The
rest of the town was rising on its own weight: bars, rooming houses,
laundries, and diners--establishments which thrived only because there
were men here to patronize them. Several weeks before a few of the men
had tried killing and eating the small animals who darted through the
alleys, but too many of those men had died and the practice had been
quickly abandoned. And they had noticed that when those animals foraged
in the refuse heaps outside the town, they died too.
A few of the big corporations had sent out field men to look around, but
it was too soon for any industry to have established itself here; all
the planet offered so far was room to expand. Despite the wide expansion
of the Earthmen through the stars, a planet where conditions were at all
favorable for living was not to be overlooked; the continuing population
explosion, despite tight regulations on the inner worlds, had kept up
with the colonization of these worlds, and new room was constantly
needed.
But the planetfall on Hirlaj was still new.
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