punishment.” “I’m surprised, is all, that gold isn’t on it.”
“Gold/” Maynard snorted. “Besides currency base, jewelry, and show, what’s it good
for? We’ve never touched it and never intend to-produce a few tons too much and you
upset the economy instead of benefitting it.”
“I never thought of it that way, but that’s right. Okay, chief, we’ll flit. I’ll keep you posted.
‘Bye.”
Deston strode out and Maynard flipped a switch. “Please get Wharton, Bender, Camp,
Byrd, Train, and Purdom and bring ’em into the conference room. No note-pads and no
recorder.”
“Very well, sir,” Miss Champion said; and in a few minutes four men and three women
were walking toward the long table at the head of which Maynard sat.
“I for one was busy, Mister Maynard!” Cecily Byrd snapped. She was something under
thirty, five feet ten in her nylons, and beautifully built. She moved with the lithe grace of a
trained dancer. Her thick, brick-red, medium-bobbed hair was naturally and stubbornly
curly; with a curliness no hair-dresser had ever been able to subdue. Her untannable skin
was heavily freckled and, except for a touch of lipstick, she wore no make-up. Her
features, while regular enough, were too bold and too strong by far for prettiness. Her
mien was sullen and defiant; her eyes-smoldering green fires-swept the bare expanse of
table. “What? No pads and pencils? No mikes? Isn’t this conference going to be of such
gravid and world-shaking import that its every word and nuance should be preserved for
the edification of all ages to come?”
“Shut up, Byrd, and all of you sit down.”
The red-head gasped and all the others stared; for this was something new. President
Maynard had never before spoken to any one of them except in formal terms. Wondering
and silent, they all sat down and Maynard smiled at them wolfishly one by one. After a
long half minute of this he spoke.
“I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long long time” he gloated. “But first, I
wonder if any one of you has any idea of why I put up with all eight of you so long? Such
intractable, intransigent hellions; such knuckle-dusting, back stabbing, rampaging jerks as
you all have been?”
“That’s easy!” the red-head snapped, before any one of the eager others could say a
word. “Hog-the-talent. Dog-in-the-manager. Standard Operating Procedure.”
“Wrong. You’re also wrong in claiming to be busy. Not one of you has even the remotest
inkling of what the word means. But you are all going to find out. How you’ll find out! As
soon as this meeting is over each of you will be handed a planetary-project authorization
and will . . .”
“What?” “Huh?” “Where?” ‘How come?” Six voices shouted or shrieked almost as one.
“Whereupon each of you will proceed to design and staff a full-scale, optimum-tonnage
plant, exactly as you want it. Each of you will have full authority and full responsibility. . .
.”
“Full authority. Yeah,” Percival Train broke in, bitingly. He was a big, handsome,
hard-bodied young man, with bushy, crew-cut brown hair and highly cynical-at the
moment-gray eyes. “Except that I’ll be told exactly what to do and exactly how to do it
and then it’ll be my fault when the whole damned operation goes stinko. Full authority,
hell! I’ve heard that song, words and music, before.”
From me?” Maynard asked quietly. “Well . . . no.”
“Nor will you. You’ll be on your own; subject to Top Management only in matters of
policy-such as no pirating of personnel from each other, for instance. That’s so none of
you can come around later, bitching and bellyaching that your flop was clue to the way
we cramped your style. If each of you does a job, and I hope you will; fine. Anybody who
doesn’t will get fired. I would enjoy firing you, Train, and Byrd. Any questions?”
The six looked at each other, almost in consternation. Even “Curly” Byrd was mute.
Finally Train spoke. “Maybe … to be tossing out that kind of money … this, on top of
Barbizon and Belmark, really blows the plug. But I still don’t think that Mrs. Deston is a
metalwitch. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course she isn’t,” Rose Purdom, a plumpish, fortyish blonde put in. “Or she’d have
done it before. It’s a new talent. Mister Deston. Those huge finds were just to prove to a
certain hard-nosed tycoon that he could do it. That’s what’s really back of this gigantic
super-merger.”
“If any or all of you want to believe in that supernatural twaddle it’s all right with me,”
Maynard said, dryly. “What I am authorized to say is that the firm of Deston and Deston
Incorporated has, by marked improvements in instrumentation and techniques, been able
to take noteworthy strides in the science or art of locating large deposits of certain
metals.”
“Comet-gas!” Train rasped. “You’re right, Rose, it’s Deston. Es macht mir garnichts aus
who finds the stuff, or how; but just one question, Mr. Maynard. Are you going to play
this straight, on a first-found-first-out basis?”
“Absolutely. Thus, either Wharton or Camp will probably be first, the lady Byrd here last.
Probably all of you, however, except Byrd, will have your locations before you’re ready
for them.”
“But if probability governs, I might come in first,” Cecily Byrd said, looking pointedly at
Maynard.
“The possibility, although vanishingly small, does exist,” Maynard admitted. “Therefore, if
that event occurs, I want you all to know now as a fact that it will be because rhenium is
discovered first in a non-selective survey, and not because. . . .” He paused and his icy
gray eyes scanned as much of a highly-sculptured green garment as was visible above
the table’s top, “I repeat, not because of our Doctor Byrd’s generosity with her charms;
which, by the exercise of super-human self-control, I have managed so far to resist. Now
go back to your offices, all of you, and start earning part of your pay.”
The red-head flushed hotly-it was the first time anyone there had seen her blush-but not
even that blast could dampen the enthusiasm of the melee that followed. They shook
hands all around; they whacked each other-including Maynard and Miss Champion-on the
back; the men kissed the women-including Miss Champion-vigorously; and they all
babbled excitedly. In fact, it took fifteen minutes for Maynard to get them out of the
conference room.
And the six engineer-scientist-executives who finally left that room w ere very different
from the six who had entered it such a short time before.
The Destons and MetEnge, on a fifty-fifty basis, had bought from InStell the Procyon’s
hulk, as is, at its appraised value for machinery and scrap. InStell had been glad to sell
her on that basis; for in the still-somewhatsuperstitious public mind she was, and under
any possible disguise would remain, an irreparably jinxed and hoodooed death-ship.
She was now completely reconditioned; not as a passenger liner, but as an armed and
armored, completely self-contained, subspace-going independent worldlet with a
population of just under a thousand people. There were no unmarried men or women
aboard, and most of the couples had children. Every man and every woman had passed
a series of physical, mental, and psychological examinations.
With this special ship, then, and with this super-special crew, the Destons set out.
In the con-room there was now a forty-foot tri-di of the galaxy, with an eight-inch, roughly
globular cluster of red dots in a spiral arm, much nearer to one edge than to the center of
the huge lens. The Destons sat at two bewildering-instrumented desks. Behind them
stood big, hard, tough Captain Theodore Jones, with his platinum-blonde wife Bernice.
Her left hand rested upon his right shoulder; her spectacular head rested thoughtfully
upon her hand.
At Jones’ left, toward the massed control-boards of the ship, his fifteen top officers
stood at ease; at his right was a group of twenty-odd scientists.
“So that’s what all explored space amounts to.” Jones pointed at the tiny globe in the
enormous, discus-shaped, light-point-filled volume which represented the galaxy. “I
simply would not have believed it. Damn it, Babe, are you sure that thing is to scale?”
“To within one percent, yes. That’s why Bobby and I are going to work fourteen hours a
day instead of six. I’m not going to try to tell any of you what to do”-Deston’s eyes swept
both groups= because each of you knows more about his own job than I do. So let’s get
at it.
The Procyon flashed to the nearest one of the ninety five colonized planets and Carlyle
and Barbara Deston taped their three-dimensional surveys; the man on metals, the
woman on oil, coal, water and natural gas. Nor was her part :my less important than his.
The use of fuels as such, while large, was insignificant in comparison with their use in
petrochemistry. Led by Plastics, that industry had grown so fast that not even WarnOil’s