"Well, maybe you're the man for the job at that. The guys don't put
out anymore. Used to be I knew all the gang. I'd look around and see
when they were goofing off. Now they're all such experts, I can't tell
if they're loafing or just thinking." They both laughed at that.
Whitemarsh thought it would be a good time to say: "I don't want to do
anything to your boys for a while until I get my own gang straightened
out!"
"Don't kid me, Doc," responded Lo Presti, "you know when I retire
you're going to move in and crack down. Well I'm with you!"
So they parted friends.
Whitemarsh went back to his office in a happy mood. True, Miss Chester
had been avoiding him lately and he had to drink coffee by himself but
he now had the foremen on his side and the front office. Now was the
chance to reform the laboratory.
His first bombshell was the requirement that all the junior chemists
should take a qualifying examination. That really caused trouble in
paradise. Apparently, all of the younger set had thrown away their
books on graduation and remembered only their own specialties.
Whitemarsh, from being a pleasant companion at the Snack Bar who
discussed skiing and spaceball, had now become an ogre of the first
water. The senior chemists chuckled, since they were exempt, and the
Laboratorians guffawed aloud to see their harriers in turn harried.
In any event there was frenzied activity in the month before the
examination and the library staff did yeoman duty. And, no one had
threatened to quit. At least almost no one. Whitemarsh was musingly
staring out of his office's Plastoid window at the green eye of Earth
when he heard a commotion outside in the ante-room. He looked out to
see Sally Chester, and he sensed that their relationship was less than
idyllic.
"Let me see that egotistical ass, Whitemarsh," she shouted at his
secretary who cowered in silk clad finery as the white-coated Valkyrie
charged by.
"Be calm," he advised her, placing himself strategically behind his
desk.
"Calm," she screamed, "how can I be calm when an officious busybody
starts getting drunk with power and acting like a Twentieth Century
dictator? After all I've done for this stinking Lunar Lab, how come
that I have to take an exam in freshman chemistry?"
"I thought you were exempt," began the chastened director.
"Sorry, your honor! Your order says five years at Lunarport. I've only
been around this sweat shop for four years and six months. What are you
going to do if I fail? Throw me out and I'm moving over to Campo Sano
with every one of our trade secrets!"
"I'll get you exempted," he offered.
"What, and have the other chemists cry favoritism? Not on your life,
you coffee-swilling Judas," she yelled. "And stop grinning at me like a
Cheshire Cat!"
He did not answer. He was content only to admire her in her rage. Her
usually mild face was flushed through the tan and her graceful hands
were tightly clenched into fists that pounded on his desk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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