“Look,” Ronny said in disgust one day after a particularly unbelievable siege with two agents recently returned from a trouble spot in a planetary system that involved three aggressive worlds which revolved about the same sun. “Look, it’s impossible for one man to accomplish all this. He’s blamed for half the _coups d’états_, revolts and upheavals that have taken place for the past quarter century. It’s obvious nonsense. Why, a revolutionist usually spends the greater part of his life toppling a government. Then, once it’s toppled, he spends the rest of his life trying to set up a new government—and he’s usually unsuccessful.” One of the others was shaking his head negatively. “You don’t understand this Tommy Paine’s system, Bronston.” “You sure don’t,” the other agent, a Nigerian, grinned widely. “I’ve been on planets where he’d operated.” Ronny leaned forward. The three of them were having a beer in a part of the city once called Baltimore. “You have?” he said. “Tell me about it, eh? The more background I get on this guy, the better.” “Sure. And this’ll give you an idea of how he operates, how he can get so much trouble done. Well, I was on this planet Goshen, understand? It had kind of a strange history. A bunch of colonists went out there, oh, four or five centuries ago. Pretty healthy expedition, as such outfits go. Bright young people, lots of equipment, lots of know-how and books. Well, through sheer bad luck everything went wrong from the beginning. Everything. Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all their communications technicians. They lost contact with the outside. O.K. Within a couple of centuries they’d gotten into a state of chattel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They were at this stage when a scout ship from the UP Space Forces discovered them and, of course, they joined up.” “Where does Tommy Paine come in?” Ronny said. He signaled to a waiter for more beer. “He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on Goshen, understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and Two of the UP Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that if their people ever came to know about more advanced socio-economic systems it’d be the end of Goshen’s Golden Age. So they allowed practically no intercourse. No contact whatsoever between UP personnel and anyone outside the upper class, understand? All right. That’s where Tommy Paine came in. It couldn’t have taken him more than a couple of months at most.” Ronny Bronston was fascinated. “What’d he do?” “He introduced the steam engine, and then left.” Ronny was looking at him blankly. “Steam engine?” “That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny,” the Nigerian said. “That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them.”