an exception being
taken to its clauses and wording.

Niobe became a full member of the Confederation, with sovereign
planetary rights, and the viscaya concentrate began flowing aboard the
ships waiting at the polar bases.

A day later I got orders to start winding up the BEE's installations on
Niobe. The consular service would take over after I had finished....

* * * * *

Lanceford looked at his watch. "Well, we're going to have time. It looks
like they'll be late. Want to hear the rest of it?"

"Naturally," Perkins said. "I certainly wouldn't want you to stop here."

"Well," Lanceford continued, "the next four years weren't much."

* * * * *

We spent most of the time closing down the outpost and regional
installations, but it took longer than I expected what with the
difficulty in getting shipping space to move anything but viscaya
concentrate off the planet. Of course, like any of the Confederation
bureaus, the BEE died hard. With one thing and another, there were still
a lot of our old people left. We still had the three main bases on the
continental land masses in operating condition, plus a few regional
experiment stations on Alpha Continent and the Marine Biology Labs on
Varnel Island. I'd just closed the last regional stations on Beta and
Gamma when Heinz Bergdorf paid me an official call.

Heinz was the senior biologist on Varnel. He was a good looking lad of
Teutonic ancestry, one of those big blond kids who fool you. He didn't
look like a scientist, but his skull held more knowledge of Niobe's
oceans than was good for a man. He would have to unlearn a lot of it
before he took his next job, or so I thought at the time.

Anyway, Heinz came into my office looking like someone had stolen his
favorite fishnet. The expression of Olympian gloom on his beak-nosed
face would have done credit to Zeus. It didn't take any great amount of
brains to see that Heinz was worried. It stuck out all over him. He
draped himself limply in the chair beside my desk.

"We've got troubles, Chief," he announced.

I grinned at him. I knew perfectly well why he was here. Something had
come up that was too big for him to handle. That was Heinz's only fault,
a belief in the omnipotence of higher authority. If he couldn't handle
it, it was a certainty that I could--even though I knew nothing of
either his specialty or his problems. However, I liked the man. I did m