"Thor, no conscientious officer lets himself be relieved until his board is all green. We both knew that you had lots of lights blinking red."

"Well... all right, I can't make the conference. Got a few minutes?"

"Shoot," agreed "Smith."

"I think I've got a boy to hunt porcupines. Remember?"

" 'Nobody eats a porcupine.' "

"Right! Though I had to see a picture of one to understand what you meant. To put it in trader terms, the way to kill a business is to make it unprofitable. Slave raiding is a business, the way to kill it is to put it in the red. Porcupine spines on the victims will do it"

"If we had the spines," the "X" Corps director agreed dryly. "You have an idea for a weapon?"

"Me? What do you think I am? A genius? But I think I've found one. Name is Joel de la Croix. He's supposed to be about the hottest thing MIT ever turned out. I've gossiped with him about what I used to do as a firecontrolman in Sisu. He came up with some brilliant ideas without being prodded. Then he said, 'Thor, it's ridiculous for a ship to be put out of action by a silly little paralysis beam when it has enough power in its guts to make a small star.' "

"A very small star. But I agree."

"Okay. I've got him stashed in our Havermeyer Labs in Toronto. As soon as your boys okay him, I want to hand him a truckload of money and give him a free hand. I'll feed him all I know about raider tactics and so forth -- trance tapes, maybe, as I won't have time to work with him much. I'm being run ragged here."

"He'll need a team. This isn't a home-workshop project."

"I know. I'll funnel names to you as fast as I have them. Project Porcupine will have all the men and money it can use. But, Jake, how many of these gadgets can I sell to the Guard?"

"Eh?"

"I'm supposed to be running a business. If I run it into the ground, the courts will boost me out I'm going to let Project Porcupine spend megabucks like water -- but I've got to justify it to directors and stockholders. If we come up with something, I can sell several hundred units to Free Traders, I can sell some to ourselves -- but I need to show a potential large market to justify the expenditure. How many can the Guard use?"

"Thor, you're worrying unnecessarily. Even if you don't come up with a superweapon -- and your chances aren't good -- all research pays off. Your stockholders won't lose."

"I am not worrying unnecessarily! I've got this job by a handful of votes; a special stockholders meeting could kick me out tomorrow. Sure research pays off, but not necessarily quickly. You can count on it that every credit I spend is reported to people who would love to see me bumped -- so I've got to have reasonable justification."

"How about a research contract?"

"With a vice colonel staring down my boy's neck and telling him what to do? We want to give him a free hand."

"Mmm... yes. Suppose I get you a letter-of-intent? Well make the figure as high as possible. I'll have to see the Marshal-in-Chief. He's on Luna at the moment and I can't squeeze time to go to Luna this week. You'll have to wait a few days."

"I'm not going to wait; I'm going to assume that you can do it. Jake, I'm going to get things rolling and get out of this crazy job -- if you won't have me in the corps I can always be an ordnanceman."

"Come on down this evening. I'll enlist you -- then I'll order you to detached duty, right where you are."

Thorby's chin dropped. "Jake! You wouldn't do that to me!"

"I would if you were silly enough to place yourself under my orders, Rudbek."

"But --" Thorby shut up. There was no use arguing; there was too much work to be done.

"Smith" added, "Anything else?"

"I guess not."

"I'll have a first check on de la Croix by tomorrow. See you."

Thorby switched off, feeling glummer than ever. It was not the Wing Marshal's half-whimsical threat, nor even his troubled conscience over spending large amounts of other people's money on a project that stood little chance of success; it was simply that he was swamped by a job more complex than he had believed possible.

He picked up the top item again, put it down, pressed the key that sealed him through to Rudbek estate. Leda was summoned to the screen. "I'll be late again. I'm sorry."

"I'll delay dinner. They're enjoying themselves and I had the kitchen make the canapes substantial"

Thorby shook his head. "Take the head of the table. I'll eat here. I may sleep here."

She sighed. "If you sleep. Look, my stupid dear, be in bed by midnight and up not before six. Promise?"

"Okay. If possible."

"It had better be possible, or you will have trouble with me. See you."

He didn't even pick up the top item this time; he simply sat in thought. Good girl, Leda... she had even tried to help in the business -- until it had become clear that business was not her forte. But she was one bright spot in the gloom; she always bucked him up. If it wasn't patently unfair for a Guardsman to marry -- But he couldn't be that unfair to Leda and he had no reason to think she would be willing anyhow. It was unfair enough for him to duck out of a big dinner party at the last minute. Other things. He would have to try to treat her better.

It had all seemed so self-evident: just take over, fumigate that sector facing the Sargony, then pick somebody else to run it. But the more he dug, the more there was to do. Taxes... the tax situation was incredibly snarled; it always was. That expansion program the Vegan group was pushing -- how could he judge unless he went there and looked? And would he know if he did? And how could he find time?

Funny, but a man who owned a thousand starships automatically never had time to ride in even one of them. Maybe in a year or two --

No, those confounded wills wouldn't even be settled in that time! -- two years now and the courts were still chewing it. Why couldn't death be handled decently and simply the way the People did it?

In the meantime he wasn't free to go on with Pop's work.

True, he had accomplished a little. By letting "X" Corps have access to Rudbek's files some of the picture had filled in -- Jake had told him that a raid which had wiped out one slaver pesthole had resulted directly from stuff the home office knew and hadn't known that it knew.

Or had somebody known? Some days he thought Weemsby and Bruder had had guilty knowledge, some days not -- for all that the files showed was legitimate business... sometimes with wrong people. But who knew that they were the wrong people?

He opened a drawer, got out a folder with no "URGENT" flag on it simply because it never left his hands. It was, he felt, the most urgent thing in Rudbek, perhaps in the Galaxy -- certainly more urgent than Project Porcupine because this matter was certain to cripple, or at least hamper, the slave trade, while Porcupine was a long chance. But his progress had been slow -- too much else to do.

Always too much. Grandmother used to say never to buy too many eggs for your basket Wonder where she got that? -- the People never bought eggs. He had both too many baskets and too many eggs for each. And another basket every day.

Of course, in a tough spot he could always ask himself; "What would Pop do?" Colonel Brisby had phrased that -- "I just ask myself, 'What would Colonel Baslim do?' " It helped, especially when he had to remember also what the presiding judge had warned him about the day his parents' shares had been turned over to him; "No man can own a thing to himself alone, and the bigger it is, the less he owns it. You are not free to deal with this property arbitrarily nor foolishly. Your interest does not override that of other stockholders, nor of employees, nor of the public."

Thorby had talked that warning over with Pop before deciding to go ahead with Porcupine.