"'Sfunny," said Joe, "that after all these hundreds of years the word 'official' is still synonymous with inefficiency and general chowder-head-edness. My sorter gets the data in fifteen minutes — yours hasn't got it in more than eighteen hours."
"Official sources require accuracy. We could not afford to be wrong if the landing of this ship involves violation of the I.G.B. regulations, or if these creatures cannot be identified. Your sorter is not concerned with such factors, understandably. You are concerned only with repairing the vessel and making a profit on the operation."
"And what a wicked thing that is! Eh?" said Joe. "We've been over this before. I know when I'm licked, but when will that obsolete monstrosity get its official bowels in gear and give out with the data? I've had a crew standing by since yesterday."
O'Conners didn't answer. He looked speculatively around the plush, luxurious office that was Joe's one vice and his only indulgence. He looked out at the vast properties that represented as much as a small nation might have once possessed. The great shops and laboratories rivaled a government facility.
"We'll be taking you over one of these days," said the inspector. "A government can't tolerate a private enterprise of this scope. This should belong to the people."
"Like the Tyrannosaurus," muttered Joe in a cloud of smoke, " He must have kicked and jumped and squealed to the last, too. And you've got just about as much chance now as he had. As long as there is space, you bureaucrats will never be on top again. It took a civil world war to get your kind off the top of the heap once, and you're off for good. In an expanding economy civilization simply passes by while you fuss and holler. It's only in a shrinking world that people think they need bureaucrats and socialists to tell them what to do."
O'Conners shook his head sadly, "The government needs men like you. It's tragic that the organising and technical ability you possess should be coupled with such atavism."
He turned to the door. "I'll send yon an official clearance to bring them in as soon as — and if — the sorter verifies the data given by the disabled craft, and central confirms it."
He left.
Every time, Joe thought. Every time it was like this. Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. He went to the window and looked out upon the hundred or so craft from every part of the universe that lay on the landing field. That they represented genius incredibly far removed from his comprehension troubled O'Conners not at all. One of them, a huge vessel a mile and a half long and fifteen hundred feet in diameter had come almost three million light-years out of space, the farthest communication that men of Earth had yet had with other sentient beings.