Ralph Unterzuyder was furious. He stalked the darkened decks of the trembling space ship _Ares_--a slick hundred-tonner with sixty square feet of firing surface--and reflected that the Beechers were making a worse sucker out of him than he'd expected them to. First, they were a pair of fakers. That much had been obvious from the start, with that phony newspaper write-up, all that bragging about their knowledge of fire-arms when they didn't even know enough to keep a weapon pointed toward the floor. Well, he'd expected that much. But to discover they did not even have _basic_ knowledge of how to outfit an expedition! They had actually begun ordering _lumber_ for building, until he pointed out the climate of Titan might be kinder to prefabricated glassteel sections. They had actually paid out money for seeds, bulbs, and saplings until he showed that all farming on Titan must for the present be on an experimental or at best highly speculative basis. Not only that, they had attempted to charter a ship twice as big as needed, one that used large quantities of chemical fuels. That ridiculous error had been amended with a smaller ship sporting atomic gas-thrust. As for the captain and crew, they had been hired by Unterzuyder himself--and, by means of the secret passage of one thousand credits from Titan Settlers' funds to Captain Foshag, the captain and crew were bought. Unterzuyder balanced himself angrily down a companionway. As he passed a hanging ventilator, the drum-beat and skittering rhythm of a jury-rigged orchestra echoed up from the ballroom. A dance was in progress. Unterzuyder smiled sentimentally. Nothing like giving the settlers a run for their money. Of course, he reflected dourly, Fayette Beecher had got the best of him in the matter of using the drawing account. Unterzuyder scowled. What had got into him? Somehow, Fayette's roving blue eyes and fiery touch did their work on him. Next thing he knew, he was in duress, being dragged on the arm of that fluffy creature from one dress shop to another. An expense account to buy swirling party dresses?--with a smidgin here and there for fancy explorers' outfits? The memory of his folly made Unterzuyder squirm. He sighed heavily as he came to C deck. Anyway, by his own cleverness, he had a ship, he had the Beechers--who had the map! And the hibernaculum asteroid, where his dozen infamous ancestors were sleeping away the decades under the influence of a potent, forbidden drug called somnolene, was somewhere out near Titan. Or _had been_. That was the one thing he remembered when, as a child, his father showed him the legendary map. At least he was headed for the area where the asteroid _might be_. And so might, he reflected glumly, that arrogant, impossible Bigger Bailes! * * * * * The Beecher's double-state-room was on C deck. Just as he turned an L in the corridor, he ran head-on into a gaily running figure clad in a fluffy party dress.