outside the window.
"All I want, Mr. Mead, is half a planet to myself," he said softly.

He shook his head. "Well, it'll work out this time. This time, I won't
have to sell so much, and I'll have a place to spend what time I've got
left in peace, without this ... this--" He gestured helplessly in an
effort to convey his tortured consciousness of his own fear.

Mead nodded quickly as he saw his features knot convulsively. "Of
course, Mr. Holliday. We'll get you an option on a new planet as quickly
as we can."

"Thank you," Holliday said again. "Can we ... can we handle it today?
I've had my credit transferred to a local bank."

"Certainly, Mr. Holliday. We won't keep you on Earth a moment longer
than absolutely necessary." He took a standard form out of a desk drawer
and passed it to Holliday for his signature.

"I'll be smarter this time," the aging man said, trying to convince
himself, as he uncapped his pen. "This time, it'll work out."

"I'm sure it will, Mr. Holliday," Mead said.

II.

Marlowe was obese. He sat behind his desk like a tuskless sea lion
crouched behind a rock, and his cheeks merged into jowls and obliterated
his neck. His desk was built specially, so that he could get his thighs
under it. His office chair was heavier and wider by far than any
standard size, its casters rolling on a special composition base that
had been laid down over the carpeting, for Marlowe's weight would have
cut any ordinary rug to shreds. His jacket stretched like pliofilm to
enclose the bulk of his stooped shoulders, and his eyes surveyed his
world behind the battlemented heaviness of the puffing flesh that filled
their sockets.

A bulb flickered on his interphone set, and Marlowe shot a glance at the
switch beneath it.

"Secretary, quite contrary," he muttered inaudibly. He flicked the
switch. "Yes, Mary?" His voice rumbled out of the flabby cavern of his
chest.

"Mr. Mead has just filed a report on Martin Holliday, Mr. Secretary.
Would you like to see it?"

"Just give me a summary, Mary."

Under his breath he whispered, "Summary that mummery, Mary," and a thin
smile fell about his lips while he listened. "Gave him Karlshaven IV,
eh?" he observed when his secretary'd finished. "O.K. Thanks, Mary."

He switched off and sat thinking. Somewhere in the bowels of the Body
Administrative, he knew, notations were being made and cross-filed. The
addition of Karlshaven IV to the list of planets under colonization