Part 8 (2/2)
”You mean there's another place like this?”
”You can say so You can say a twenty-renade, too”
Anse Dawes siot back to the Ad on top, they found Rodney Maxwell, Jerry Rivas, the general fore fore a hundred and fifty more men and ten farm scows fro out fro one of his deputies to help boss them Well have to keep an eye on this crowd; they're all Tra to have to get this place cleaned out in a hurry We only have about teeks till the wine-pressing's over, and then ant to start the next operation
Conn, did you see all that engineering equipht to leave a lot of that here--the shovels and bulldozers and manipulators and so on We canexplosives?”
”Na you want”
”We'll need a lot of it”
”We're going to have to get a shi+p I hter; first, to move this stuff out of here, and then to move the stuff out of Force Command And ant it hter, ant a fighting shi+p”
”You think so?”
”I' is full of outlaws; thereup over there That's where all the trouble on the east coast co players They want to be alive to spend their loot, and they won't tackle anything that's too tough for theuards and combat equipment may look like a loss on the books, but the books won't sho ht take if you didn't have them
I want this operation armed till it'll be too much for all the outlaws on the planet to tackle”
That made sense It also made sense out of the billions of sols the Federation had spent preparing for an invasion that never caht have been the war itself
The scows and the newly hired workers began arriving a little after noon The scows had been borrowed frootten in; there were melon leaves and bits of vine in the bottoms The workers were a bleary-eyed and unsavory lot; Conn had a suspicion, which Brangwyn's deputy confirrancy arrests in Tra, Jerry Rivas hurried down to the old provost-marshal's headquarters and came back with a lot of rubber billy-clubs, which he issued to his gang-bosses, regular and te, however, the insubordinate and troubleso they could put in their pockets, but that was to be expected By evening, too, the contents of the underground treasure trove wasto and fro back to town after lunch the next day Conn wanted to know if he should go along
”No, you stay here; help keep thingsRemember what I told you about the older and wiser heads? Let er than you have Just give me an audiovisual of your proxy and I'll vote your stock”
”How much stock do I have, by the way?”
”The same as I have--ten thousand five hundred shares of cooes after we open Force Command”
His father was back, two days later, to report:
”We're organized Kurt Fawzi's president, of course, and does he love it That'll keep him out of mischief Dolf Kellton's secretary; he has an office force at the Acade a research tearad students to work in the Planetary Library at Storisende There are a lot of old Third Force records there; heuseful Of course, Lester Dawes is treasurer”
”What are you?”
”Vice-president in charge of operations That's what I spent all yesterday log-rolling, baby-kissing and cigar-passing to get”
”And what auished position; you are a non-office-holding stockholder The only other one is Judge Ledue; as a member of the judiciary, he did not feel it proper to accept official position in a private corporation Towyn's Chief of Company Police; Klem Fawzi is Commander of the Company Guards And we have a law firm in Storisende lined up to handle our charter application Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong Sterber's married to Jake Vyckhoven's sister, Flynn's son is hter of the Secretary of the Treasury, and Chen-Wong is a nephew of the Chief Justice All of theinal crew”
”You don't anticipate any trouble about getting the charter?”
”Not exactly And Lester Dawes is in Storisende now, trying to find us a contragravity shi+p There are about a dozen in the hands of receivers for bankrupt shi+pping coht find one that's still airworthy Oh; you remember how I insisted on absolute secrecy about our Merlin objective? That's working out better than unned water tank, and everybody it leaks to is positive that we know exactly where Merlin is or ouldn't be trying to keep it a secret”
Three days later, Conn hitched a ride on a freight-scow to Litchfield