I grated, "I could stand the rest of it, but what burns me up is that makron Westley Marks. Here he is getting rich on the project. Besides what he makes from the government, he's bet every one of us so much that we'll all be out our life savings when we go back."
"Brother Nap, you have said it," Mike Holiday said feelingly. He tilted the glass to his lips and drank deeply. I was right behind him.
It was more than two years later when I walked into the office of Westley Marks. I noted with pleasure that he still looked as aristocratic as ever.
"Ah," he said, "Mr. Napoleon Prescott. As I recall, the last time we met you objected to my calling your namesake a 'bust.' Don't tell me that we have an additional bust in—"
I loved it. I loved every word of it. And he must have seen that I did.
"What are you grinning about?" he barked. It was the first time I had seen his poise disturbed.
"Frankie," I told him, "is at the spaceport right now. Johnny will be down on the next shuttle. As you can imagine, the shuttle was pretty well strained to capacity to bring even one at a time. It was no trouble in space of course, since they were weightless in free fall, but entering the gravitational—"
He put his hands on the top of the desk and half came to his feet. His eyes were wide. "Who are Frankie and Johnny?"
I feigned surprise. "Frankie and Johnny are sweethearts—a couple of zloors, in this case. Remember? You sent me for them. I thought a male and a female would be best."