see at all. He looked curiously at the entrepreneur. Alexander couldn’t be as easy as he seemed. Objectivity and dispassionate weighing and balancing were nice traits and very helpful ones, but in the bear pit of galactic business they wouldn’t keep their owner alive for five minutes. The interworld trade sharks would have skinned him long ago and divided the stripped carcass of his company between them.
But Outworld was a “respected” company. The exchange reports said so—which made Alexander a different breed of cat entirely. Still, his surface was perfect—polished and impenetrable as a duralloy turret on one of the latest Brotherhood battleships. Kennon regretted he wasn’t a sensitive. It would be nice to know what Alexander really was.
“Tell me, sir,” Kennon asked. “What are the real reasons that make you think I’m the man you want?”
“And you’re the young man who’s so insistent on a personal privacy rider,” Alexander chuckled. “However, there’s no harm telling you. There are several reasons.
“You’re from a culture whose name is a byword for moral integrity. That makes you a good risk so far as your ethics are concerned. In addition you’re the product of one of the finest educational systems in the galaxy-and you have proven your intelligence to my satisfaction. You also showed me that you weren’t a spineless ‘yes man.’ And finally, you have a spirit of adventure. Not one in a million of your people would do what you have done. What more could an entrepreneur ask of a prospective employee?”
Kennon sighed and gave up. Alexander wasn’t going to reveal a thing.
“All I hope,” Alexander continued affably, “is that you’ll find Outworld Enterprises as attractive as did your predecessor Dr. Williamson. He was with us until he died last month—better than a hundred years.”
“Died rather young, didn’t he?”
“Not exactly, he was nearly four hundred when he joined us. My grandfather was essentially conservative. He liked older men, and Old Doc was one of his choices—a good one, too. He was worth every credit we paid him.”
“I’ll try to do as well,” Kennon said, “but I’d like to warn you that I have no intention of staying as long as he did. I want to build a clinic and I figure sixty thousand is about enough to get started.”
“When will you veterinarians ever learn to be organization men?” Alexander asked. “You’re as independent as tomcats.”
Kennon grinned. “It’s a breed characteristic, I guess.”
Alexander shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll change your mind after you’ve worked for us.”
“Possibly, but I doubt it.”
“Tell me that five years from now,” Alexander said—“Ah—here are the contracts.” He smiled at the trim secretary who entered the room carrying a stack of papers.
“The riders are as you asked, sir,” the girl said.
“Good. Now, Doctor, if you please.”
“You don’t mind if I check them?” Kennon asked.
“Not at all. And when you’re through, just leave them on the desk—except for your copy, of course.” Alexander scrawled his signature on the bottom of each contract. “Don’t disturb me. I’ll be in contact with you. Leave your whereabouts with your hotel.” He turned to the papers in front of him, and then looked up for the last time. “Just one more thing,” he said. “You impress me as a cautious man. It would be just as well if you carried your caution with you when you leave this room.”
Kennon nodded, and Alexander turned back to his work.
CHAPTER III
“I’d never have guessed yesterday that I’d be here today,” Kennon said as he looked down at the yellow waters of the Xantline Sea flashing to the rear of the airboat at a steady thousand kilometers per hour as they sped westward in the middle traffic level. The water, some ten thousand meters below, had been completely empty for hours as the craft hurtled through the equatorial air.
“We have to move fast to stay ahead of our ulcers,” Alexander said with a wry smile. “Besides, I wanted to get away from the Albertsville offices for awhile.”
“Three hours’ notice,” Kennon said. “That’s almost too fast.”
“You had nothing to keep you in the city, and neither did I—at least nothing important. There are plenty of females where we are going and I need you on Flora—not in Albertsville. Besides I can get you there faster than if you waited for a company transport.”
“Judging from those empty sea lanes below, Flora must be an out-of-the-way place,” Kennon said.
“It is. It’s out of the trade lanes. Most of the commercial traffic is in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is practically all water. Except for Flora and the Otpens there isn’t a land area for nearly three thousand kilometers in any direction, and since the company owns Flora and the surrounding island groups there’s no reason for shipping to come there. We have our own supply vessels, a Discovery Charter, and a desire for privacy.—Ah! It won’t be long now. There’s the Otpens!” Alexander pointed at a smudge on the horizon that quickly resolved into an irregular chain of tiny islets that slipped below them. Kennon got a glimpse of gray concrete on one of the larger islands, a smudge of green trees, and white beaches against which the yellow waters dashed in smothers of foam.
“Rugged-looking place,” he murmured.
“Most of them are deserted. Two support search and warning stations and automatic interceptors to protect our property. Look!—there’s Flora.” Alexander gestured at the land mass that appeared below.
Flora was a great green oval two hundred kilometers long and about a hundred wide.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Alexander said as they sped over the low range of hills and the single gaunt volcano filling the eastward end of the island and swept over a broad green valley dotted with fields and orchards interspersed at intervals by red-roofed structures whose purpose was obvious.
“Our farms,” Alexander said redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. “That’s the Styx,” Alexander said. “Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way—spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano’s Mount Olympus. The marshland to the north is called the Pontine Marshes—our main road is the Camino Real.” Alexander grinned. “There’s a lot of Earth on Flora. You’ll find it in every name. Grandfather was an Earthman and he used to get nostalgic for the homeworld. Well—there’s Alexandria coming up. We’ve just about reached the end of the line.”
Kennon stared down at the huge gray-green citadel resting on a small hill in the center of an open plain. It was a Class II Fortalice built on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago—an ugly spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern
