I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it--I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even. I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him. I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness. Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth. "G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown. "Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?" "Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission." The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it. "Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked. "Not at all, sir," she said dreamily. "May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first." Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency. * * * * * Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation." "You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?" "Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back." I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?" The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?" "I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more." The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly. I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"