Plague

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“...By the YEAR 2075—Earth Style—it was clear that merely the admin­istration of intersolar and interplanetary affairs would soon absorb the entire attention of the Galactic Commission, so the formation of an ad­ministrative service was a necessity. It was not then realized that adminis­trative services in the past had had the good fortune to be tested contin­ually by emergencies and conflicts with other administrative services. (See WARS.)

The Galactic Administrative Service had, however, a monopoly in its field, and had necessarily vast authority. Individuals, to whom authority per se is an ambition crowded into its ranks, fought bit­terly among themselves for promotion, and unfortunately ultimately attained high posts. But individuals of this sort are unable to dis­tinguish between authority and intelligence, subservience and sub­ordination, or between protest and rebellion. After a hundred years with no emergencies or conflicts to reveal its faults, the Administrative Service was an ironclad, fossilized bureaucracy in which high place was an end in itself, pomposity a tradition, and red tape the breath of life. Red tape, alone, kept three solar systems from all contact with the rest of humanity for more than thirty years. Certain key documents had been misfiled, and without them no person had authority to give clearance to spaceships for those solar systems. Therefore, no ships could land on any planet of the three suns—not even Space-Navy ships! The accidental dis­covery of the situation by a member of the Galactic Commission led to the dismissal of the officials responsible, but the Service did not reform itself.

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