He couldn't have shocked Don Mathers more if he'd suddenly sprouted a unicorn's horn. "We've been looking for you for a week," Rostoff snapped. "Out of one bar, into another, our men couldn't catch up with you. Dammit, don't you realize we've got to get going? We've got a dozen documents for you to sign. We've got to get this thing underway, before somebody else does." Don blurted, "You can't talk to me that way." It was the other's turn to stare. Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, "No? Why can't I?" Don glared at him. Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, "Let's get this straight, Mathers. To everybody else, but Demming and me, you might be the biggest hero in the Solar System. But you know what you are to us?" Don felt his indignation seeping from him. "To us," Max Rostoff said flatly, "you're just another demi-buttocked incompetent on the make." He added definitely, "And make no mistake, Mathers, you'll continue to have a good thing out of this only so long as we can use you." A voice from behind them said, "Let me add to that, period, end of paragraph." It was Lawrence Demming, who'd just entered from an inner office. He said, even his voice seemed fat, "And now that's settled, I'm going to call in some lawyers. While they're around, we conduct ourselves as though we're three equal partners. On paper, we will be." "Wait a minute, now," Don blurted. "What do you think you're pulling? The agreement was we split this whole thing three ways." Demming's jowls wobbled as he nodded. "That's right. And your share of the loot is your Galactic Medal of Honor. That and the dubious privilege of having the whole thing in your name. You'll keep your medal, and we'll keep our share." He growled heavily, "You don't think you're getting the short end of the stick, do you?" Max Rostoff said, "Let's knock this off and get the law boys in. We've got enough paper work to keep us busy the rest of the week." He sat down again at his desk and looked up at Don. "Then we'll all be taking off for Callisto, to get things under way. With any luck, in six months we'll have every ounce of pitchblende left in the system sewed up." * * * * * There was a crowd awaiting his ship at the Callisto Spaceport. A crowd modest by Earth standards but representing a large percentage of the small population of Jupiter's moon. On the way out, a staff of the system's best speech writers, and two top professional actors had been working with him. Don Mathers gave a short preliminary talk at the spaceport, and then the important one, the one that was broadcast throughout the system, that night from his suite at the hotel. He'd been well rehearsed, and they'd kept him from the bottle except for two or three quick ones immediately before going on. _The project at hand is to extract the newly discovered deposits of pitchblende on these satellites of Jupiter._ He paused impressively before continuing.