A day later I got orders to start winding up the BEE's installations on Niobe. The consular service would take over after I had finished.... * * * * * Lanceford looked at his watch. "Well, we're going to have time. It looks like they'll be late. Want to hear the rest of it?" "Naturally," Perkins said. "I certainly wouldn't want you to stop here." "Well," Lanceford continued, "the next four years weren't much." * * * * * We spent most of the time closing down the outpost and regional installations, but it took longer than I expected what with the difficulty in getting shipping space to move anything but viscaya concentrate off the planet. Of course, like any of the Confederation bureaus, the BEE died hard. With one thing and another, there were still a lot of our old people left. We still had the three main bases on the continental land masses in operating condition, plus a few regional experiment stations on Alpha Continent and the Marine Biology Labs on Varnel Island. I'd just closed the last regional stations on Beta and Gamma when Heinz Bergdorf paid me an official call. Heinz was the senior biologist on Varnel. He was a good looking lad of Teutonic ancestry, one of those big blond kids who fool you. He didn't look like a scientist, but his skull held more knowledge of Niobe's oceans than was good for a man. He would have to unlearn a lot of it before he took his next job, or so I thought at the time. Anyway, Heinz came into my office looking like someone had stolen his favorite fishnet. The expression of Olympian gloom on his beak-nosed face would have done credit to Zeus. It didn't take any great amount of brains to see that Heinz was worried. It stuck out all over him. He draped himself limply in the chair beside my desk. "We've got troubles, Chief," he announced. I grinned at him. I knew perfectly well why he was here. Something had come up that was too big for him to handle. That was Heinz's only fault, a belief in the omnipotence of higher authority. If he couldn't handle it, it was a certainty that I could--even though I knew nothing of either his specialty or his problems. However, I liked the man. I did my best to give him the fatherly advice he occasionally needed, although he would have been better off half the time if he hadn't taken it. "Well, what's the trouble now?" I asked. "From the look on your face it must be unpleasant. Or maybe you're just suffering from indigestion." "It's not indigestion, Chief." "Well, don't keep me in suspense. Tell me so I can worry too." I didn't like the way he looked. Of course, I'd been expecting trouble for the past year. Things had been going far too smoothly. "Oysters!" Bergdorf said laconically. "Oysters?" I looked at him incredulously. Bergdorf sat straight up in his chair and faced me. There was no humor in his eyes. "For God's sake! You frightened me for a moment. You're joking, I hope."