LITMIR.BIZ

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will you veterinarians ever learn to be organization men?” Alexander asked. “You’re as independent as tomcats.”

      Kennon grinned. “It’s a breed characteristic, I guess.”

      Alexander shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll change your mind after you’ve worked for us.”

      “Possibly, but I doubt it.”

      “Tell me that five years from now,” Alexander said—“Ah—here are the contracts.” He smiled at the trim secretary who entered the room carrying a stack of papers.

      “The riders are as you asked, sir,” the girl said.

      “Good. Now, Doctor, if you please.”

      “You don’t mind if I check them?” Kennon asked.

      “Not at all. And when you’re through, just leave them on the desk—except for your copy, of course.” Alexander scrawled his signature on the bottom of each contract. “Don’t disturb me. I’ll be in contact with you. Leave your whereabouts with your hotel.” He turned to the papers in front of him, and then looked up for the last time. “Just one more thing,” he said. “You impress me as a cautious man. It would be just as well if you carried your caution with you when you leave this room.”

      Kennon nodded, and Alexander turned back to his work.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      “I’d never have guessed yesterday that I’d be here today,” Kennon said as he looked down at the yellow waters of the Xantline Sea flashing to the rear of the airboat at a steady thousand kilometers per hour as they sped westward in the middle traffic level. The water, some ten thousand meters below, had been completely empty for hours as the craft hurtled through the equatorial air.

      “We have to move fast to stay ahead of our ulcers,” Alexander said with a wry smile. “Besides, I wanted to get away from the Albertsville offices for awhile.”

      “Three hours’ notice,” Kennon said. “That’s almost too fast.”

      “You had nothing to keep you in the city, and neither did I—at least nothing important. There are plenty of females where we are going and I need you on Flora—not in Albertsville. Besides I can get you there faster than if you waited for a company transport.”

      “Judging from those empty sea lanes below, Flora must be an out-of-the-way place,” Kennon said.

      “It is. It’s out of the trade lanes. Most of the commercial traffic is in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is practically all water. Except for Flora and the Otpens there isn’t a land area for nearly three thousand kilometers in any direction, and since the company owns Flora and the surrounding island groups there’s no reason for shipping to come there. We have our own supply vessels, a Discovery Charter, and a desire for privacy.—Ah! It won’t be long now. There’s the Otpens!” Alexander pointed at a smudge on the horizon that quickly resolved into an irregular chain of tiny islets that slipped below them. Kennon got a glimpse of gray concrete on one of the larger islands, a smudge of green trees, and white beaches against which the yellow waters dashed in smothers of foam.

      “Rugged-looking place,” he murmured.

      “Most of them are deserted. Two support search and warning stations and automatic interceptors to protect our property. Look!—there’s Flora.” Alexander gestured at the land mass that appeared below.

      Flora was a great green oval two hundred kilometers long and about a hundred wide.

      “Pretty, isn’t it?” Alexander said as they sped over the low range of hills and the single gaunt volcano filling the eastward end of the island and swept over a broad green valley dotted with fields and orchards interspersed at intervals by red-roofed structures whose purpose was obvious.

      “Our farms,” Alexander said redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. “That’s the Styx,” Alexander said. “Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way—spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano’s Mount Olympus. The marshland to the north is called the Pontine Marshes—our main road is the Camino Real.” Alexander grinned. “There’s a lot of Earth on Flora. You’ll find it in every name. Grandfather was an Earthman and he used to get nostalgic for the homeworld. Well—there’s Alexandria coming up. We’ve just about reached the end of the line.”

      Kennon stared down at the huge gray-green citadel resting on a small hill in the center of an open plain. It was a Class II Fortalice built on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago—an ugly spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern forces.

      “Why did he build a thing like that?” Kennon asked.

      “Alexandria?—well, we had trouble with the natives when we first came, and Grandfather had a synthesizer and tapes for a Fortalice in his ship. So he built it. It serves the dual purpose of base and house. It’s mostly house now, but it’s still capable of being defended.”

      “And those outbuildings?”

      “They’re part of your job.”

      The airboat braked sharply and settled with a smooth, sickeningly swift rush that left Kennon gasping—feeling that his stomach was still floating above him in the middle level. He never had become accustomed to an arbutus landing characteristics. Spacers were slower and steadier. The ship landed gently on a pitted concrete slab near the massive radiation shields of the barricaded entranceway to the fortress. Projectors in polished dually turrets swivelled to point their ugly noses at them. It gave Kennon a queasy feeling. He never liked to trust his future to automatic machinery. If the analyzers failed to decode the ship’s I.D. properly, Kennon, Alexander, the ship, and a fair slice of surrounding territory would become an incandescent mass of dissociated atoms.

      “Grandfather was a good builder,” Alexander, said proudly. “Those projectors have been mounted nearly four hundred years and they’re still as good as the day they were installed.”

      “I can see that,” Kennon said uncomfortably. “You ought to dismantle them. They’re enough to give a man the weebies.”

      Alexander chuckled. “Oh—they’re safe. The firing mechanism’s safetied. But we keep them in operating condition. You never can tell when they’ll come in handy.”

      “I knew Kardon was primitive, but I didn’t think it was that bad. What’s the trouble?”

      “None—right now,” Alexander said obliquely, “and since we’ve shown we can handle ourselves there probably won’t be any more.”

      “You must raise some pretty valuable stock if the competition tried to rustle them in the face of that armament.”

      “We do.” Alexander said. “Now if you’ll follow me”—the entrepreneur opened the cabin door letting in a blast of heat and a flood of yellow sunlight.

      “Great Arthur Fleming!” Kennon exploded. “This place is a furnace!”

      “It’s hot out here on the strip,” Alexander admitted, “but its cool enough inside. Besides, you’ll get used to this quickly enough—and the nights are wonderful. The evening rains cool things off. Well—come along.” He began walking toward the arched entrance to the great building some hundred meters away. Kennon followed looking around curiously. So this was to be his home for the next five years? It didn’t look particularly inviting. There was a forbidding air about the place that was in stark contrast to its pleasant surroundings.

      They

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