'If we whites stick together - ' Hadley began.

'Listen,' Pethel said, 'that time has passed. If Briskin can dispose of the bibs, more power to him; personally, it keeps me awake at night, thinking of all those people, most of them just kids, lying in those gov warehouses year after year. Look at the talent going to waste. It's - bureaucratic!

Only a swollen socialist government would have dreamed up a solution like that.' He eyed his salesman harshly. 'If you hadn't gotten this job with me, even you might - '

Hadley interrupted quietly, 'But I'm white.'

Reading on further, Pethel saw that Thisbe Olt's satellite had grossed a billion U.S. dollars in

2079. Wow, he said to himself. That's big business, Before him was a pic of Thisbe; with cadmium-white hair and little high conical breasts she was a superb sight, an aesthetic as well as a sexual treat. The pic showed her serving male guests of her satellite a tequila sour - an added fillip because tequila, being derived from the mescal plant, had long been illegal on Earth proper.

Pethel touched the word tab of Thisbe's pic and at once Thisbe's eyes sparkled, her head turned, her stable, dense breasts vibrated subtly, and in the balloon above her head the proper words formed.

Embarrassing personal urgency, Mr. American businessman ? Do as many doctors recommend: visit my Golden Door!

It was an ad, Pethel discovered. Not an informative article.

'Excuse me.' A customer had entered the store and Hadley moved in his direction.

Oh lord, Darius Pethel thought as he recognized the customer. Don't we have his 'scuttler fixed yet ? He rose to his feet, knowing that he would be personally needed to appease the man; this was Dr Lurton Sands, and because of his recent domestic troubles he had become, of late, demanding and hot-tempered.