Hiding wasn't the answer. Walton smiled grimly. If martyrdom were in store for him, let martyrdom come. The work of Popeek had to go forward. He decided he would conduct as much of his official business as possible by screen; but when personal contact was necessary, he would make no attempt to avoid it. He glanced around FitzMaugham's office. The director had been a product of the last century, and he had seen nothing ugly in the furnishings of the Cullen Building. Unlike Walton, then, he had not had his office remodeled. That would be one of the first tasks--to replace the clumsy battery of tungsten-filament incandescents with a wall of electroluminescents, to replace the creaking sash windows with some decent opaquers, to get rid of the accursed gingerbread trimming that offended the eye in every direction. The _thunkety-thunk_ air-conditioner would have to go too; he'd have a molecusorter installed in a day or two. The redecorating problems were the minor ones. It was the task of filling FitzMaugham's giant shoes, even on an interim basis, that staggered Walton. He fumbled in the desk for a pad and stylus. This was going to call for an agenda. Hastily he wrote: _1. Cancel F's appointments_ _2. Investigate setup in Files_ _a) Lang terraforming project_ _b) faster-than-light_ _c) budget--stretchable?_ _d) locate spy pickups in building_ _3. Meeting with section chiefs_ _4. Press conference with telefax services_ _5. See Ludwig ... straighten things out_ _6. Redecorate office_ He thought for a moment, then erased a few of his numbers and changed _Press conference_ to _6._ and _Redecorate office_ to _4._ He licked the stylus and wrote in at the very top of the paper: _0. Finish Prior affair._ In a way, FitzMaugham's assassination had taken Walton off the hook on the Prior case. Whatever FitzMaugham suspected about Walton's activities yesterday morning no longer need trouble him. If the director had jotted down a memorandum on the subject, Walton would be able to find and destroy it when he went through FitzMaugham's files later. And if the dead man had merely kept the matter in his head, well, then it was safely at rest in the crematorium. Walton groped in his jacket pocket and found the note his brother had slipped to him at lunchtime the day before. In the rush of events, Walton had not had a chance to destroy it. Now, he read it once more, ripped it in half, ripped it again, and fed one quarter of the note into the disposal chute. He would get rid of the rest at fifteen-minute intervals, and he would defy anyone monitoring the disposal units to locate all four fragments. Actually, he realized he was being overcautious. This was Director FitzMaugham's office and FitzMaugham's disposal chute. The director wouldn't have arranged to have his _own_ chute monitored, would he?