"I told you I was forced into it, didn't I? Wendel is calling Endicott's bluff. We can no longer go on buying Endicott fuel cylinders openly on margin, hundreds of them and letting all of them stay in Wendel's custody, because we don't really own them at all. The price goes up or the price goes down and we sell out and buy again--and we're supposed to own four-fifths of the Endicott Combine. But there's not a single Colonist who owns the equivalent of four or five cylinders outright. I don't own these six cylinders. But I had to bring them home with me." "I just don't understand why. It's too complicated for me. A nuclear explosion would be much easier for me to understand." "All right ... I'll go over it again. But try to listen more carefully this time. Before this big, cut-throat war started only one man suspected that one of the two competing combines might try to sell its fluid property to the Colonists on margin. They were supposed to cooperate, not compete, because it was thought that Wendel couldn't possibly keep its nuclear generators operating without fuel. It can't, of course, but only one man suspected that Endicott might refuse to be dwarfed by Wendel in a sharp-practice duel and fight to stay big and powerful by letting the Colonists buy and sell fuel on speculation. That would put the Colonists right in the middle, don't you see?" "Yes ... I do," the woman who had once been almost beautiful said. "Thank you for giving me credit for having that much intelligence. You seem to forget that I have a fairly good memory too. We've gone over this a hundred times." "Sure we have. But it doesn't seem to have made too deep an impression on you. You can sum it all up by saying that _on paper_, from day to day, it's the Colonists who now own the Endicott Combine, or most of it. So it's the Colonists who are carrying the battle directly to Wendel, fighting for the right to go on wildcatting, to get rich overnight or end up pauperized. It's wildcatting in a sense, just as it was when oil instead of atomic fuel was the big prize to be fought over Earthside. When a Colonist buys Endicott fuel cylinders on margin, it's practically the same as if he were digging an oil well in his own backyard." "Go on, John," the woman said wearily. "There's that much uncertainty in it, don't you see? And he's really doing it entirely single-handed and on his own, because he's digging in what is practically a paper graveyard in some respects, unless he's one of the lucky ones. Endicott keeps the fuel. It doesn't go out of their hands. But Wendel still has to buy it directly from the Colonists, who are supposed to own it, and the price fluctuations keep Wendel from becoming all-powerful and Endicott from going under or being dwarfed.