Terran Electric stock took a gradual slide, for Kingman's crowd needed additional money. But the slide was slow, and controlled, and manipulated only for the purpose of selling short. Terran Electric stock eventually remained in the hands of Kingman's crowd, though its value was lessened. Venus Equilateral Preferred hit four hundred and sixty-eight, and hovered. It vacillated around that point for another hour, and the market closed at four hundred and sixty-nine and three-eighths. Kingman looked at his watch and smiled. He reached forth and cut the dinning sound of the cacophony with a vicious twist of the gain knob. Silence reigned in the spaceship; grand, peaceful silence. Kingman, his nerves frayed by the mental activity and the brain-addling music-from-nowhere, took a hot shower and went to bed. He locked the panel of the control room first, however. He wanted no engineer tinkering with his pet relay. * * * * * Cartwright came into Channing's living room with a long face. "It's bad," he said. "Bad." "What's bad?" "Oh, I, like the rest of the fools, got caught in his trap." "Whose trap?" "The wild man who is trying to rock Venus Equilateral on its axis." "Well, how?" "They started to buy like mad, and I held out. Then the thing dropped a few points, and I tried to make a bit of profit, so that we could go on bolstering the market. They grabbed off my stock, and then, just like _that!_ the market was on the way up again and I couldn't find more than a few odd shares to buy back." "Don't worry," said Channing, "I don't think anyone is big enough to really damage us. Someone is playing fast and loose, making a killing. When this is over, we'll still be in business." "I know, Don, but whose business will it be? Ours, or theirs?" "Is it that bad?" "I'm afraid so. One more flurry like today, and they'll be able to tow Venus Equilateral out and make Mars Equilateral out of it, and we won't be able to say a word." "H-m-m-m. You aren't beaten?" "Not until the last drop. I'm not bragging when I say that I'm as good an operator as the next. My trouble today was not being a mind reader. I'd been doing all right, so far. I've been letting them ride it up and down with little opposition, and taking off a few here and there as I rode along. Guessing their purpose, I could count on their next move. But this banging the market sky-high has me stumped, or had me stumped for just long enough for me to throw our shirt into the ring. They took that quick--our shirt, I mean." "That's too bad. What are you leading up to?" "There are a lot of unstable stocks that a guy could really play hob with; therefore their only reason to pick on us is to gain control!" "Pirates?" "Something like that."