"That's right, but that's the way some of them are muffing their work."
Lo Presti eyed him appraisingly. "Aren't you the same Whitemarsh who capped the crater on Phobus last year?"
"I sure am. And your Laboratorians are a bevy of Nice Nellies compared to that mutinous bunch of space rats I had with me."
"Well, maybe you're the man for the job at that. The guys don't put out anymore. Used to be I knew all the gang. I'd look around and see when they were goofing off. Now they're all such experts, I can't tell if they're loafing or just thinking." They both laughed at that. Whitemarsh thought it would be a good time to say: "I don't want to do anything to your boys for a while until I get my own gang straightened out!"
"Don't kid me, Doc," responded Lo Presti, "you know when I retire you're going to move in and crack down. Well I'm with you!"
So they parted friends.
Whitemarsh went back to his office in a happy mood. True, Miss Chester had been avoiding him lately and he had to drink coffee by himself but he now had the foremen on his side and the front office. Now was the chance to reform the laboratory.
His first bombshell was the requirement that all the junior chemists should take a qualifying examination. That really caused trouble in paradise. Apparently, all of the younger set had thrown away their books on graduation and remembered only their own specialties. Whitemarsh, from being a pleasant companion at the Snack Bar who discussed skiing and spaceball, had now become an ogre of the first water. The senior chemists chuckled, since they were exempt, and the Laboratorians guffawed aloud to see their harriers in turn harried. In any event there was frenzied activity in the month before the examination and the library staff did yeoman duty. And, no one had threatened to quit. At least almost no one. Whitemarsh was musingly staring out of his office's Plastoid window at the green eye of Earth when he heard a commotion outside in the ante-room. He looked out to see Sally Chester, and he sensed that their relationship was less than idyllic.
"Let me see that egotistical ass, Whitemarsh," she shouted at his secretary who cowered in silk clad finery as the white-coated Valkyrie charged by.
"Be calm," he advised her, placing himself strategically behind his desk.