“The Wedge” was originally published in the October 1944 issue of Astounding.  It’s a Foundation story and was reprinted as “The Traders” when the stories were collected in book form. It was published after “The Big and the Little” but placed before that story (as “The Merchant Princes”).

I thought this was a fairly weak story. A trader gets an emergency message instructing him to go to a particular planet where another trader has gotten himself in trouble with the local potentate.

The trader who is in trouble is actually an agent of the Foundation, and the protagonist knows this. The Foundation has been trying to gain influence and power two ways. With missionaries of the religion the Foundation has set up and through agents who act as traders.

The agent in trouble has violated a ban on nuclear power.  Many of the star systems have reverted to a pre-atomic level of technology since the Empire pulled back from the edge of the galaxy.

The trader uses entrapment to bring about a a change in the policy by blackmailing his main opponent. The story was worked out logically and held my interest, but it is the weakest of the Retro Hugo stories I’ve read so far.