"If you'll pardon my mentioning the subject," said Horman in a scathing tone, "you'd have been far better off to tag along with 'em instead of fighting 'em."
"I'll get 'em yet."
"What's it got you so far?"
"I'm not too bad off. I've come up from the Chief Legal Counsel of Terran Electric to controlling the company."
"And Terran Electric has slid down from the topmost outfit in the system to a seventh rater."
"We'll climb back. At any rate, I'm better off personally. You're better off personally. In fact, everybody that had enough guts to stay with us is better off."
"Yeah—I know. It sounds good on paper. But make a bum move again, Kingman, and we'll all be in jail. You'd better forget that hatred against Venus Equilateral and come down to earth."
"Well, I've been a good boy for them once. After all, I did point out the error in their patent on the solar beam."
"That isn't all. Don't forget that Terran Electric's patent was at error, too."
"Frankly, it was a minor error. It's one of those things that is easy to get caught on. You know how it came about?"