But as time wore on, the habits of the West-loving aliens grated more and more on Baker's soul. He was particularly irritated by the weekly ritual every male had of riding into the sunset. Since there were two sunsets in opposite directions, it was a long and involved and thoroughly annoying process. Tom Wayne had kept Baker waiting an hour at the Golden Slipper to discuss his loan. Baker was exasperated and dry. Local custom regarded it as friendly to not begin your drinking before your companion arrived. Gibson laid out the ingredients of the martini on the bar. "You going to wait any longer for Tom to finish riding into the sunset before I start mixing?" Baker whirled angrily. "Nuts to Tom! _Mix!_" Before the blasphemous words died on his lips, Baker saw death in the rising barrels of the vengeful six-shooters. VI "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. * * * * * The Humans First Lobby in the Galactic Legislature was willing to live with the difficulties caused by the absolute literal-mindedness of most extraterrestrials, so long as they could continue to make them believe in lifetime guarantees and unbreakable toys for inventive youngsters.