Not because he's a friend of yours, Danny—though that too—but because you can't have too many people like Slade on your side." The President did not precisely frown, but his face lost most of its laughter. "Among other reasons, because if they're on your side, they aren't on the other guy's."
"I think Don had had about enough of sides when he left here," Pritchard said. He looked up at the ceiling and remembered his big, black-haired friend in the spaceport at their last meeting. "He said he was ready to spend the rest of his life fishing like his grandfather."
"Fishing?" Hammer repeated in angry amazement. "He was going to go from one of my tank companies to fishing?"
It was his Adjutant's turn to laugh. Danny gestured with his notecards and said, "Well, fishing on Tethys isn't that different from the sort of jobs we gave M Company, Alois. There's a lot of water there, and the things that grow in it are pretty much to scale, from what Don told me . . . .
"But the thing is," Pritchard added, sobering, "Don didn't get there. We got a query from—" he checked the uppermost card from habit rather than from present need— "Marilee