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Why, I… you…’
‘Stop stuttering and come to life, you halfwit! Gimme Ferber and hurry it up! This ship’s trickier’n hell!’
‘Why, you … I never…’ Ferber’s outraged First Secretary could scarcely talk. ‘He … he is…”
‘I know, babe, I know – “Chancellor Ferber is in conference and can not be disturbed,”‘ he mimicked. ‘What is it this time? Has he got a naked file-clerk on the davenport because you’re getting too old and fat to do a good job on him any more? Listen, you worn-out battle-axe – didn’t you get your tits far enough into the wringer when you tangled with Belle Bellamy? This is me, not her, and I haven’t got time to waste on you, or any of the rest of Fat Stuff’s sofa-partners. Put him on now – but quick – or I’ll ‘port down there and slap ’em clear off. Now ]ump!’
Bella, seated cross-legged on the floor, was rocking back and forth with both hands jammed into her mouth. James was standing up, gesticulating fervently with hands clasped high above his head. Lola, who had not been completely informed, was staring in wide-eyed, horrified amazement.
The tri-di tank brightened up, Chancellor Ferber’s image appeared. He was disheveled, surprised, and angry; but Gar-lock gave him no chance to speak.
‘Well, Fatso – at last! Where the hell have you been all morning? I want some stuff, just as fast as God will let you get it together.’ And he began to read off, as fast as he could talk, a long list of highly technical items.
Ferber tried for many seconds to break in, and Garlock finally allowed him to do so.
‘Are you crazy, Garlock?’ he shouted. ‘What in hell’s name are you bothering me with that stuff for? You know better than that – make out your requisitions and send them through regular channels!’
‘Channels, hell!’ Garlock shouted back. ‘Hasn’t it got through your four-inch-thick skull yet that I’m in a hurry? I don’t want this stuff week after next; I want it day before yesterday – this damned junk-heap is apt to fall apart any second. So quit goggling and slobbering at me, you slimy fat toad, and get that three hundredweight of suet into action -hump yourself!’
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‘You… you… Why, I was never so insulted…’
‘Insulted? You?’ Garlock out-roared him. ‘Listen, Fatso. If I ever really set out to insult you, you’ll know it – it’ll blister all the plastic off the walls. All I’m trying to do now is to get you off that fat butt of yours and get some action. Tell that woman on the sofa to put her clothes back on and get to hell out!’
‘Woman!’ Ferber yelled, pounding his desk. There’s no woman here, you God damned insubordinate son of a…”
‘The hell there isn’t!’ Garlock yelled louder and pounded harder. ‘It’s nine-seventeen – and besides, I’m a Prime, not a lousy dumb low First, like you. So put the filthy pictures and nasty pamphlets back in the drawer. Start rounding up this stuff – but fast – or I’ll come down there and take your job away from you and do it myself – and for your own greasy hide’s sake you’d better believe I’m not just blowing wind, either.’
‘You’ll whatr Ferber screamed. ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’
‘You fire meV Garlock mimicked the scream. ‘And make it stick? You’d better write that one up for the funnies. Why, you lard-brain, you couldn’t fire a cap-pistol.”
‘Foster!’ Ferber yelled. ‘Terminate Garlock as of now. Insurbordination, misconduct, abuse of position, incompetence, malfeasance – everything else you can think of – blacklist him all over the system!’
At the word ‘fired’ Belle had leaped to her feet and had stopped laughing.
‘Miss Bellamy!’ Ferber snapped.
‘Yes, sir?’ she answered, sweetly.
‘You are hereby promoted to Head of the…’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Belle said, her voice fairly reeking with contempt. ‘You filthy slob – you unprincipled, lascivious, lecherous hitler \ Have you got the unmitigated gall to take me for a whore? To think you can add me to your collection of bootlicking, round-heeled tramps?
‘Me? Take you on? No, thanks. Just looking at you with your corset and all your clothes on makes me sick at the stomach – if I actually had to touch your sloppy carcass I’d vomit all over the floor. Oh no! Instead of promoting me you can take the job I’ve got now and stick it!’
‘You’re fired and blacklisted, too!’
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‘How nice! You know, I don’t know of anything I’d rather have happen to me?’
‘Get James on there. You, James …’
‘You don’t need to fire me, you fathead,’ James said contemptuously. ‘I’ve already quit – the exact second you fired Clee.’
‘No you didn’t!’ Ferber screamed. ‘Resignation not accepted. You’re fired. Dishonorably discharged – blacklisted everywhere – you’ll never get another job – anywhere*. And here’s your slip, too!’ Miss Foster was very fast on the machines.
James ‘ported his slip up into the Pleiades, just as Garlock and Belle had done with theirs, and disappeared with it as they had; reappearing almost instantly.
‘Montandon!’
‘Chancellor Ferber, are you completely out of your mind? You can’t discharge either Miss Bellamy or me.’
‘I can’t?’ he gloated. ‘Why not?’
‘Because neither of us is employed. By anybody.’
‘That’s right, Fatso,’ Belle jeered. ‘We just came along. Just to keep the boys company. It’s lonesome, you know, ‘way out in deep space.”
Miss Foster ripped a half-filled-out termination form out of her machine and hurled it into a waste-basket. Ferber’s jaw dropped and his eyes stared glassily, but he rallied quickly.
‘I can blacklist her, though, and maybe you think I won’t. Belle Bellamy will never get another job in this whole solar system as long as” she lives, except through me! Maybe I’ll hire her some day, for something, and maybe I won’t. Are you listening, Bellamy?’
‘Not only listening, I’m revealing in every word.” Belle laughed derisively. ‘I hate to shatter such wonderful dreams -or do I? You see, the Pleiades really works, and the Galaxians own her in fee simple and lock, stock, and barrel. You wouldn’t have any part of her, remember? Insisted on payment for every nut, wire, and service? Now, they want to hire us four for a big operation with this starship. Since you only loaned Garlock and James to them, you might have made some legal trouble on that score, but now that you’ve fired them both – and in such conclusive language! – we’re all set.
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So when you blacklist us with the Society, please let me know – I want to take a tri-di in technicolor of you doing it!’
Til see about that!’ Ferber stormed. ‘We’ll have an injunction out in an hour!’
‘Go ahead,’ Garlock said, with a wide grin. ‘Have fun – the Galaxians have lawyers too, you know. One thing Belle forgot. Just in case you recover consciousness some time and want to steal our termination papers back – especially Belle’s; what a howler that was! – don’t try it. They’re in a Gunther-blocked safe.’
Then, as comprehension began to dawn on Ferber’s face:
The Pleiades disappeared.
NINE
The Pleiades landed on Margonia’s Glaxian Field, where the Tellurians found the project running smoothly, a little ahead of schedule. Delcamp and Fao were working at their fast and efficient pace, but the hairy pair from Thaker seemed to be, literally, everywhere at once.
‘Hi, Belle,’ Fao ‘ported up and shook hands warmly. ‘I thought I was going to have the first double-Prime baby, until she appeared on the scene.’
‘Didn’t it make you mad? I’d’ve been furious.”
‘Maybe a little at first, but not after I’d talked with her for half a minute. She’d never even thought of that angle. Besides she thinks the whole galaxy is fairly crawling with double-Primes.’
‘That’s funny – so does Clee. But there are other things -strictly not angles – that she hasn’t thought of, too. If those coveralls were half an inch tighter they’d choke her to death. You’d think she’d …’
‘What?’ Fao interrupted. ‘You should scream – oh, that
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ridiculous Tellurian prud —’
‘It isn’t ridiculous!’ Belle snapped. ‘And it isn’t prudishness, either – not with me, anyway. It’s just that’ – she ran an indicative glance over Fao’s trim flanks and hard flat abdomen – ‘it spoils your figure. It’s only temporary, of course, but…’
‘Spoils it! Why, how utterly idiotic! Why, it’s magnificent! Just as soon as it starts to show on me, Belle, I’m going to start wearing only half as many clothes as I’ve got on now.’
‘You couldn’t.’ Belle eyed the other girl’s bathing-suit-like garment. Except for being blue instead of yellow, it was the same as the one she had worn before.
‘Hey, you two!’ came Delcamp’s hail. ‘How about getting some work done?’
With six Prime Operators on the job the work went on very rapidly, yet without error. The Celestial Queen was finished, tested, and found perfect, one full day ahead of James’ most optimistic estimate for construction alone. The six Primes conferred.