“No matter,” said Skorragan, with a touch of grimness.

“What a Planet! Backward as…as Pluto! I’m going on to Skontar from here. I hope to get a business contract—you know how to do business, you Skontarans!”

Skorrogan snarled and swung away, fairly dragging Thordin with him. They had gone half a block down the motilator before the Valtam asked, “What happened to your manners? He was trying hard to be civil to us. Or do you just naturally hate humans?”

“I like most of them,” said Skorrogan. “But not their tourists. Praise the Fate, we don’t get many of that breed on Skontar. Their engineers and businessmen and students are all right. I’m glad that relations between Sol and Skang are close, so we can get many of that sort. But keep out the tourists!”

“Why?”

Skorrogan gestured violently at a flashing neon poster. “That’s why.”

He translated the Solarian:

SEE THE ANCIENT MAUIROA CEREMONIES!
COLORFUL! AUTHENTIC!
THE MAGIC OF OLD CUNDALOA!
AT THE TEMPLE OF THE HIGH ONE
ADMISSION REASONABLE

“The religion of Mauiroa meant something, once,” said Skorrogan quietly. “It was a noble creed, even if it did have certain unscientific elements. Those could have been changed— But it’s too late now. Most of the natives are either Neopantheists or unbelievers, and they perform the old ceremonies for money. For a show.”

He grimaced. “Cundaloa hasn’t lost all its picturesque old buildings and folkways and music and the rest of its culture. But it’s become conscious that they are picturesque, which is worse.”

“I don’t quite see what you’re so angry about,” said Thordin. “Times have changed. But they have on Skontar, too.”

“Not in this way. Look around you, man! You’ve never been in the Solar System, but you must have seen pictures from it. Surely you realize that this is a typical Solarian city—a little backward, maybe, but typical. You won’t find a city in the Avaikian System which isn’t essentially—human.

“You won’t find significant art, literature, music here any more—just cheap imitations of Solarian products, or else an archaistic clinging to outmoded native traditions, romantic counterfeiting of the past. You won’t find science that isn’t essentially Solarian, you won’t find machines basically different from Solarian, you’ll find fewer homes every year which can be told from human houses. The old society is dead; only a few fragments remain now. The familial bond, the very basis of native culture, is gone, and marriage relations are as casual as on Earth itself. The old feeling for the land is gone. There are hardly any tribal farms left; the young men are all coming to the cities to earn a million credits. They eat the products of Solarian-type food factories, and you can only get native cuisine in a few expensive restaurants.

“There are no more handmade pots, no more handwoven cloths. They wear what the factories put out. There are no more bards chanting the old lays and making new ones. They look at the telescreen now. There are no more philosophers of the Araclean or Vranamauian schools, there are just second-rate commentaries on Aristotle versus Korzybski or the Russell theory of knowledge—”