here. "Perfectly all right, Mr. Oak," the blond young man said affably. Then he coughed politely and added: "But I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to take off the gun."

I glanced at the holster under my armpit, walked back over to the locker, opened it, and took out my vac suit.

"Hey!" said the blond young man. "Where are you going?"

"Back to my boat," I said calmly. "I'm getting tired of this runaround already. I'm a professional man, not a hired flunky. If you'd called a doctor, you wouldn't tell him to leave his little black bag behind; if you'd called a lawyer, you wouldn't make him check his brief case. Or, if you did, he'd tell you to drop dead.

"I was asked to come here as fast as possible, and when I do, I'm told to wait till tomorrow. Now you want me to check my gun. The hell with you."

"Merely a safety precaution," said the blond young man worriedly.

"You think I'm going to shoot Ravenhurst, maybe? Don't be an idiot." I started climbing into my vac suit.

"Just a minute, please, Mr. Oak," said a voice from a hidden speaker. It was Ravenhurst, and he actually sounded apologetic. "You mustn't blame Mr. Feller; those are my standing orders, and I failed to tell Mr. Feller to make an exception in your case. The error was mine."

"I know," I said. "I wasn't blaming Mr. Feller. I wasn't even talking to him. I was addressing you."

"I believe you. Mr. Feller, our guest has gone to all the trouble of having a suit made with a space under the arm for that gun; I see no reason to make him remove it." A pause. "Again, Mr. Oak, I apologize. I really want you to take this job."

I was already taking off the vac suit again.

"But," Ravenhurst continued smoothly, "if I fail to live up to your ideas of courtesy again, I hope you'll forgive me in advance. I'm sometimes very forgetful, and I don't like it when a man threatens to leave my employ twice in the space of fifteen minutes."

"I'm not in your employ yet, Ravenhurst," I said. "If I accept the job, I won't threaten to quit again unless I mean to carry it through, and it would take a lot more than common discourtesy to make me do that. On the other hand, your brand of discourtesy is a shade above the common."

"I thank you for that, at least," said Ravenhurst. "Show him to my office, Mr. Feller."

The blond young man nodded wordlessly and led me from the room.

Walking under low-gee conditions is like nothing else in this universe. I don't mean trotting around on Luna; one-sixth gee is practically homelike in comparison. And zero gee is so devoid of orientation that it gives the sensation of falling endlessly until you get used to it. But a planetoid is in a different class altogether.

Remember that dream—almost everybody's had it—where you're suddenly able to fly? It isn't flying exactly; it's a sort of swimming in the air. Like being underwater, except that the medium around you isn't so dense and viscous, and you can breathe. Remember? Well, that's the feeling you get on a low-gee planetoid.

Your arms don't tend to hang at your sides, as they do on Earth or Luna, because the muscular tension tends to hold them out, just as it does in zero-gee, but there is still a definite sensation of up-and-down. If you push yourself off the floor, you tend to float in a long, slow, graceful arc, provided you don't push too hard. Magnetic soles are practically a must.

I followed the blond Mr. Feller down a series of long corridors which had been painted a pale green, which gave me the feeling that I was underwater. There were doors spaced at intervals along the corridor walls. Occasionally one of them would open and a busy looking man would cross the corridor, open another door, and disappear. From behind the doors, I could hear the drum of distant sounds.

We finally ended up in front of what looked like the only wooden door in the place. When you're carving an office and residence out of a nickel-iron planetoid, importing wood from Earth is a purely luxury matter.

There was no name plate on that mahogany-red door; there didn't need to be.

Feller touched a thin-lined circle in the door jamb.

"You don't knock?" I asked with mock seriousness.

"No," said Feller, with a straight face. "I have to signal. Knocking wouldn't do any good. That's just wood veneer over a three-inch-thick steel slab."

The door opened and I stepped inside.

I have never seen a room quite like it. The furniture was all that same mahogany—a huge desk, nineteenth century baroque, with carved and curlicued legs; two chairs carved the same, with padded seats of maroon leather; and a chair behind the desk that might have doubled as a bishop's throne, with even fancier carving. Off to one side was a long couch upholstered in a lighter maroon. The wall-to-wall carpeting was a rich Burgundy, with a pile deep enough to run a reaper through. The walls were paneled with mahogany and hung with a couple of huge tapestries done in maroon, purple, and red. A bookcase along one wall was filled with books, every one of which had been rebound in maroon leather.

It was like walking into a cask of old claret. Or old blood.

The man sitting behind the desk looked as though he'd been built to be the lightest spot in an analogous color scheme. His suit was mauve with purple piping, and his wide, square, saggy face was florid. On his nose and cheeks, tiny lines of purple tracing made darker areas in his skin. His hair was a medium brown, but it was clipped so short that the scalp showed faintly through, and amid all that overwhelming background, even the hair looked vaguely violet.

"Come in, Mr. Oak," said Shalimar Ravenhurst.

I walked toward him across the Burgundy carpet while the blond young man discreetly closed the door behind me, leaving us alone. I didn't blame him. I was wearing a yellow union suit, and I hate to think what I must have looked like in that room.

I sat down in one of the chairs facing the desk after giving a brief shake to a thick-fingered, well-manicured, slightly oily hand.

He opened a crystal decanter that stood on one end of the desk. "Have some Madeira, Mr. Oak? Or would you like something else? I never drink spirits at this time of night."

I fought down an impulse to ask for a shot of redeye. "The Madeira will be fine, Mr. Ravenhurst."

He poured and handed me a stemmed glass nearly brimming with the wine. I joined him in an appreciative sip, then waited while he made up his mind to talk.

He leaned across the desk, looking at me with his small, dark eyes. He had an expression on his face that looked as if it were trying to sneer and leer at the same time but couldn't get much beyond the smirk stage.

"Mr. Oak, I have investigated you thoroughly—as thoroughly as it can be done, at least. My attorneys say that your reputation is A-one; that you get things done and rarely disappoint a client."

He paused as if waiting for a comment. I gave him nothing.

After a moment, he went on. "I hope that's true, Mr. Oak, because I'm going to have to trust you." He leaned back in his chair again, his eyes still on me. "Men very rarely like me, Mr. Oak. I am not a likable man. I do not pretend to be. That's not my function." He said it as if he had said it many times before, believed it, and wished it wasn't so.

"I do not ask that you like me," he continued. "I only ask that you be loyal to my interests for the duration of this assignment." Another pause. "I have been assured by others that this will be so. I would like your assurance."

"If I take the assignment, Mr. Ravenhurst," I told him, "I'll be working for you. I can be bought, but once I'm bought I stay bought.

"Now, what seems to be your trouble?"

He frowned. "Well, now, let's get one thing settled: Are you working for me, or not?"

"I won't know that until I find out what the job is."

His frown deepened. "Now, see here; this is very confidential work. What happens if I tell