ough here. One solid week I work to teach
these idiots what I want them to do, and you have to come along at the
one moment all week when I really need their concentration." He glared,
his face purple. "Concentration! I should hope for so much! You got to
have a brain to have concentration--"

"Barton, this is Kielland. He's here from the Home Office, to solve all
our problems."

"You mean he brought us an evacuation ship?"

"No, he's going to tell us how to make this Installation pay. Right,
Kielland?" Simpson's grin was something to see.

Kielland scowled. "What are you going to do with the dredge--just leave
it there?" he asked angrily.

"No--I'm going to dig it out, again," said Barton, "after we take
another week off to drum into those quarter-brained mud-hens just what
it is we want them to do--again--and then persuade them to do
it--again--and then hope against hope that nothing happens along to
distract them--again. Any suggestions?"

Simpson shook his head. "Take a rest, Barton. Things will look brighter
in the morning."

"Nothing ever looks brighter in the morning," said Barton, and he
sloshed angrily off toward the Administration island.

"You see?" said Simpson. "Or do you want to look around some more?"

* * * * *

Back in Administration shack, Kielland sprayed his throat with Piper
Fortified Bio-Static and took two tetracycline capsules from his
samples case as he stared gloomily down at the little gob of blue-gray
mud on the desk before him.

The Venusian bonanza, the sole object of the multi-million-dollar Piper
Venusian Installation, didn't look like much. It ran in veins deep
beneath the surface. The R&D men had struck it quite by accident in the
first place, sampled it along with a dozen other kinds of Venusian
mud--and found they had their hands on the richest 'mycin-bearing
bacterial growth since the days of the New Jersey mud flats.

The value of the stuff was incalculable. Twenty-first century Earth had
not realized the degree to which it depended upon its effective
antibiotic products for maintenance of its health until the mutating
immune bacterial strains began to outpace the development of new
antibacterials. Early penicillin killed 96 per cent of all organisms in
its spectrum--at first--but time and natural selection undid its work in
three generations. Even the broad-spectrum drugs were losing their
effectiveness to a dangerous degree within deca