n an act to sell the plan to Carlson. Can you take
it?"

Rod was thoughtful for a few minutes. He liked and trusted Jaimie, but
the man had no experience in this field--and this sounded like an
all-or-nothing shot.

Then he remembered his despair over the latest set of resignations. He'd
been ready to quit--he had nothing to offer, and neither did his men.
Even a wild idea was worth a try, he thought grimly--he would be risking
nothing but a plan that had already failed.

"Go to it, boy," he said. "And if you need a fight, you'll get a damn
good one."

* * * * *

The fight with Carlson was short, and Rod was abruptly overruled. After
that Jaimie moved fast. The new colonists flocked in. Three months after
Rod's talk with him, the compounds started to fill. A shipload was a
hundred men, and each new man had to wait in a group until it was
filled. But there was no waiting now except for processing; the
compounds were full before the ships were ready.

Rod had paid no attention to Jaimie's recruiting methods, thinking that
the historian's idea differed mainly in control over the colonists.

Until he saw the crowds.

Even from a distance, they didn't have the young look of the previous
groups. Up close, they looked like the sweepings of the slums.

[Illustration]

He and Biddington talked to a few before they fully realized what Jaimie
had done. All the men were sure that Venus was a mineral paradise--gold
in the streams, uranium lodes so pure you had to wear a shield to get
near them, diamonds, silver--every treasure that had ever excited men on
Earth was scattered around the new world waiting to be picked up. That
was what Jaimie had told them.

Rod got to a phone, fast.

"Jaimie, you fool! I know what you're doing, and I won't put up with it!
You've told these dupes they can get rich on Venus! You intended to
attract large numbers of recruits, in the hope that some of them will be
what we need--but look at what you attracted! Crooks, gangsters, bums,
hoboes, sharecroppers and I don't know what. You got recruits all
right ... but what the hell kind of a society are you going to start
with them! And who will go and live there among them later?"

"What's the matter, Workham?" Jaimie asked coldly. "Are you a racial
purist? Want only your kind of people to get to Venus?"

"I don't care _who_ goes, as long as they fit some standards. But to
make a decent place, you need decent p