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Lon Simpson swore. The Diesel of his tractor ran a generator. The generator ran the motors in the tractor’s catawheels. But this was the sixth time in a month that the generator had broken down, and generators do not break down.

Lon put it together for the eighteenth time this breakdown, and it still wouldn’t work. There was nothing detectably wrong with it, but he couldn’t make it work.

Seething, he walked back to his neat, prefabricated house. He picked up the beamphone. Even Cathy’s voice at the exchange in Cetopolis could not soothe him, he was so furious.

“Cathy, give me Carson—and don’t listen!” he said tensely.

He heard clickings on the two-way beam.

“My generator’s gone,” he said sourly when Carson answered. “I’ve repaired it twice this week. It looks like it was built to stop working! What is this all about, anyhow?”

The representative of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company sounded bored.

“You want a new generator sent out?” he asked without interest. “Your crop credit’s still all right—if the fields are in good shape.”