have cared less if they never did move. It
was nice that old Holati Tate had made an almost indecently vast
fortune out of his first-discovery rights to the things, because she
was really very fond of the Commissioner when he wasn't being
irritating. But in some obscure way she found the plasmoids themselves
and the idea of unlimited plastic life which they embodied rather
appalling. However, she was in a minority there. Practically everybody
else seemed to feel that plasmoids were the biggest improvement since
the creation of Eve.

She switched the viewer presently to its local-news setting and dialed
in the Manon System's reference number. Keeping tab on what was going on
out there had become a private little ritual of late. Occasionally she
even picked up references to Brule Inger, who functioned nowadays as
Precol's official greeter and contact man in the system. He was very
popular with the numerous important Hub citizens who made the long run
out to the Manon--some bent on getting a firsthand view of the marvels
of Old Galactic science, and a great many more bent on getting an early
stake in the development of Manon Planet, which was rapidly approaching
the point where its status would shift from Precol Project to Federation
Territory, opening it to all qualified comers.

Today there was no news about Brule. Grand Commerce had opened its first
business and recreation center on Manon, not ten miles from the Precol
Headquarters dome where Trigger recently had been working. The subspace
net which was being installed about the Old Galactic base was very
nearly completed. The permanent Hub population on Manon Planet had just
passed the forty-three thousand mark. There had been, Trigger recalled,
a trifle nostalgically, barely eight hundred Precol employees, and not
another human being, on that world in the days before Holati Tate
announced his discovery.

She was just letting the viewer panel slide back into the desk when the
office ComWeb gave forth with a musical ping. She switched it on.

"Hi, Rak!" she said cheerily. "Anything new?"

The bony-faced young man looking out at her wore the lusterless black
uniform of a U-League Junior Scientist. His expression was worried.

He said, "I believe there is, Miss Farn." Rak was the group leader of
the thirty-four Junior Scientists the League had installed in the
Project. Like all the Juniors, he took his duties very seriously.
"Unfortunately it's nothing I can discus