rummaged through the huge heap, hoping to discover a later communiqué; by FitzMaugham's own request, Lang should have contacted Popeek about four days ago with his first report.

Possibly it had gone astray in delivery, Walton thought. He spent twenty minutes digging through the assorted material before remembering that he could get a replacement within seconds from the filing computer.

He typed out a requisition for any and all correspondence between Director FitzMaugham and Dr. Herbert Lang that was dated after 28 May 2232.

The machine acknowledged, and a moment later replied, This material is not included in memory banks.

Walton frowned, gathered up most of his superfluous terraforming data, and deposited it in a file drawer. The status of the project, then, was uncertain: the terraformers were on Venus and presumably at work, but were yet to be heard from.

The next Popeek project to track down would be the faster-than-light spaceship drive. But after the mass of data Walton had just absorbed, he found himself hesitant to wade through another collection so soon.

He realized that he was hungry for the sight of another human being. He had spent the whole morning alone, speaking to anonymous underlings via screen or annunciator, and requisitioning material from an even more impersonal computer. He wanted noise, life, people around him.

He snapped on the annunciator. "I'm calling an immediate meeting of the Popeek section chiefs," he said. "In my office, in half an hour—at 1230 sharp. Tell them to drop whatever they're doing and come."

Just before they started to arrive, Walton felt a sudden sick wave of tension sweep dizzyingly over him. He pulled open the top drawer of his new desk and reached for his tranquilizer tablets. He suffered a moment of shock and disorientation before he realized that this was FitzMaugham's desk, not his own, and that FitzMaugham forswore all forms of sedation.

Chuckling nervously, Walton drew out his wallet and extracted the extra benzolurethrin he carried for just such emergencies. He popped the lozenge into his mouth only a moment before the spare figure of Lee Percy, first of the section chiefs to arrive, appeared in the screener outside the door.

"Roy? It's me—Percy."

"I can see you. Come on in, Lee."

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