Part 12 (1/2)

Froun haun haain, a couple of short bursts

”So to steal so to eat, I suppose,” Conn cohtfully He'd only need one ht, push ”Why don't you talk to Wade Lucas He's got brains, and he's honest--nobody but an honest man would have made himself as unpopular as Lucas has If you pretend to be disillusioned with this Merlin business ityou and your father for what's been going on here in the last teeks Yes He'd help get things straightened out”

At home, he found his mother simply dazed She was happy to see him, and solicitous about his and his father's health It seeh, as if he were sootten so far beyond her that she wasn't even trying to catch up

Flora, returning from school, stopped short when she saw hireeted him

”For a start, yes”

”For a start! You knohat you've done?”

”Yes I don't knohat you think I've done, though Tellinto a madhouse; you've sent this whole world Merlin-crazy Look at the stock market”

”You look at it All I can see is a pack of lunatics playing Russian roulette with five chambers loaded out of six So peddled around isn't worth five millisols a share--Seekers for Merlin, Ltd, closed today at a hundred and seventy You notice, there isn't any L E & S being traded If you don't believe me, talk to Lester Dawes; he'll tell you e think of this market”

”Well, it's your fault!”

”In part it's my fault that any of these quarter-wits have any h to play a five-centisol slot otten a little business started”

There was just a little truth to that, too A feoolen socks were co exhumed in cellars, since the new flood of Federation equipotten on the uchi's tailor shop: QUARTER PRICE IN FEDERATION CURRENCY

That night, however, he had one of the night up onto a huge , helpless and terrified, unable to stop it as it went faster and faster toward destruction

Kleer outlaw bands, the result of gangparties, and prospecting parties were fighting one another Much of this was ularly chartered prospecting companies, lasted three days, with an i that the Planetary Govern about the situation; the Governnant questions in Parliaed a couple of arhter like the _Lester Dawes_, and a big assault transport--and began trying to get them into commission

And, of course, the market boom was still on The newscasts were full of that, too He had started worrying about _if_ a bust ca about ould happen _when_ it did Another good reason for wanting to get to Koshchei and getting a hypershi+p built; when the bust came, he and his father would want one, very badly

In any case, it was ti an expedition ready for Barathrue contragravity craft, and the nascent Planetary Air Navy was approaching a state of being He wanted to get out there before anybody else did

Maybe if they got the hypershi+p built soon enough, it would start a second, sound boom that would cushi+on the crash of the present speculative market when it came, as co a couple of the eighty-foot gunboats Zareff's attitude was autoative

”Wedisaster

Why, this whole country in here is siunboats, the _Werewolf_, yesterday”

He'd heard about that; soround, and the _Werewolf_ had detonated it with a counter- company who'd taken the L E & S craft for a pirate