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He couldn’t have shocked Don Mathers more if he had suddenly levitated and flown out a window.
“We’ve been looking for you for over a week,” Rostoff snapped, enraged. “Out of one bar, into another. Our men couldn’t catch up with you. Damn it, don’t you realize we’ve got to get going, you drunk? We’ve got a double dozen and more of documents for you to sign. We’ve got to get this thing underway, before somebody else does.”
Don blurted, “You can’t talk to me that way”
It was the other’s turn to stare. Obviously, Max Rostoff had as short a temper as his power was long. He said, low and dangerously, “No? Why can’t I?”
Don glared at him.
Max Rostoff ran a hard hand back over his bald, tanned head and sneered, low and dangerously, “Let’s get this straight, Mathers. To everybody else but Demming and me, you might be the biggest hero in the solar system. But you know what the hell you are to us?”
Don felt his indignation seeping from him. For the past two weeks he had been a god. For the past few days, he had begun to believe it himself. But here he was confronting reality.
Rostoff was saying, “To us, you’re just another demi-buttocked incompetent on the make. You’re a guzzler. A woman chaser. An opportunist willing to freeload on all the starry-eyed slobs who think you’re the greatest thing to come down the aisle since Alexander the Great. You think our men didn’t check you out? Hell, you didn’t even pay your hover-cabs. Underpaid cabbies that needed the couple of pseudo-dollars you owed them. Hell, you didn’t even pay in the whorehouse you spent twenty-four hours in, in Paris. The madam closed the place up to all customers as long as you were there. Do you know who her husband was? I won’t bother to tell you. He died in a One Man Scout; blew when the shuttle was taking him into orbit.”
Don sank into one of the enormous office’s huge, real-leather chairs.
Rostoff said, “You’re a rummy and a con man and… a coward. We have the record of your past six patrols, Mathers.”
Don said nothing. He was breathing deeply.
Rostoff added contemptuously, “Make no mistake, Mathers, you’ll continue to have a good thing out of this only so long as we can use you.”
A voice from behind them said, “Let me add to that, period, end of paragraph.” It was the corpulent Lawrence Demming, who had just waddled in from an inner office.
He said, and even his voice seemed fat, “And now that’s settled, I’m going to call in some of our lawyers who have already begun to work on the project. While they are about, we conduct ourselves as though we’re three equals. Theoretically we will be.” He lowered himself into a sizable chair with a sigh. It was obvious that his feet were too small for his bulk.
“Wait a minute now,” Don blurted. “What do you mean theoretically? What in the hell do you think you’re pulling? The agreement was we split this whole thing three ways.”
Demming’s jowls wobbled as he nodded. “That’s right. And your share of the loot is your Galactic Medal of Honor. That and the dubious privilege of having the whole thing in your name. You’ll keep your medal and we’ll keep our share.” He grunted heavily and added, “You don’t think you’re getting the short end of the stick, do you?”
“I think I’m getting shafted with the stick,” Don said indignantly.
Rostoff had reseated himself. He said now, “Let’s keep this on as gentlemanly a scale as possible.” He took Don in. “We’ve been working this over ever since you were successful in your farce attack upon the Kraden. This is what we’ve come up with. We are going immediately to incorporate the Donal Mathers Radioactives Mining Corporation, concentrating at first on Callisto and its pitchblende deposits. Recent prospecting has indicated a high incidence of carnotite on Ganymede and Io. We’ll undoubtedly move in on them.”
“What’s carnotite?” Don said, his voice sulky.
Rostoff’s face indicated disgust at the other’s lack of knowledge. “It’s an ore composed of oxides of vanadium, uranium and potassium. It usually occurs, often in cavities of rocks, as a lemon-yellow crystalline powder; it crystallizes in the orthorhombic system.”
Don Mathers was out of his depth. “All right, go on,” he said. “What’s all this about my being squeezed out?”
“That’s not the way to put it,” Demming wheezed. He had closed his eyes and leaned back into his chair as Rostoff talked.
Rostoff went on. “We’re going to present this on the highest patriotic level,” he said. “The Donal Mathers Radioactives Mining Corporation is above such mundane matters as making large profits. You will be president and you’ll be chairman of the board, but you will not own a single share of stock. That should impress the peasants.”
“What the hell do I live on?” Don said with belligerence.
“All that you will receive from the corporation will be your expenses. Of course, your expense account will be unlimited. You will receive not a single pseudo-dollar in salary, but what difference if your expense account is unlimited?”
“The same thing,” Demming wheezed.
“What’s the Space Service going to say about all this?” Don said. “Officers aren’t supposed—”
“You’ll resign from the Space Service tomorrow,” Rostoff said.
“That won’t go over. You’re not allowed to resign, especially in time of war. Besides, it’ll hurt my image with the common herd.”
Rostoff made with a humorless laugh. “No, it won’t. In the first place, you can resign any time you want. You can do no wrong. In the second place, we’ve assembled a whole squad of writers and speech writers for you. This will be presented as the ultimate in patriotism, you throwing yourself into a non-profit endeavor to solve the uranium shortage.”
Demming said, “You’d better move into my apartments. Tomorrow the speech writers want a preliminary session with you. They want your style of talking. They’re going to have to work on your public image. We also have a couple of actors to coach you. Then you’ll have to have a session with the makeup staff.”
“Makeup!”
“Yes,” Rostoff said. “Everything from the way you cut your hair to the type of civilian clothes you wear. We’re considering a new style of clothes, which you’ll sponsor. The simplicity look. You’re going to be the clean cut kid from next door, who, in view of the war effort, scorns expensive, fancy clothing, expensive cars, and all the rest of it.”
“Almighty Ultimate, why?”
Rostoff sighed. “The standard of living is too damn high these days. To maintain it, employees have to be paid too much. We want to lower wages and salaries—all in the name of the war effort, of course. We’re going to get them down to a living wage.”
“A meager living wage,” Demming said. “The bastards are living too high on the hog.”
Look who’s talking about hogs, Don thought inwardly.
Rostoff said, “In the privacy of your own quarters, of course, you can do whatever you want. Eat, drink, wear, and bed anything or anybody you want. But in public you’re a simple, earnest, personally unambitious young man, as befits being the hero of the solar system.”
Demming sighed satisfaction and said, “The common stock we sell will return a minimum dividend, very minimum. The dividends of the preferred stock will be limited only by the rate of profit the corporation realizes. Max, here, and I will own the preferred stock but that fact will not be made public. Through you, we will take measures to get permission to withhold such information due to, ah, let us say, national security, always a useful term.”
“It’s the rip-off of the century,” Don muttered.
Rostoff grinned his wolf grin. “It’s the rip-off of all history,” he corrected.
“And you called me a con man,” Don said bitterly.
Demming wheezed again and said, “Let’s knock this off and get the law boys in.” He pushed his bulk to his feet and went over to the desk and flicked a switch on one of the screens there and said, “Dirck.”
Dirck Bosch, his Belgian secretary, entered from the same inner office Demming had emerged from
