David R. Bunch

“ But you know how things get started, and how powerful tradition can be and how old-line thinking can keep people, even a whole planet, in a rut.
The big cargo saucers were getting bigger and bigger each year, what with the growing popularity of the jag-whiff places, and the jag-whiff places themselves were growing in number with more and more people going "on the jag" because—well, partly because—of troubles in the sky, like strange balls whirling around and unexplainable objects going beep and wuff and wuff wuff. ”

“ And when our face spines and head tubes would go into that special sharp buzz of contentment, we'd know we were on our jag, full and warm and happy with as much pleasure as any Martian is ever supposed to know. But we never revealed the play to our Earthit contacts, just slipped in at night in our noiseless saucers with all lights dimmed, cleared our cargo tubes of the tons of pay-picture we'd brought (green copy of the Earthits' currency) and took on as many of the gleaming jag-whiffer machines as our cargo tubes would hold. ”

“ So you see how life can be—grim and fuzzy and unsafe most of the time. And to make things even more uncertain, just because they couldn't duplicate the product we were hauling, our scientists got uppity and ignored the whole problem. Except to run off to the jag-whiff places of course to ease their frustrations, which they did plenty often when they thought they wouldn't be seen. ”