For a fleeting moment, George Carter was conscious of a feeling of ungainliness as he stood there in his tight-sleeved, close-necked shirt of Ganymedan linen. His unbuttoned vest and his voluminous trousers with their ends tucked into high-laced, heavy-soled boots were clumsy and provincial. Even he felt it - for just a moment.

From his sleeve-pocket Allen removed a cigarette case - it was the first move either of the brothers had made - opened it, withdrew a slender cylinder of paper-covered tobacco that spontaneously glowed into life at the first puff.

George hesitated a fraction of a second and his subsequent action was almost one of defiance. His hand plunged into his inner vest pocket and drew therefrom the green, shriveled form of a cigar made of Ganymedan greenleaf. A match flared into flame upon his thumbnail and for a long moment, he matched, puff for puff, the cigarette of his brother.

And then Allen laughed - a queer, high-pitched laugh, 'Your eyes are a little closer together, I think.'

'Rackon 'tis, maybe. Y'r hair's fixed sort o' different.' There was faint disapproval in his voice. Allen's hand went selfconsciously to his long, light-brown hair, carefully curled at the ends, while his eyes flickered over the carelessly-bound queue into which the other's equally long hair was drawn.

'I suppose we'll have to get used to each other. - I'm willing to try.' The Earth twin was advancing now, hand outstretched.

George smiled, 'Y' bet. 'At goes here, too.'

The hands met and gripped.

'Y'r name's All'n, huh?' said George.

'And yours is George, isn't it?' answered Allen.

And then for a long while they said nothing more. They just looked - and smiled as they strove to bridge the twenty-five year gap that separated them.

George Carter's impersonal gaze swept over the carpet of low-growing purple blooms that stretched in plot-path bordered squares into the misty distance of the caverns. The newspapers and feature writers might rhapsodize over the 'Fungus Gold' of Mars - about the purified extracts, in yields of ounces to acres of blooms, that had become indispensable to the medical profession of the System. Opiates, purified vitamins, a new vegetable specific against pneumonia - the blooms were worth their weight in gold, almost.

But they were merely blooms to George Garter - blooms to be forced to full growth, harvested, baled and shipped to the Aresopolis labs hundreds of miles away.

He cut his little ground car to half-speed and leant furiously out the window, 'Hi y' mudcat there. Y' with the dairty face. Watch what y'r doing - keep the donined water in the channel.'

He drew back and the ground car leapt ahead once more. The Ganymedan muttered viciously to himself, 'These domned men about here are wairse than useless. So many machines t' do their wairk for 'm they give their brains a pairrnenent vacation. I rackon.'

The ground car came to a halt and he clambered out. Picking his way between the fungus plots, he approached the clustered group of men about the spider-armed machine in the plotway ahead.

"Well, here I am. What is 't, All'n?'

Allen's head bobbed up from behind the other side of the machine. He waved at the men about him, 'Stop it for a second!' and leaped toward his twin.

'George, it works. It's slow and clumsy, but it v/orks. We can improve it now that we've got the fundamentals down. And in no time at all, we'll be able to -'

'Now wait a while, All'n. On Ganny, we" go slow. Y' live long, that way. What y' got there?'

Allen paused and swabbed at his forehead. His face shone with grease, sweat and excitement. 'I've been working on this thing ever since I finished college. It's a modification of something we have on Earth - but it's no end improved. It's a mechanical bloom picker.'

He had fished a much-folded square of heavy paper from his pocket and talked steadily as he spread it on the plotway before them, 'Up to now, bloom-picking has been the bottleneck of production, to say nothing of the 15 to 20% loss due to picking under- and over-ripe blooms. After all, human eyes are only human eyes, and the blooms - Here, look!'

The paper was spread flat and Allen squatted before it. George leaned over his shoulder, with frowning watchfulness.

'You see. It's a combination of fluoroscope and photo-electric cell. The ripeness of the bloom can be told by the state of the spores within. This machine is adjusted so that the proper circuit is tripped upon the impingement of just that combination of light and dark formed by ripe spores within the bloom. On the other hand, this second circuit - but look, it's easier to show you.'

He was up again, brimming with enthusiasm. With a jump, he was in the low seat behind the picker and had pulled the lever.

Ponderously, the picker turned toward the blooms and its 'eye' travelled sideways six inches above the ground. As it passed each fungus bloom, a long spidery arm shot out, lopping it cleanly half an inch from the ground and depositing it neatly in the downward-sloping slide beneath. A pile of blooms formed behind the machine.

'We can hook on a binder, too, later on. Do you notice those blooms it doesn't touch? Those are unripe. Just wait till it comes to an over-ripe one and see what it does.'

He yelled in triumph a moment later when a bloom was torn out and dropped on the spot.

He stopped the machine. 'You see? In a month, perhaps, we can actually start putting it to work in the fields.'

George Carter gazed sourly upon his twin, 'Take more 'n a month, I rackon. It'll take foraver, more likely.'

'What do you mean, forever. It just has to be sped up -'

'I don't care if 't just has t' be painted pairple. 'Tisn't going t' appear on my fields.'

'Your fields?'

'Yup, mine,' was the cool response. 'I've got veto pow'r here same as you have. Y' can't do anything 'thout my say-so - and y' won't get it f'r this. In fact, I want y' t' clear that thing out o' here, altogether. Got no use f r 't.'

Allen dismounted and faced his brother, 'You agreed to let me have this plot to experiment on, veto-free, and I'm holding you to that agreement.'

'All right, then. But keep y'r domned machine out o' the rest o' the fields.'

The Earthman approached the other slowly. There was a dangerous look in his eyes. 'Look, George, I don't like your attitude - and I don't like the way you're using your veto power. I don't know what you're used to running on Ganymede, but you're in the big time now, and there are a lot of provincial notions you'll have to get out of your head.'

'Not unless I want to. And if y' want t' have 't out with me, we'd batter go t' y'r office. Spatting before the men 'd be bad for discipline.'

The trip back to Central was made in ominous silence. George whistled softly to himself while Allen folded his arms and stared with ostentatious indifference at the narrow, twisting plotway ahead. The silence persisted as they entered the Earthman's office. Allen gestured shortly toward a chair and the Ganymedan took it without a word. He brought out his ever-present green-leaf cigar and waited for the other to speak.

Allen hunched forward upon the edge of his seat and leaned both elbows on his desk. He began with a rush.

'There's lots to this situation, George, that's a mystery to me. I don't know why they brought up you on Ganymede and me on Earth, and I don't know why they never let us know of each other, or made us co-managers now with veto-power over one another - but I do know that the situation is rapidly growing intolerable.

'This corporation needs modernization, and you know that. Yet you've been wielding that veto-power over every trifling advance I've tried to initiate. I don't know just what your viewpoint is, but I've a suspicion that you think you're still living on Ganymede. If you're still in the sticks, - I'm warning you - get out of them fast. I'm from Earth, and this corporation is going to be run with Earth efficiency and Earth organization. Do you understand?'