m had died ... a slipper on
the floor here, a book face down on the couch there....

It looked as though Dad had just stepped out for an hour or so.

Tom was three steps into the room before he saw the visitor.

The man was sitting comfortably in Roger Hunter's easy chair, a short,
fat man with round pink cheeks that sagged a little and a double chin
that rested on his neck scarf. There were two other men in the room,
both large and broad-shouldered; one of them nodded to the fat man, and
moved to stand between the boys and the door.

The fat man was out of his seat before the boys could speak, smiling at
them and holding out his hand. "I wanted to be sure to see you before
you left the city," he was saying, "so we just came on in to wait. I
hope you don't mind our ... butting in, so to speak." He chuckled,
looking from one twin to the other. "You don't know me, I suppose. I'm
Merrill Tawney. Representing Jupiter Equilateral, you know."

Tom took the card he was holding out, looked at the name and the tiny
gold symbol in the corner, a letter "J" in the center of a triangle. He
handed the card to Greg. "I've seen you before," he told the fat man.
"What do you want with us?"

Tawney smiled again, spreading his hands. "We've heard about the
tragedy, of course. A shocking thing ... Roger was one of our group so
recently. We wanted you to know that if there is anything at all we can
do to help, we'd be only too glad...."

"Thanks," Greg said. "But we're doing just fine."

Tawney's smile tightened a little, but he hung onto it. "I always felt
close to your father," he said. "All of us at Jupiter Equilateral did.
We were all sorry to see him leave."

"I bet you were," Greg said, "he was the best mining engineer you ever
had. But Dad could never stand liars, or crooked ways of doing
business."

One of the men started for Greg, but the fat man stopped him with a wave
of his hand. "We had our differences of opinion," he said. "We saw
things one way, your father saw them another way. But he was a fine man,
one of the finest...."

"Look, Mr. Tawney, you'd better say what you came to say and get out of
here," Greg said dangerously, "before we give your friends here
something to do."

"I merely came to offer you some help," Tawney said. He was no longer
smiling. "Since your father's death, you two have acquired certain
responsibilities. I thought we might relieve you of some of them."

"What sort of responsibilities?"