The Mayor of Steadheim considered this information.
"Ha-hmmm!" he said profoundly.
"Criminals can be kept down, but a revolt can't be suppressed," Kim went on. "The soldiers who are occupying the twenty-one planets will be called back to put down revolts, as soon as the people discover the Disciplinary Circuits on their planets are blowing out, and that they blow out again as fast as they're re-made and used."
"Hm!" said the Mayor of Steadheim. "Not bad! And the rebels will have some very tasty ideas of what to do to the folk who've tyrannized over them. No troops can stop a revolt nowadays. Not for long!"
"No, not for long," said Kim. "No government will be able to rule with a dissatisfied population. Not if it has a little gadget hidden somewhere that will blow out the Disciplinary Circuit, if it's used to excess."
"Good enough, good enough," grumbled the mayor. "When rulers are kept busy satisfying their people, they won't have time to bother political offenders. That's sensible enough! But it's too fiendish bad that only those twenty planets have the gadgets on them! I suppose we criminals will have to set up a factory and make them, and then visit all the three hundred million inhabited planets, one by one, and drop one little contrivance on every one. But it'll take us centuries! Space! That's a pity!"
"It won't take centuries," said Kim drily. "I made a deal with a factory-owner on Spicus Five. He turned out the ones I personally dropped, in exchange for the design. He's going to manufacture them in quantity. He'll make a fortune out of them!"
"How? Who'll buy them?" demanded the mayor. "Every king will outlaw them! Space, yes! They'll be scared to death—"
"The kings," said Kim more drily than before, "the kings and despots and emperors will be the ones to buy them. They'll want them to drop in their neighbors' dominions. Every king or ruler will buy a few to put where they will weaken his enemies—and every one has enemies! We don't have to plant the gadgets that make the Disciplinary Circuit into a boomerang! We'll let the kings weaken each other and bring back freedom. And they will!"
The Mayor of Steadheim puffed in his breath until it looked as if he would explode. Then he bellowed with laughter.