that still went over with some of the humanoid and biped races. (He had none of the newer stuff, only titles in the public domain—he couldn't force himself to fall to the level of a literary pirate.) But here on Lintz III he was slaying braces of fowl with a single stone. Lintzians were highly stimulated by intricate philosophy and mathematics. This allowed him to sell banned copies of Korzybski at outrageous prices, while at the same time introducing the native intellectuals to human semantics, a definite aid to the natives in throwing off the verbal domination by Earthmen.