"Uh-uh," she demurred, positively. "Older, yes. More mature--you _baby_, you!" She snickered gleefully. "If he hadn't included you in that crack I'd've stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn't true. He said himself it's _you_ who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not him." "Us. We, I mean," he corrected, absently. "Uh-huh; us-we. One, now and forever. Hot Dog! Anyway, he wants us to and we want to so everything's lovely and so let's get to work on Fatso and his Foster. I think we ought to have some fun for a change and that'll be a lot. When do we want to hit him?" "Any day Monday through Friday. Nine-fifteen A.M. Eastern Daylight time. Plus or minus one minute." "Nice! Catch him _in flagrante delicto_. Lovely--shovel on the coal, my intrepid engineer!" On a Wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutes past nine EDT, the _Pleiades_ hung poised, high over the Chancellery of Solar System Enterprises, Incorporated. "Remember, Belle!" Garlock was pacing the Main. "To keep 'em staggering we'll have to land slugging and beat 'em to every punch. You did a wonderful job on her last time, and it's been eating on her ever since. She's probably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she's going to tear you apart next time and just how she's going to spit out the pieces. Last time, you were cold, stiff, rigidly formal, and polite. So this time it'll be me, and I'll be hot and bothered, dirty, low, coarse, lewd, and very, very rough." Belle threw back her head and laughed. "Rough? Yes. Vicious, contemptuous, or ugly; yes. A master of fluent, biting, and pyrotechnic profanity; yes. But low or dirty or coarse or lewd, Clee? Or any one of the four, to say nothing of them all? Uh-uh. Ferber's a filthy beast, of course; but even he knows you're one of the cleanest men that ever lived. They'd _know_ it was an act." "Not unless I give 'em time to think--or unless you do, before he fires Jim--in which case we'll lose the game anyway. But how about you? If I can knock 'em too groggy to think, will you carry on and keep 'em that way?" "Watch my blasts!" Belle giggled gleefully. "I never tried anything like that--any more than you have--but I'll guarantee to be just as low, dirty, coarse, lewd, and crude as you are. Probably more so, because in this particular case it'll be fun. You see, you're a man--you can't possibly despise and detest that slimy stinker either in the same way or as much as I do." "This ought to be good. Cut the rope, Jim." Even before the starship came to rest, Garlock drove a probe into the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the Chancellery--an utterly unheard-of act of insolence. "Foster! This is the _Pleiades_ coming in. Garlock calling. Hot up the tri-di and the recorder, Toots. Put Fatso on, and snap into it.... I said shake a leg!" "Why, I.... You...." "Stop stuttering and come to life, you half-witted bag! Gimme Ferber and hurry it up--this ship's tricky."