"That I do believe."
"And so we will have our revenge on Venus Equilateral and upon the system itself."
"We're heading home now?"
"Right. We want this ship fitted with the triple turret I mentioned before. Also I want the interconnecting links between the solar intake and the power-projectors beefed up. When you're passing several hundred megawatts through any system, losses of the nature of .000,000,1% cause heating to a dangerous degree. We've got to cut the I²R losses. I gave orders that the turret be started, by the way. It'll be almost ready when we return."
"You gave orders?" said Kingman.
"Oh, yes," said Hellion Murdoch with a laugh. "Remember our last bout with the stock market? I seem to have accumulated about forty-seven percent. That's sufficient to give me control of our company."
"But ... but—" spluttered Kingman. "That took money—"
"I still have enough left," said Murdoch quietly. "After all, I spent years in the Melanortis Country of Venus. I was working on the Hippocrates when I wasn't doing a bit of mining. There's a large vein of platiniridium there. You may answer the rest."
"I still do not get this piracy."
Murdoch's eyes blazed.