you crazy, Garlock?" he shouted. "What in hell's name are you
bothering _me_ with _that_ stuff for? You know better than that--make
out your requisitions and send them through channels!"

"Channels, hell!" Garlock shouted back. "Hasn't it got through your
four-inch-thick skull into your idiot's brain yet that I'm in a hurry? I
don't want this stuff today; I want it day before yesterday--this damned
junk-heap is apt to fall apart any minute. So quit goggling and
slobbering at me, you wall-eyed, slimy, fat toad. Get that three hundred
weight of suet into action. _Hump_ yourself!"

"You ... you ... Why, I was never so insulted...."

"Insulted? You?" Garlock out-roared him. "Listen, Fatso. If I ever set
out to really insult you, you'll know it--it'll blister all the paint
off the walls. All I'm trying to do now is get you off that fat butt of
yours and get some action."

Ferber became purple and pounded his desk in consuming anger.

Garlock yelled louder and pounded harder. "Start rounding up this
stuff--but _fast_--or I'll come down there and take your job away from
you and do it myself--and for your own greasy hide's sake you'd better
believe I'm not just chomping my choppers, either."

"You'll _What?_" Ferber screamed. "_You're fired!_"

"_You_ fire _me_?" Garlock mimicked the scream. "And make it stick?
You'd better write that one up for the funnies. Why, you lard-brain, you
couldn't fire a cap-pistol."

"Foster!" Ferber yelled. "Terminate Garlock as of now. Insubordination,
and misconduct, abuse of position, incompetence, malfeasance--everything
else you can think of. Blacklist him all over the System!"

At the word "fired" Belle, had leaped to her feet and had stopped
laughing.

"Miss Bellamy!" Ferber snapped.

"Yes, sir?" she answered, sweetly.

"You are hereby promoted to be Head of the...."

"Oh, yeah?" Belle sneered, her voice cutting like a knife. "You
unprincipled, lascivious, lecherous _Hitler!_ Have you got the
unmitigated gall to take _me_ for a floozie? To think you can add _me_
to your collection of bootlicking, round-heeled tramps?"

"You're fired and blacklisted too!"

"How nice! You know, I don't know of _anything_ I'd rather have happen
to me?"

* * *

"Get James on there--you, James...."

"You don't need to fire me, you fat-headed old goat," James said,
contemptuously. "I've already quit--the exact second you fired Clee."

"No you didn't!" Ferber scre