Kent let out a long breath. He smiled at Joe and the smile turned into a laugh that had an odd sound of triumph. "_Hohn, Uarnl_," he said, and laughed again. "_Ut sinna d'yonlwar?_" Joe sat down behind his desk and looked at the big man. Hone you-arnel. Wasn't that what Sarah had said--or something very much like it? He shook his head. "You wanted to talk to me about something, Kent? What are you and Sarah cooking up with this gibberish?" The brilliant Martian sunlight--not as dim as had been anticipated in the days before space travel--came through the ceiling-high windows, struck little lights here and there from the bouquet of Venusian Glass-moss that Miss Kal tended so carefully. It slanted across Kent's big face as he looked at Joe for a long moment, giving his left eye a pale, shallow lustre and throwing the shadow of his jutting nose down over his mouth. He opened and closed his hands, and said: "Nothing. It'll wait, I guess." His gaze wandered over the room and settled on a corner that was empty save for a throw rug--a relic of Caradac's Iowa past. Kent's mouth tightened into a thin line. He stared at the corner. "It'll wait--for a while," he said stiffly and opened the door and went into the outer office. Bone-faced, he walked toward the transveyor belt. "Mr. Kent--Mr. Kent!" The big man's Mercurian secretary rose out of a chair near the door, his voice quacking from the speaker set into his fishbowl helmet. "Yes?" "They tolt me that you hat gone to Mr. Caradac's office, sir. I've been trying to finte you all morning, sir. A laty, sir, on the visiphone. She has callt many times--many times--" "Thank you," Kent said tonelessly. "I know who it is." * * * * * Joe Caradac stared in astonishment at the door. First Sarah--now Kent. This seemed to be the day for everybody to blast in orbits ... well, hell ... he shrugged his shoulders and called Miss Kal back out of her office. She dropped into her chair with a sigh and they picked up the day's business from where it had fallen. San-Vika of Saturn Enterprises was threatening all kinds of things if he didn't receive his shipment of ato-rotors on the very next flight. Joe didn't waste much time with that. One of the many things that made him a top executive was that he knew how to deal with phonies. He told San-Vika--via spacephone--that he could go stick his heads in a waste eliminator and push the button, and that if he wanted to get nasty, M. I. and E. had an army of lawyers hanging around just itching to get their teeth into last year's insurance double-deal. "We let everybody get away with it--once!" Joe told him and cut the suddenly fawning image off the screen. M. I. and E.'s investigators, he thought absently, could certainly give the Sol Secret Service a run for their credits. Now that he had tactfully gotten San-Vika straightened out, he might as well release those ato-rotors to be shipped.