At the mention of Fun Incorporated, Buck turned his head at least half an inch, while Carstairs almost blinked.
"You have rather big ideas, don't you?" Llewellyn remarked quietly.
"Yeah," Buck agreed with a yawn, "he maybe could have picked an easier place."
Carstairs asked Mitzie softly, "You did say he was one of your father's nuts, didn't you?"
Mitzie started to reply, but Phil interposed blandly, "I know a private way into Fun Incorporated, right through Billig's office. It'll be simple. You needn't worry about the wasps."
Buck drawled, "What is this jewel beyond price, anyhow."
"Something I wouldn't expect you to appreciate," Phil replied. "However," he continued, taking a more cautious slug of the mind swelling drink, "there should be enough in the way of ordinary valuables lying about to compensate you for your effort. I understand that Fun Incorporated is rather wealthy. For one thing, all sales-robots work from there," he finished grandly. "Why not hit them where they live?"
Otie stretched leanly from under Buck's chair and snapped at Phil's hand. Phil, stiffened by the drink, didn't move it. The jaws clashed hardly an inch away. "Why do you call him Otie?" Phil asked.
"'Cause he's a coyote," Buck explained, almost with condescension. "S'posed to have been bred back for ancestral traits to the Oligocene type."
Phil found himself wondering whether cats could be bred back to their Egyptian ancestors and whether those ancestors might have been green.