And simply because I supply those colonists with their Can-D, he said to himself. I mean, somebody has to; they’ve got to have it. Otherwise what good are the Perky Pat layouts to them?

And in addition it was one of the most profitable trading operations in the Sol system. Many truffle skins were involved.

The UN knew that, too.

At twelve-thirty New York time Leo Bulero had lunch with a new girl who had joined the secretary pool. Pia Jurgens, seated across from him in a secluded chamber of the Purple Fox, ate with precision, her small, neat jaw working in an orderly manner. She was a redhead and he liked redheads; they were either outrageously ugly or almost supernaturally attractive. Miss Jurgens was the latter. Now, if he could find a pretext by which to transfer her to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres… assuming that Scotty didn’t object, however. And such did not at the present seem very likely; Scotty had a will of her own, which was always dangerous in a woman.

Too bad I couldn’t wangle Scotty off onto Barney Mayerson, he said to himself. Solve two problems at once; make Barney more psychologically secure, free myself for—

Nuts! he thought. Barney needs to be insecure, otherwise he’s as good as on Mars; that’s why he’s hired that talking suitcase. I don’t understand the modern world at all, obviously. I’m living back in the twentieth century when psychoanalysts made people less prone to stress.

“Don’t you ever talk, Mr. Bulero?” Miss Jurgens asked.

“No.” He thought, Could I dabble successfully in Barney’s pattern of behavior? Help him to–what’s the word?–become less viable?