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.

For a moment they struggled in an attempt to regain their balance, and when Unterzuyder came out of it he was holding Fayette Beecher tightly, and he was kissing her warm little face. She responded just as energetically. And suddenly he woke up to the horror of the role he had assumed.

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