Part 7 (1/2)

”That's a h.e.l.l of a picture, chief. I simply can't visualize top-bracket executives acting that way.”

”You haven't handled enough people for years enough. They can't act any other way. What I've been wanting to do, every time she sticks her d.a.m.ned s.e.xy neck out, is wring it... wait a minute; that gives me an idea... yes, that'll work. The minute they find out for sure they must all suspect it already-that you're an honest-to-G.o.d metal-wizard I can kick their teeth right down their throats. They'll all tear into their jobs like that many hundred-ton cat tractors.”

”But listen! You can't tell 'em-we've got to keep it dark, the way we find the stuff.”

From most people, yes; but from anybody with a brain? One, of course, could be luck. Two might-just barely-be coincidence. But the next one? I won't have to tell them, even now. I'll make the method certain the same way you did-by denying its possibility.”

”Could be, at that... so maybe we'd better make it a straight tri-di survey for everything you're interested in. That would save time, in fact, over all. What kind of a list would that be?”

”Here.” Maynard reached into a drawer and sailed a sheet of paper across his desk. ”The full want list, which we boiled down to the must-haves.”

Deston caught the paper and read it. ”Is that all?” ”Isn't that enough? You're a brute for 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 h.e.l.lions; 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 d.a.m.ned operation goes stinko. Full authority, h.e.l.l! 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, b.i.t.c.hing 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 tyc.o.o.n 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 vanis.h.i.+ngly 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 sc.r.a.p. InStell had been glad to sell her on that basis; for in the still-somewhatsuperst.i.tious public mind she was, and under any possible disguise would remain, an irreparably jinxed and hoodooed death-s.h.i.+p.

She was now completely reconditioned; not as a pa.s.senger liner, but as an armed and armored, completely self-contained, subs.p.a.ce-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 pa.s.sed a series of physical, mental, and psychological examinations.

With this special s.h.i.+p, 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 ma.s.sed control-boards of the s.h.i.+p, his fifteen top officers stood at ease; at his right was a group of twenty-odd scientists.

”So that's what all explored s.p.a.ce 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. d.a.m.n 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 fantastic expansion had been able to keep up with it.

Day after day, planet after planet, they surveyed the ninety five colonized and all the virgin planets they had scanned so sketchily on their first trip. Deston found immense deposits of several of the ”wanted” metals, including copper, and Barbara found plenty of water and fuels. Tungsten and tantalum, however, were no more abundant on any of those planets than they were on Earth; and rhenium existed only in almost imperceptible traces. Therefore the Procyon set out, on an immensely helical course, toward the center of the galaxy.

On their first expedition the Destons had learned so much that they could work any planet whose sun they could see. Now, as their psionic powers kept on increasing, their astronomers had to push the Procyon's telescopes farther and farther out into the immensity of s.p.a.ce to keep them busy.

Days lengthened into weeks, and life aboard the immense sky-rover settled down into a routine. Adults worked, read, studied, loafed, and tuned in programs of entertainment and of instruction. Children went to school and/or played just as though they were at home. In fact, they were at home. Except that physical travel outside the hall was forbidden, life aboard the stars.h.i.+p was very similar to, and in many ways more rewarding_ than, life in any village of civilization.

Deston and Barbara, however, worked and slept and ate-and that was all. Fourteen hours per day every day of every week is a brutal s.h.i.+ft to work, especially at such grueling tasks as theirs; but the entire expedition had been built around those two and they wanted to get the job done.

Chapter 8 THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK s.p.a.cEPORT.

Galactic Metals moved its main office from Earth to Galmetia. WarnOil's was already on Newmars. InStell moved to Newmars. Many other very large firms moved from Earth to various ”outplanets.” Thus, while there was a great deal of objection to the formation of such a gigantic ”trust” as METALS AND ENERGY, INCORPORATED, there was nothing that WestHem's government could do about it. While GalMet was now a whollyowned subsidiary of MetEnge, neither its name nor its operation had been changed in any way.

In GalMet's vast new building on Galmetia, President Upton Maynard sat at the head of a conference table. At his left sat Executive Vice-President Eldon Smith and Comptroller Desmond Phelps. At his right were Darrell Steams, head of GalMet's legal staff, and Ward Q. Wilson, Chief Mediator of WestHem. Miss Champion sat at her desk, off to one side. Wilson was speaking.

... no over-riding authority, of course, since MetEnge is a Newmars corporation and GalMet's legal domicile and princ.i.p.al place of business is here on Galmetia. While such tax evasion is not...”

”Let's keep the record straight, Mr. Wilson,” Maynard said sharply. ”Not evasion; avoidance. Avoidance of Earth's ruthlessly confiscatory taxation was necessary to our continued existence. Under such taxation our basic principle of operation, which the founders of GalMet inaugurated over two hundred years ago, could not possibly have remained implemented.

”Do you think it's accidental that we are the largest firm in existence? It isn't; it is due absolutely to the fact that, very unlike capital in general, we have adhered strictly to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest.