Carson sent the information by spacegram. He was informed that a special Company ship was heading for Cetis Gamma Two at full speed. Carson would take orders from its skipper when it arrived. Meanwhile, he would buy _thanar_ leaf if absolutely necessary, but stall as long as possible. The legal staff of the Trading Company was working on the problem of adapting the system to get the new surplus supplies of _thanar_ without letting anybody get anything in particular for it. He would keep secret the coming of the special ship, which was actually the space yacht of a member of the Board of Directors. And he would display great friendliness toward Lon Simpson. The last was the difficult part, because Lon Simpson was becoming difficult. With the sun writhing as if in agony overhead--seen dimly through a permanent blessed mistiness--and changing shape from hour to hour, Lon Simpson had discovered something new to get mad about. Lon had felt definitely on top of the world. He had solved the problem of clearing his debts and getting credit sufficient for two passages back to Earth, with money there to take care of getting rich on his inventions. There was no reason to delay marriage. He wanted to get married. And through a deplorable oversight, there had been no method devised by which a legal marriage ceremony could be performed on Cetis Gamma Two. It was one of those accidental omissions which would presently be rectified. But the legal minds who'd set up the system for the planet had been thinking of money, not marriages. They hadn't envisioned connubial bliss as a service the Company should provide. And Lon was raising cain. His barn was literally bursting with _thanar_ leaves, and he was filling up his attic, extra bedroom, living quarters and kitchen with more. He was rich. He wanted to get married. And it wasn't possible. Lon was in a position to raise much more cain than ordinary. He'd made an amicable bargain with his fellow colonists. They brought truckloads of miscellaneous foliage to be put into his vegetation converter, and he converted it all into _thanar_ leaves. The product was split two ways. Everybody was happy--except Carson--Because every colonist had already acquired enough _thanar_ leaf to pay himself out of debt, and was working on extra capital. If this kept up, the galactic market would be broken. Carson had nightmares about that. * * * * * So the sun went through convulsions in emptiness, and nobody on its second planet paid any attention at all. After about a week, it occasionally subsided. When that happened, the ionization of the planet's upper atmosphere lessened, the radiation screen grew thinner, and a larger proportion of light reached the surface. When the sun flared higher, the shield automatically grew thicker. An astronomical phenomenon which should have destroyed all life on the inner planets came to be taken for granted.