she used first names abundantly in greeting; to a few VIP’s she introduced her “husband
and business partner, Carlyle Deston.” A retinue escorted them up to their penthouse
suite; the manager himself made sure that everything was on the beam. Lock, stock, and
barrel, the place was theirs.
Deston was not used to high life, but he made a good stab at it. Even when, at the
imposing portals of the Deep Space Room, the velvet rope was whisked aside and the
crowd of waiting standees was ignored. But when, at the end of the long and perfect
meal and of the magnificent floor show, no check was presented for signature, Deston
did reach for his wallet; to be stopped by a slight shake of Barbara’s head.
“But no tip, even?” he protested, in a whisper.
“Of course not. The office takes care of everything. I never carry any money on Tellus.”
And next morning a Warner limousine took them across town to the immense skyscraper
that was the Warner Building, where they were escorted ceremoniously up into WarnOil’s
innermost private office; a huge, luxuriously business-like office worthy in every respect
of being the sanctum sanctorum of the second-largest firm in existence.
As has been said, Warner Oil was not a corporation. It was not even a partnership. It
had been owned in toto by Barbara’s parents as community property; it was now owned
in the same way by Carlyle and Barbara Deston. Thus, it had no stock and no bonds and
published no reports of any kind. It had no officers, no board of directors. It had one
general manager and a few department heads; men who, despite the unimportance of
their titles, were high on the list of the most powerful operators of Earth.
The Destons’ first appointment was with General Manager Lansing; a big, bear-like man
who picked Barbara up on sight and kissed her vigorously. “Mighty glad to see you
again, Barbry. Glad to meet you, Carl.” He engulfed Deston’s hand in a huge, hard paw.
“I apologize for thinking you were something that crawled out from under a rock. What
you’ve been putting out is the damndest hairiest line of stuff I’ve seen since the old
gut-cutting days when the old man and I were pups. But go ahead, Barbry.”
“First, I want to assure you, Uncle Paul, that neither Carl nor I will bother you any more
than father did. Not as much, in fact, because neither of us has any delusions as to who
is running WarnOil and we both want you to keep on running it.”
“Thanks, both of you. I was hoping, of course, but I got a little dubious when Carl here
started showing so many long, sharp, curly teeth.”
“I understand. Second, I’m very glad that all of you-all that count, I mean-approve of
Carl’s program.” “Should have incorporated long ago. As for the hell raising-wow!” He
slapped himself resoundingly on the leg. “If we can push half of that stuff through it’ll rock
the whole damned galaxy on its foundations.” “Third, how is the probate coming along?”
“I’d better call DuPuy in here for that, I. . . .”
“Uh-uh, listen! We don’t want two solid hours of whereases and hereinbefores. You talk
our language.” “We’re steam-rollering ’em and it tickles me a foot up . . .” Lansing broke
off and into a bellow of laughter. “Every damn shyster the government has got is scream-
ing bloody murder and threatening everything he can think of, including complete
confiscation, but they haven’t got a leg to stand on. They can’t tax anything except what
little stuff we have here on Tellus, and the inheritance tax on that will be only a few
megabucks. Everything else belongs to Newmars, where there’s no inheritance tax, no
income tax, and hardly any property tax; and the fact that DuPuy writes Newmars’ laws
has nothing to do with the case. So after DuPuy and his crew get tired of quibbling and
horsing around we’ll pay it out of petty cash and never miss it.”
The Destons, during the next few days, held conference after conference, during which
hundreds of details were ironed out; and as a by-product of which the news spread
abroad that the heiress was very active indeed in the management of civilization-wide
Warner Oil.
One morning, then, at nine o’clock, Barbara herself punched the series of letters and
numerals that was the unlisted and close-held number of Doris Champion, the First
Secretary of Upton Maynard, the president of Galactic Metals, the largest firm that
civilization had ever known. Barbara’s yellow-haired self appeared up on the FirSec’s
screen; Barbara saw a tall, cool, svelte brunette seated at something less than forty
square feet of cluttered-seeming desk.
“Yes?” the FirSec asked, pleasantly, then stared-and lost a little of her cool poise. For
every FirSec on Earth knew that yellow-haired woman by sight … and she was on the
com in person and there had been nothing preliminary, through channels, at all. . . .
“That’s right,” Barbara confirmed the unspoken thought.” I’m Barbara Warner Deston of
WarnOil. Please arrange a half-hour face-to-face for Mr. Deston and me with Mr.
-Maynard. There’s no great hurry about it; any time today will do.”
“A half hour! Today? I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Deston, but it’s simply impossible. Why, he’s
booked solid for . . .” “I know he’s busy, Miss Champion, but so are we. Just tell him,
please, that he is the first metals man we have called, and that tomorrow morning we will
call Ajax.”
“Very well. If you’ll give me a ten-second brief I’ll see what we can possibly do and call
you back.”
“No briefing. You have my private number. We’ll be here until twelve o’clock.” Barbara’s
hand moved toward the cut-off switch; but Miss Champion, being a really smart girl,
smelled a deal so big that even a top-bracket FirSec should duck-and fast. Wherefore:
“Hold the beam for fifty seconds, please, Mrs. Deston,” she said, and snapped down the
button that made her office as tight as the vault of a bank. Then, “I’m sorry to interrupt,
Mr. Maynard, but Mrs. Deston of WarnOil is on.” She cut the audio then, but kept on
speaking rapidly.
In thirty seconds the keen, taut face of Upton Maynard appeared upon Barbara’s plate.
“Good morning, Mrs. Deston. Something about metal, I gather? A little out of your line,
isn’t it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Maynard,” Barbara agreed. She added nothing and for a moment he,
too, was silent. Then:
“It’ll have to be after closing,” Maynard said.
“That’s quite all right. We’ll fit our time to yours and you may name the place.”
“Seventeen ten. Your office. Satisfactory?”
“Perfectly. Thank you, Mr. Maynard,” and as Barbara’s hand moved to cut com
Maynard’s voice went on: “Get my wife, Miss Champion. Tell her I’ll be late again getting
home this evening.”
Chapter 6
MAYNARD BUYS THE PACKAGE
At ten minutes past five Upton Maynard-a tall, lean, gray-haired man of fifty-odd, with a
fringe of gray-brown hair on the sides and back of an otherwise completely bald
head-was ushered into the Destons’ private office.
“How (lo you do, Mister Maynard.” Barbara shook his hard cordially. “You haven’t met
my husband. Carlyle Deston of Deston and Deston, Incorporated.”
As the two men shook hands, Maynard said, “Incorporated, eh? This room is spy-proof,
of course.”
“Solid,” Deston assured him.
“Okay, Mrs. Deston; what have you got?”
“Oh, it’s Carl’s party, really. My part of this project was just to bring you two men
together,” and Deston took over.
“This is such a weirdie, Mr. Maynard, that I’ll have to give it to you in stages.” He opened
a bulging accordion-pleated case and began to spread its contents out over the table.
“Barbara and I discovered a planet that’s thousands of parsecs beyond where any
human being had ever been before. We named it ‘Barbizon’. We did,. by proxy, all the
development work necessary to establish full ownership of the entire planet.
“Here’s an envelope-full of astronautic and planetological data. Here’s the file on
registration, work, proveup, transfer, and so on. Here’s the certification, by Earth’s most
eminent firm of consulting engineers-Littleton, Bayless, Clifton, and Snelling itself, no
less-that said planet Barbizon is a new discovery; that it is exactly where we said it was;
that all required work has been done; that the bodies of manganese ore actually exist;
that the in situ values run as high as three dollars and seventy one cents per ton; that. . .
.”
“Suckered, by God!” Maynard smacked his right hand flat down against the table’s top.
“You mouse-trapped us -and that hasn’t been done before for twenty five years.” His
sharp gray eyes bored into Deston’s with rapidly mounting respect. “To skip the rest of
the preliminaries for the moment, what have you two actually got?”
“I told you he’s quick on the uptake, Carl,” Barbara laughed, and Deston said, “Uranium,