It would probably be better for Terra if this wasn’t Eldritch coming back, he decided. Palmer Eldritch was too wild and dazzling a solo pro; he had accomplished miracles in getting autofac production started on the colony planets, but—as always he had gone too far, schemed too much. Consumer goods had piled up in unlikely places where no colonists existed to make use of them. Mountains of debris, they had become, as the weather corroded them bit by bit, inexorably. Snowstorms, if one could believe that such still existed somewhere… there were places which were actually cold. Too cold, in actual fact.

“Thy destination, your eminence,” the autonomic cab informed him, halting before a large but mostly subsurface structure. P. P. Layouts, with employees handily entering by its many thermal-protected ramps.

He paid the cab, hopped from it, and scuttled across a short open space for a ramp, his case held with both hands; briefly, naked sunlight touched him and he felt– or imagined—himself sizzle. Baked like a toad, dried of all life-juices, he thought as he safely reached the ramp.

Presently he was subsurface, being allowed into Mayerson’s office by a receptionist. The rooms, cool and dim, invited him to relax but he did not; he gripped his display case tighter and tensed himself and, although he was not a Neo-Christian, he mumbled a prolix prayer.

“Mr. Mayerson,” the receptionist, taller than Hnatt and impressive in her open-bodice dress and resort-style heels, said, speaking not to Hnatt but to the man seated at the desk. “This is Mr. Hnatt,” she informed Mayerson. “This is Mr. Mayerson, Mr. Hnatt.” Behind Mayerson stood a girl in a pale green sweater and with absolutely white hair. The hair was too long and the sweater too tight. “This is Miss Fugate, Mr. Hnatt. Mr. Mayerson’s assistant. Miss Fugate, this is Mr. Richard Hnatt.”

At the desk Barney Mayerson continued to study a document without acknowledging the entrance of anyone and Richard Hnatt waited in silence, experiencing a mixed bag of emotions; anger touched him, lodged in his windpipe and chest, and of course Angst, and then, above even those, a tendril of growing curiosity.