His voice was pitched deep. He talked in short, rumbled sentences. His thick arm jerked sharply each time he moved the pointer.

“Coogan, you’re going into IV. You’ve studied the aerial surveys. No animal life. No vegetation. All naked rock where it isn’t water. Take Petrick with you and do a mineralogical survey. You’ve got a week. If you hit anything promising, I’ll extend your schedule. Don’t go drawing any weapons. No more’n it takes to keep you happy, anyhow. Jusek’s going to need ’em on VII.”

Imbry’s mouth twitched in disgust. The lighting. The platform on which Lindenhoff was shambling back and forth, never stumbling even when he stepped back without looking behind him. The dimensions of that platform must be clearly imprinted in his mind. Every step was planned, every gesture practiced. The sunburn, laid down by a battery of lamps. The careful tailoring of the coveralls to make that ursine body look taller.

Coogan and Petrick. The coward and the secret drunkard. Petrick had left a partner to die on a plague world. Coogan had shot his way out of a screaming herd of reptiles on his third contact mission—and had never gone completely unarmed, anywhere, in the ten years since.

The rest of them were no better. Ogin had certified a planet worthless. A year later, a small scavenger company had found a fortune in wolfram not six miles away from his old campsite. Lindenhoff hadn’t seen fit to fire him. Kenton, the foul-minded pathological liar. Maguire, who hated everything that walked or flew or crept, who ripped without pity at every world he contacted, and whose round face, with its boyish smile, was always broadcast along with a blushingly modest interview whenever the Sainte Marie’s latest job of opening up a new solar system was covered by the news programs.

Most of those programs, Imbry’d found out in the short time he’d been aboard, were bought and paid for by the Sainte Marie Development Corporation’s public relations branch.