"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him. "Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed--_Hey!_" In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared: "_Stop!_ Bartender--grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!" * * * * * Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And-- "_Johnny!_" Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise. "Johnny Haldane--you old scoundrel! Where in the void did _you_ drop from?" The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp. "I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?" "We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and--" "Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!" "You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No. 97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus. "It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space--or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible--remember?--and here we are!"[1] [Footnote 1: "_Shadrach_," <sc>Planet Stories</sc>, Fall, 1941.] Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated. "That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship--yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash--but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?" Warren shook his head.