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you.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because it will affect what you do. You’re the historian for the expedition; I’m its official reporter. We’ll have to take
     steps to insure that our activities don’t overlap—or conflict. It would be bad public relations.”
    This time she shot a feline, sidelong glance at Harriet to see if the shot had told. Obviously it had.
    “I don’t see why there should be any conflict,” I said a little stiffly. “I hadn’t figured on filing any stories, not at least
     until I got back, but if I do they aren’t likely to be spot news. I’ll be aiming at the science editors—people like Bob Plumb,
     Gilbert Cant, Earl Ubell, Bill Laurence, Behari-Lal, Dick Winslow. Whatever you file is more likely to be city desk stuff.
     I’ll be sending features, if I send anything.”
    “There you’re wrong, I’m afraid,” Jayne said, with an intimate smile. “You see, we don’t want any repetition of last year’s
     fiasco. All that ridicule—even outright lies…. This time I’ve contracted with Faber to file
all
the stories that come out of the expedition, with the Faber papers exclusively, over my own by-line. It’s the only way we
     can be
sure
of getting a decent press.”
    It didn’t look like such a sure thing to me, and it brought Harriet from the window in a hurry.
    “You can’t do that, Jayne,” she said indignantly. “You must be out of your mind. There are eighteen big corporations in on
     this, and nearly every one of them has some sort of public relations project tied to it. How are you going tokeep them from sending their own releases to the papers? You can’t even protect your exclusives.”
    “I think I can, Harriet dear. All I have to do is see each story that the p.r. people propose to send, and get it first to
     FNS under my own by-line. After that, your agency and the others can release it for general pick up.”
    “That won’t work. We can’t ‘release’ a copyrighted exclusive.”
    “Then make changes, dear,” Jayne said airily. “That’s what you people are paid to do—put the commas in the right place.”
    “Nonsense. Superficial changes don’t invalidate a newspaper’s or a wire service’s copyright. And if we write a whole new release
     instead, we’ll have to clear it through you and the problem is as bad as it was in the first place. I can just see Pfistner
     sitting still for that system. Let alone a cartel, like LeFevre. Which side do you think your bread is buttered on, anyhow?”
    Jayne was obviously very close to losing her temper; only the fact that Harriet had already lost hers had kept the older woman
     in control of herself this long, as far as I could see. Since the problem obviously was insoluble unless one of them gave
     way completely—it was that kind of problem, either Jayne kept her exclusives or she relinquished them, there was no middle
     course—the argument could well have gone on indefinitely. Inevitably it would have involved me, since I thought Harriet in
     the right, and Harriet wouldn’t have hesitated to ask me for support.
    Luckily, at this point Geoffrey Bramwell-Farnsworth erupted into the room.
    “Well, well,” he said in his booming bass voice. “Hello, Harriet, nice to see you; sorry to be tardy. And you, sir; welcome,
     I’m Commodore Farnsworth.”
    I stood up and introduced myself; Jayne was too busy glaring at Harriet. The Commodore’s handshake was powerful, but not deliberately
     bone-crushing—which was a good thing, for he could have ground bones if he had wanted to. He was a huge man, at least six
     feet four, with a figure almost as exaggerated as that of a keg sitting on a camera tripod. He didn’t have three legs, of
     course, but the two he had were long and relatively slender, and his hips were narrow too. His trunk and chest, however, were
     enormousand it was impossible for me to see both his shoulders at once while I was standing at handshaking distance. His head was
     the bullet dome of