processing and synthesizing plants, the refineries, the laboratories, the power-houses, and so on.

In a ground-floor office of the towering Administration Building two men sat in silence and waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated desk-board faded through pink into pure white.

"All clear. This way, Doctor." Manager Graves pushed a button and a section of blank wall slid smoothly aside.

The fat man and Doctor Fairchild—unrecognizable now as the man who had once been known as Doctor Stonely—went down two long flights of narrow steps. Along a dimly-lit corridor they made their way, through an elaborately locked steel door, then into a barely-furnished, steel-lined room upon the floor of which four inert bodies lay.

Graves thrust a key into an inconspicuous orifice and a plate swung open, revealing a chute into which the four lax forms were unceremoniously dumped. Then the two men retraced their steps to the manager's office.

"Well, that's about all that we can feed to the disintegrators." Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled thoughtfully.

"Why? Going soft on us?" Graves sneered.

"No," the scientist replied calmly. "The ice is getting thin."

"Whaddya mean 'thin'?" the manager demanded. "The Patrol inspectors are ours—enough of them, anyway. Our records are fixed. Faked identities, trips, all that stuff, you know. Everything's on the green."

"That's what you think," Fairchild countered cynically. "Our accident rate, in spite of everything we have been able to do, is up three hundredths of one percent; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the Patrol's files. How can you give such facts the brush-off?"

"We don't have to," Graves laughed comfortably. "Even a half of one percent would not excite suspicion, and our distribution is so uniform throughout the galaxy that they can't center it. They can't possibly trace anything back to us. Besides, they wouldn't suspect us. With our reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer's, for instance, is putting out heroin by the ton."

"Again I say that's what you think." Fairchild 

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