She wheedled and nudged the woman into giving a fairly coherent story. Her son, Peter III, a slightly shopworn Peter Pan, whose features were familiar to Grace Gormet through years of stereogravure, dressed in every conceivable costume affected by the richly idle in their pastimes, had been so thoughtless as to pick the afternoon before his mother's most important social function to bung himself up - seriously. Furthermore, he had been so thoughtless as to do so half a continent away from his mater.

Miss Cormet gathered that Mrs Johnson's technique for keeping her son safely under thumb required that she rush to his bedside at once, and, incidentally, to select his nurses. But her dinner party that evening represented the culmination of months of careful maneuvering. What was she to do?

Miss Cormet reflected to herself that the prosperity of General Services and her own very substantial income was based largely on the stupidity, lack of resourcefulness, and laziness of persons like this silly parasite, as she explained that General Services would see that her party was a smooth, social success while arranging for a portable full-length stereo screen to be installed in her drawing room in drder that she might greet her guests and make her explanations while hurrying to her son's side. Miss Cormet would see that a most adept social manager was placed in charge, one whose own position in society was irreproachable and whose connection with General Services was known to no one. With proper handling the disaster could be turned into a social triumph, enhancing Mrs Johnson's reputation as a clever hostess and as a devoted mother.

'A sky car will be at your door in twenty minutes,' she added, as she cut in the circuit marked TRANSPORTATION, 'to take you to the rocket port. One of our young men will be with it to get additional details from you on the way to the port. A compartment for yourself and a berth for your maid will be reserved on the 16:45 rocket for Newark. You may rest easy now. General Services will do ybur worrying.'

'Oh, thank you, my dear. You've been such a help. You've no idea of the responsibilities a person in my position has.'

Miss Cormet cluck-clucked in professional sympathy while deciding that this particular girl was good for still more fees. 'You do look exhausted, madame,' she said anxiously. 'Should I not have a ma.s.seuse accompany you on the trip? Is your health at all delicate? Perhaps a physician would be still better.'

'How thoughtful you are!'

'I'll send both,' Miss Cormet decided, and switched off, with a faint regret that she had not suggested a specially chartered rocket. Special service, not listed in the master price schedule, was supplied on a cost-plus basis. In cases like this 'plus' meant all the traffic would bear.

She switched to EXECUTIVE; an alert-eyed young man filled the screen. 'Stand by for transcript, Steve,' she said. 'Special service, triple-A. I've started the immediate service'

His eyebrows lifted. 'Triple-A - bonuses?'

'Undoubtedly. Give this old battleaxe the works - smoothly. And look - the client's son is laid up in a hospital. Check on his nurses. If any one of them has even a shred of s.e.x-appeal, fire her out and put a zombie in.'

'Gotcha, kid. Start the transcript.'

She cleared her screen again; the 'available-for-service' light in her booth turned automatically to green, then almost at once turned red again and a new figure built up in her screen.

No stupid waster this. Grace Cormet saw a weil-kempt man in his middle forties, flat-waisted, shrewd-eyed, hard but urbane. The cape of his formal morning clothes was thrown back with careful casualness. 'General Services,' she said. 'Miss Cormet speaking.'

'Ab, Miss Cormet,' he began, 'I wish to see your chief.'

'Chief of switchboard?'

'No, I wish to see the President of General Services.'

'Will you tell me what it is you wish? Perhaps I can help you.'

'Sorry, but I can't make explanations. I must see him, at once.'

'And General Services is sorry. Mr Clare is a very busy man; it is impossible to see him without appointment and without explanation.'

'Are you recording?'

'Certainly.'

'Then please cease doing so.'

Above the console, in sight of the client, she switched off the recorder. Underneath the desk she switched it back on again. General Services was sometimes asked to perform illegal acts; its confidential employees took no chances. He fished something out from the folds of his chemise and held it out to her. The stereo effect made it appear as if he were reaching right out through the screen.

Trained features masked her surprise-it was the sigil of a planetary official, and the color of the badge was green.

'I will arrange it,' she said.

'Very good. Can you meet me and conduct me in from the waiting room? In ten minutes?'

'I will be there, Mister . . . Mister - ' But he had cut off.

Grace Cormet switched to the switchboard chief and called for relief. Then, with her board cut out of service, she removed the spool bearing the clandestine record of the interview, stared at it as if undecided, and after a moment, dipped it into an opening in the top of the desk where a strong magnetic field wiped the unfixed patterns from the soft metal.

A girl entered the booth from the rear. She was blond, decorative, and looked slow and a little dull. She was neither. 'Okay, Grace,' she said. 'Anything to turn over?'

'No. Clear board.'

''S matter? Sick?'

'No.' With no further explanation Grace left the booth, went on out past the other booths housing operators who handled unlisted services and into the large hail where the hundreds of catalogue operators worked. These had no such complex equipment as the booth which Grace had quitted. One enormous volume, a copy of the current price list of all of General Services' regular price-marked functions, and an ordinary look-and-listen enabled a catalogue operator to provide for the public almost anything the ordinary customer could wish for. If a call was beyond the scope of the catalogue it was transferred to the aristocrats of resourcefulness, such as Grace.

She took a short cut through the master files room, walked down an alleyway between dozens of chattering punched-card machines, and entered the foyer of that level. A pneumatic lift bounced her up to the level of the President's office. The President's receptionist did not stop her, nor, apparently, announce her. But Grace noted that the girl's hands were busy at the keys of her voder.

Switchboard operators do not walk into the offices of the president of a billion-credit corporation. But General Services was not organized like any other business on the planet. It was a sui generis business in which special training was a commodity to be listed, bought, and sold, but general resourcefulness and a ready wit were all important. In its hierarchy Jay Clare, the president, came first, his handyman, Saunders Francis, stood second, and the couple of dozen operators, of which Grace was one, who took calls on the unlimited switchboard came immediately after. They, and the field operators who handled the most difficult uncla.s.sified commissions - one group in fact, for the unlimited switchboard operators and the unlimited field operators swapped places indiscriminately.

After them came the tens of thousands of other employees spread over the planet, from the chief accountant, the head of the legal department, the chief clerk of the master files on down through the local managers. the catalogue operators to the last cla.s.sified part time employee - stenographers prepared to take dictation when and where ordered, gigolos ready to fill an empty place at a dinner, the man who rented both armadillos and trained fleas.

Grace Cormet walked into Mr Clare's office. It was the only room in the building not cluttered up with electromechanical recording and communicating equipment. It contained nothing but his desk (bare), a couple of chairs, and a stereo screen, which, when not in use, seemed to be Krantz' famous painting 'The Weeping Buddha'. The original was in fact in the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt, a thousand feet below.

'h.e.l.lo, Grace,' he greeted her, and shoved a piece of paper at her. 'Tell me what you think of that. Sance says it's lousy.' Saunders Francis turned his mild pop eyes from his chief to Grace Cormet, but neither confirmed nor denied the statement.

Miss Cormet read:

CAN YOU AFFORD IT?.

Can You Afford GENERAL SERVICES?

Can You Afford NOT to have General Services ? ? ? ??

In this jet-speed age can you afford to go on wasting time doing your own shopping, paying bills yourself, taking care of your living compartment?

We'll spank the baby and feed the cat.

We'll rent you a house and buy your shoes.

We'll write to your mother-in-law and add up your check stubs.

No job too large; No job too small - and all amazingly Cheap!

GENERAL SERVICES.

Dial H-U-R-R-Y - U-P

P.S. WE ALSO WALK DOGS.