Flint ground his teeth, looked at the clock. Thank Saturn he hadn't long to listen to this—Greeno should show up in a few minutes. But those few minutes were long and before two more of them had elapsed he found himself getting madder and madder.

"To make up for shipping rates and deterioration," the lawyer said, toying with his mustache, "we'll have to increase supply." He thumbed through a sheaf of papers in his lap. "At fifty-six ninety per hide—"

"One crew of hunters can take five hundred hides a day," Hudson interrupted him. "Think what a hundred crews could do."

"I wonder how many feather-deer there are out here," Miss Vaun said. And though Flint bit his lip, it finally slipped out.

"Did it ever occur to you," he said over his shoulder, "that the fur business is a murderous racket?"

The woman stiffened visibly. Indignation flushed her face. Her stooges sat up like startled rabbits.

"I beg your pardon!"

"The fur business," Flint repeated, eyes on their faces in the mirror. "You're a bunch of butchers. I guess you've never seen a feather-doe standing over the raw carcass of her freshly-skinned faun." He turned in the seat to face them, talking through his teeth. "I've seen a whole planet littered with dead animals—thousands of them—stinking in the sun."

"Mr. Flint!" the woman's voice was like a razor. "Obviously you don't know how to converse with a lady. You will please return to your piloting."

This scalded Flint. "Why, you walking adding machine! You flat-chested treasurer's report! You haven't an ounce of womanly warmth in you. A lady! If you're a lady, I'm a moon-baboon's uncle. All you know is fur prices. If you—"

Suddenly his audience was no longer looking at him. Like a quick change of masks, the faces of all three of them had changed from anger to the stark twitching white of sheer terror. Every eye was staring past him, over his shoulder at the view-plate.

Instinctively, Flint ducked, whirled around.

As he turned, the woman screamed. Her scream filled the cabin and with this sound in his ears, Flint saw the thing and ice shot through 

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