s going to be needed to finish the ship and what
facilities you have to produce it, and get things cleaned up a little
so that you can start work as soon as you have people to do it. I'm
organizing another company--don't laugh, now; I've only started
promotioneering--which I think we will call Trisystem & Interstellar
Spacelines. Get me all the views you can of the ship herself and of
the steel mills and that sort of thing that will produce material for
finishing her; I want to use them in promotion. By the way, has she a
name?"

"Only a shipyard construction number."

"Then suppose you call her _Ouroboros_, after Genji Gartner's old
ship, the one that discovered the Trisystem."

"_Ouroboros II_; that's fine. Will do."

"Good. I'll have Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong make application for a
charter right away. We'll have to make Alpha-Interplanetary one of the
stockholding companies, and also Koschchei Exploitation & Development,
and, of course, Litchfield Exploration & Salvage...."

It was a pity there really wasn't a Merlin. If this kept on nothing
else would be able to figure out who owned how much stock in what.

They found the on-the-job engineering office for the ship in a small
dome half a mile from the construction dock. Yves Jacquemont and Mack
Vibart and Schalk Retief moved in and buried themselves to the ears in
specifications and blueprints. The others formed into parties of three
or four, and began looking about production facilities for material.
There was a steel mill a mile from the construction site; it was
almost fully robotic. Iron ore went in at one end, and finished sheet
steel and girders and deck plates came out at the other, and a dozen
men could handle the whole thing. There was a collapsium plant; there
were machine-shops and forging-shops. Every time they finished
inspecting one, Yves Jacquemont would have a list of half a dozen more
plants that he wanted found and examined yesterday morning at the
latest.

Some of them were in a frightful mess; work had been suspended and
everybody had gone away leaving everything as it was. Some were in
perfect order, ready to go into operation again as soon as power was
put on. It had depended, apparently, upon the personal character of
whoever had been in charge in the end. The nuclear-electric power unit
plant was in the latter class. The man in charge of it evidently
hadn't believed in leaving messes behind, even if he didn't expect to
come back.