The ugly man flipped back his lapel, showing a small silver badge beneath. "I'm John Rath, General Motors Security Division."
"Oh ... Sorry, sir," Lieutenant Smith said, saluting. "I didn't think you people would move in so fast."
Rath made a noncommittal noise. "Have you checked for prints, Lieutenant? The customer might have touched some other therapy machine."
"I'll get right on it, sir," Smith said. It wasn't often that one of the operatives from GM, GE, or IBM came down to take a personal hand. If a local cop showed he was really clicking, there just might be the possibility of an Industrial Transfer....
Rath turned to Follansby and Haskins, and transfixed them with a gaze as piercing and as impersonal as a radar beam. "Let's have the full story," he said, taking a notebook and pencil from a shapeless pocket.
He listened to the tale in ominous silence. Finally he closed his notebook, thrust it back into his pocket and said, "The therapeutic machines are a sacred trust. To give a customer the wrong machine is a betrayal of that trust, a violation of the Public Interest, and a defamation of the Company's good reputation."
The manager nodded in agreement, glaring at his unhappy clerk.
"A Martian model," Rath continued, "should never have been on the floor in the first place."
"I can explain that," Follansby said hastily. "We needed a demonstrator model and I wrote to the Company, telling them--"
"This might," Rath broke in inexorably, "be considered a case of gross criminal negligence."