Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EARTHMAN, COME HOME 75 ing, all the tests that a coinage is sup- posed to meet. The drugs could be indefinitely diluted for small change; they had never been synthesized, and any other form of counterfeiting could be detected easily by bio-assay and other simple tests ; they were very rare; they were universally needed; their sources of supply were few enough in number to be readily monitored. Unfortunately, the star-cruising Okies needed the drugs as drugs. They could not afford to use them as money. From that moment on, the Okies were no longer the collective citizens of a nomadic culture. They were just interstellar bums. There was no place for them in the galaxy any more. Outside the galaxy, of course, the Okie commerce lanes had never pene- trated— The city was old—unlike the men and women who manned it, who had merely lived a long time, which is quite a different thing. And like any old intelligence, its past sins lay very near the surface, ready for review either in nostalgia or in self-accusation at the slightest cue. It was difficult these days to get any kind of information out of the City Fathers without having to submit to a lecture, couched in as high a moral tone as was possible to machines whose highest morality was survival. | Amalfi knew well enough what he was letting himself in for when ‘he asked the City Fathers for a review of the Violations Docket. He got it, and in bells—big bells. The City Fathers gave him everything, right down to the day a dozen centuries ago when they had discovered that nobody had dusted the cities ancient subways since the city had first gone into space. That had been the first time the Okies had heard that the city had ever had any subways. But Amalfi stuck to the job, though ECOmMmichooks.co im