 Why was it unheard of to issue an effective prison sentence to the zarquil operators?
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous. There was a short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century. "You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look at them. And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance, was too much. Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again that night. There he inserted a coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions, reserving only a sum of money. As a matter of fact, no real identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for years. Each time it happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a thrill-mill." To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to remember her existence. There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the newer models. He then requested a taxi driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of "crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator; otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
 The operators lived significantly long lives
 The operators were above the law  The operators were too difficult to contain in a prison  The operators lived significantly long lives  The laws were difficult to enforce and harder to uphold