"It's changed fast in the last week."

Amos looked toward the doorway of the lab, just inside of which a large black tomcat sat watching them. "Is the cat out here a lot?"

Barnes' eyes went to the cat, widened, and turned back to the pig. He looked as ill as Amos felt.

When Amos got to his office, his sales manager was already waiting. His mind only half present, Amos sized up the stuffed briefcase and the wider-than-necessary smile as he responded automatically to the amenities. "Just get back?" he asked.

"Early train. Darned planes grounded again." Detrick looked full of energy, though he'd undoubtedly rushed home, shaved, showered and changed, and hurried to the office with no rest. He sat down, extracted papers from the briefcase, and beamed, "Wrote up the Peach Association."

He'll give me the good news first, Amos thought. "Fine, fine," he said. "The whole year?"

"Yep. Got a check from the Almond Growers, too. All paid up now."

"Good," said Amos, and waited.

It came. "Say, I was talking to Frank Barnes about that new hormone he's got and he seemed a little negative about it. When do you think we can have it?"

It was a temptation to answer with false optimisms and duck the issue for a while, but Amos said, "The slowest thing will be State and Federal testing and registration. I'd say not less than a year."

Detrick nodded. "Competition's selling more and more stuff that's not registered."

"Fly-by-night outfits and they're always getting caught."

Detrick smiled. "Every night they fly away with more business."

Amos managed a smile, though the argument was old and weary. "We'll put it up to Buffalo if you want to, Bill. You know I can't okay it myself."

Detrick dropped the subject, not being a man to beat his head against a stone wall if there were ways around it, and for the next hour Amos had to listen to the troubles: competition had cut prices on this, upped active ingredients in that, put such and such a new product on the market (Whelan's factories and warehouses already groaned under a crippling diversity of products but Sales didn't feel that was their problem) and even the credit 

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