Cities in Flight Read Free Page A

and just plain brass that passed through the reception. room of Jno. Pfitzner & Sons was marvelous to behold. During the hour and a half that Colonel Paige Russell had been cooling his heels, he had identified the following publicity-saints: Senator Bliss Wagoner (Dem., Alaska) chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Space Flight; Dr. Guiseppi Corsi, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a former Director of the World Health Organization; and Francis Xavier MacHinery, hereditary head of the FBI.
    He had seen also a number of other notables, of lesser caliber, but whose business at a firm which made biologicals was an equally improper subject for guessing games. He fidgeted.
    At the present moment, the girl at the desk was talking softly with a seven-star general, which was a rank nearly as high as a man could rise in the army. The general was so preoccupied that he had failed completely to recognize Paige's salute. He was passed through swiftly. One of the two swinging doors with the glass ports let into them moved outward behind the desk, and Paige caught a glimpse of a stocky, dark-haired, pleasant-faced man in a conservative grosse-pointilliste suit.
    "Gen. Horsefield, glad to see you. Come in."
    The door closed, leaving Paige once more with nothing to look at but the motto written over the entrance in German black-letter:
     
    Lider ben Tod ist kein Krautlein gewachsen!
     
    Since he did not know the language, he had already translated this by the If-only-it-were-English system, which made it come out, "The fatter toad is waxing on the kine's cole-slaw." This did not seem to fit what little he knew about the eating habits of either animal, and it was certainly no fit admonition for workers.
    Of course, Paige could always look at the receptionist- but after an hour and a half he had about plumbed the uttermost depths of that ecstasy. The girl was pretty in a way, but hardly striking, even to a recently returned spaceman. Perhaps if someone would yank those black-rimmed pixie glasses away from her and undo that bun at the back of her head, she might pass, at least in the light of a whale-oil lamp in an igloo during a record blizzard.
    This too was odd now that he thought about it. A firm as large as Pfitzner could have its pick of the glossiest of office girls, especially these days. Then again, the whole of Pfitzner might well be pretty small potatoes to the parent organization, A. 0. LeFevre et Cie. Certainly at least Le Fevre's Consolidated Warfare Service operation was bigger than the Pfitzner division, and Peacock Camera and Chemicals probably was too; Pfitzner, which was the pharmaceuticals side of the cartel, was a recent acquisition, bought after some truly remarkable broken-field running around the diversification amendments to the anti-trust laws.
    All in all, Paige was thoroughly well past mere mild annoyance with being stalled. He was, after all, here at these people's specific request, doing them a small favor which they had asked of him-and soaking up good leave-time in the process. Abruptly he got up and strode to the desk.
    "Excuse me, miss," he said, "but I think you're being goddamned impolite. As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to think you people are making a fool of me. Do you want these, or don't you?"
    He unbuttoned his right breast pocket and pulled out three little plioflim packets, heat-sealed to plastic mailing tags. Each packet contained a small spoonful of dirt. The tags were addressed to Jno. Pfitzner & Sons, div. A. 0. LeFevre et Cie, the Bronx 153, WPO 249920, Earth; and each card carried a $25 rocket-mail stamp for which Pfitzner had paid, still uncancelled.
    "Colonel Russell, I agree with you," the girl said, looking up at him- seriously. She looked even less glamorous than she had at a distance, but she did have a pert and interesting nose, and the current royal-purple lip-shade suited her better than it did most of the starlets to be seen on 3-V