be independent of Earth, and Earth
totally dependent on space products.

The potentialities of the business game were amazing past anything Pop
Yak had ever hinted, but the funny thing was he had to find it out
step by step for himself. That kind of excitement wasn't in stories.
The adventures of explorers, research men, and detectives were written
into stories, but not money men. The life and growth and death and
blackmail of individuals were in the stories he had read, but not the
murder of planets and cities, the control and blackmail of whole
populations, in this odd legal game with the simple rules. Funny there
hadn't been lurid stories about this in the magazines he read as a
kid.

He grinned--Well, the kids would read about _him_. In fifteen years
he'd have everyone under his thumb and they'd smile and bow and be
frightened just speaking to him.

The work vanished rapidly, the pile of accumulated letters and reports
dwindling, and the phone ringing at intervals.

Complaints he dealt with carefully, wording each letter in reply so as
to give the impression that he, Bryce Carter, was personally breaking
the corporation policy to satisfy the complainer, and adding a word of
praise on the intelligence and lucidity of the complaining letter. So
far he had made a total of some six hundred letter-writing allies that
way. Complainants were usually loquacious, interfering types who
expressed more than their share of public opinion, and many would
glorify him to everyone whose ear they could hold, if only to have it
known that they were on pally terms with a Director of the great UT.

Many of the letters were merely friendly and chatty, telling of money
troubles, successes and family affairs. To these he recorded a few
friendly remarks on wire spool, telling the same joke to each, and
slipped each loop of wire into an envelope to be mailed.

Pierce, studying a transport routing map, looked over and grinned at
the sixth repetition of the joke, and Bryce grinned back and continued
on recording a letter to an address in the Ozarks. "Got a young cousin
of mine in from Montehedo, Miss Furnald, he's sitting here watching to
see how a big business office operates and he's grinning at me because
it looks like I want to just sit and talk at my friends all day long.
I have fifty-nine business letters here to answer--honest to
God--fifty-nine, I just counted them, so I guess I'll cut off and show
the young squirt how I can wo