Gunnison's Bonanza

Sullen resentment welled up in Gunnison. He had read his history and he knew how things had changed. In the old days back on Terra, men were given freedom to seek and find. Why, once they opened half a planet—a whole hemisphere to those with the courage to move in and take it! Men and women and even children in shoddy old wagons pushed across the prairies of his own Mid-America. No fat bureaucrats called the dance in those fine days.

But now the scheme of things was gall in Gunnison's mouth. New laws promulgated under the Interplanetary Charter said only the government men moved in on new territories; so-called specialists with weapons and armor who put one timid foot in front of another until the area was declared safe and open to colonization. And who also—Gunnison bitterly knew—skimmed off the loose loot for themselves.