"

"Conn, there's an old stock-market maxim: 'A bear can make money
sometimes, and a bull can make money sometimes, but in the long run, a
hog always loses.' Let the other people find some of this; it'll all
help the Plan. Fact is, I've been thinking of leaking some
information, if I can do it without Fawzi and that gang finding out.
Do you know a good supply depot or something like that, say over on
Acaire, or on the west coast? Big enough to be important, and to start
a second prospectors' rush away from us."

"How about one of those hospitals?"

"No; not a hospital. We might use them to talk Wade Lucas into joining
us. A lot of medical stores would be a good bait for him. I'm afraid
he's going to make trouble if we don't do something about him."

"Well, how about engineering and construction equipment? I know where
there's a lot of that, down to the southwest."

"That's farming country; that stuff'll be useful down there. I'll do
that."

The next morning, Rodney Maxwell scorched the stratosphere to
Storisende in his recon-car. The day after he got back, there was a
big discovery of engineering equipment to the southwest and, as he had
anticipated, a second rush of prospectors. They had the vertical shaft
clear now, and the _Lester Dawes_ was shuttling back and forth between
Force Command Duplicate and Storisende. Other ships were coming in,
now, mostly privately owned freighting ships. They bought almost
anything, as fast as it came out.

The stock market had been paralyzed for a couple of days after the
discovery of Force Command; nobody seemed to know what to sell and
what to hold. Now it was going perfectly insane. Twenty or thirty new
companies were being formed; unlike Litchfield Exploration & Salvage,
they were all offering their stock to the public. A week after the
opening of Force Command, the Stock Exchange reported the first
half-million-share day since the War. A week after that, there were
two million-share days in succession.

Some of the L. E. & S. stockholders who had come out on the first day
began drifting back to Litchfield. Lester Dawes was the first to
defect; there was nothing he could do at Force Command, and a great
deal that needed his personal attention at the bank. Morgan Gatworth
and Lorenzo Menardes and one or two others followed. Kurt Fawzi,
however, refused to leave. Merlin was somewhere here at Force Command,
he was sure of it, and he wasn't leaving till it was found. Neither