Pete returned to his desk and picked up a piece of paper, staring at it with unseeing eyes. The trouble with being thirty-seven was you didn't have the option of starting over somewhere else. Nobody hires a thirty-five to forty year old executive expecting him to go places. That was for the young tigers like-like Eddie. If Pete was going to go any further with his career, it would have to be right here.

His thoughts were interrupted by a tingling on his hand. His ringpager. He grimaced. Dick Tracy was alive and well in the corporate world. He thumbed back the lid.

"Hornsby here."

"Yeah, Pete. Eddie." Eddie Bush's voice was identifiable even with the poor sound reproduction of a three-quarter-inch speaker-mike. "Can you stop up at my office for a minute?"

"On my way, Eddie." He thumbed the ring shut and hit a button on his desk. The wood paneling of the north wall of his office faded, giving him a one-way view of his reception area. For a change, his secretary was at her desk. However, she was covertly leafing through a cosmetics catalogue. He touched the intercom button.

"Ginny!" He was rewarded by seeing her start guiltily before hitting her own intercom button.

"Yes, Pete?"

"I'm heading up to Eddie's office. Hold all calls till I get back."

"How long will you be?"

"Don't know. It's one of his surprise calls."

He clicked off the intercom and started across his office. As he approached the south wall, a portion slid back and he entered the executive corridor, stepping onto the eastbound conveyor. He nodded recognition to another executive striding purposefully along the westbound conveyor, but remained standing, letting the conveyor carry him along at a sedate four miles an hour. Corridor-walking varied by section. Some crews walked, some ran in an effort to show frenzied enthusiasm or pseudoimportance. Eddie set the code for their group. Let the convey do it. We're smoothly run to the point to where we don't have to dash around like a bunch of panicked rodents.