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ere wouldn't be a thing I could do about it."
"I told him I'd think it over," McLeod said.
Jackson stood up. "Professor McLeod, the human race needs every Galactic credit it can lay its hands on. It's your duty to accept the offer, no matter how lousy it is. We have no choice in the matter. And a Galactic credit is worth ten dollars American, four pounds U.K., or forty rubles Soviet. If you sell a hundred thousand copies of your book, you can get yourself a meal in a fairly good restaurant and Earth will have one more Galactic credit stashed away. If you don't sell that many, you aren't out anything."
"I suppose not," McLeod said slowly. He knew that the Government could force him to take the offer. Under the Planetary Security Act, the Government had broad powers--very broad.
"Well, that isn't my business right now," Jackson said. "I just wanted to find out what this was all about. You'll hear from us, Professor McLeod."
"I don't doubt it," said McLeod.
The six men filed out the door.
Alone, McLeod stared at the wall and thought.
Earth needed every Galactic credit it could get; that was certain. The trouble came in getting them.
Earth had absolutely nothing that the Galactics wanted. Well, not absolutely, maybe, but so near as made no difference. Certainly there was no basis for trade. As far as the Galactics were concerned, Earth was a little backwater planet that was of no importance. Nothing manufactured on the planet was of any use to Galactics. Nothing grown on Earth was of any commercial importance. They had sampled the animals and plants for scientific purposes, but there was no real commercial value in them. The Government had added a few credits to its meager collection when the animals had been taken, but the amount was small.
McLeod thought about the natives of New Guinea and decided that on the Galactic scale Earth was about in the same position. Except that there had at least been gold in New Guinea. The Galactics didn't have any interest in Earth's minerals; the elements were much more easily available in the asteroid belts that nearly every planetary system seemed to have.
The Galactics were by no means interested in bringing civilization to the barbarians of Earth, either. They had no missionaries to bring new religion, no do-gooders to "elevate the cultural level of the natives." They had no free handouts for anyone. If Earthmen wanted anything from them, the terms were cash on the barrelhead. Earth's credit rating in the Galactic equivalent of Dun & Bradstreet was triple-Z-zero.
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