Jem

THREE

THE DAY AFTER Marge Menninger got back to her Washington office, she received Dalehouse’s draft proposal. But she had already begun the process of getting it granted.

She had left the conference early to catch a ride on a NASA hydrojet, a rough and expensive ride but a fast one, back to her apartment in Houston. From there she had called the deputy undersecretary of state for cultural affairs. It was after office hours, but she got through with no trouble. Marge was on easy terms with the deputy undersecretary. She was his daughter. Once she had told him she’d had a pleasant trip she came right to the point:

“Poppa, I need a grant for a manned interstellar flight.”

There was a short silence. Then he said, “Why?”

Marge scratched under her navel, thinking of all the reasons she could have given. For the advancement of human knowledge? For the potential economic benefit of the United States and the rest of the food-producing world? For the sake of her promise to Danny Dalehouse? All of these were reasons which were important to someone or other, and some of them important to her; but to her father she gave only the one reason that would prevail: “Because if we don’t do it the son-of-a-bitching Paks will.”

“By themselves?” Even three thousand kilometers away, she heard the skepticism.

“The Chinese will put up the hard stuff. They’re in it too.”

“You know what it’s going to cost.” It wasn’t a question; they both knew the answer. Even a tactran message capsule cost a couple million dollars to transport from one star system to another, and they weighed only a few kilos. What she had in mind was at least ten people with all their gear: she was asking for billions of dollars.

“A lot,” she said, “but it’s worth it.”

Her father chuckled admiringly. “You’ve always been an expensive child, Margie. How are you going to get it past the joint committee?”

“I think I can. Let me worry about that, poppa.”

“Um. Well, I’ll help from this end. What do you want from me right now?”

Marge hesitated. It was an open phone connection, and so she chose her words carefully. “I asked that Pak for a copy of his full report. Of course, I’m a little handicapped until I get my hands on it.”

“Of course,” her father agreed. “Anything else?”

“There’s not much I can do until I see the full report.”

“I understand. Well. What else is new? How did you like our brave Bulgarian allies?”

She laughed. “I guess you know I got arrested.”

“I only wonder it doesn’t happen more often. You’re a terrible person, love. You didn’t get it from my side of the family.”

“I’ll tell mom you said that,” she promised, and hung up; and so, by the time she was back in Washington, she had received by a private route a microfilmed copy of the Pakistani’s entire report, already translated for her. She read it over diligently, making notes. Then she pushed them away and leaned back in her chair.

The son-of-a-bitching Pak had held back a lot. In his private report, three times as thick as the one he had read in Sofia, there was an inventory of major life forms. He hadn’t mentioned that at all in Sofia. At least three species seemed to possess some sort of social organization: a kind of arthropod; a tunneling species, warm-blooded and soft-skinned; and an avian species — no, not avian, she corrected herself. They spent most of their time in the air, but without having developed wings. They were balloonists, not birds.

Three social species! At least one of them might well be intelligent enough to be civilized.

That brought her back to Danny Dalehouse, his paper on first contact with sentient life forms at the subtechnological level, and his draft proposal. She looked again at the bottom line of the proposal and grinned. Young Danny didn’t have any hangups about asking for what he wanted. The bottom line was seventeen billion dollars.

Seventeen billion dollars, she reflected, was about the assessed valuation of Manhattan Island… the GNP of any of twenty-five or thirty of the world’s nations… two months’ worth of the United States fuel deficit in the balance of payments. It was a lot of money.

She put the papers and her notes in a bright red folder stamped MOST SECRET and locked them away. Then she began to get Danny Dalehouse what he wanted.

There was a lot to be said about Marge Menninger, and the most important thing was that she always knew what she wanted. She wanted a lot, and a lot of different things. Her motivations were clearly and hierarchically arranged in her mind. The third or fourth thing from the top was likely to be achieved. The second was a near certainty. But the one on top was ironbound.

A week later she had Dalehouse’s final proposal and an appointment to testify before the House-Senate Joint Committee on Space Development. She used the week to good purpose, first to tell Dalehouse (on the phone, and spelled out by facsimile immediately afterwards) how to change his proposal to maximize its chances of approval, then to fill in the few gaps in her knowledge of what was required.

To throw a transmitter capsule or a shipload of human beings from one star to another, you first have to put them in orbit.

Tachyon transportation itself is a model of technological elegance. Once you have elevated your capsule to its proper charge state, it becomes obedient to tachyonic laws. It moves easily at faster-than-light speeds, covering interstellar distances to any point in the galaxy in a matter of days. It uses surprisingly little energy in the process. The paradox of the tachyon is that it requires more energy to go slow than to go fast.

Getting the capsule to the charge state is the hardest part. For that you need a rather bulky launch platform. The platform is expensive. More than that, it is heavy.

Getting the platform into orbit is not elegant at all. It is brute force. A hundred kilograms of fuel have to burn for every gram launched in the tachyon state. Fuel is fuel. You can burn oil, or you can burn something you make by using oil to make it — say, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Either way, in excess of half a million metric tons of oil had to burn to get ten people and minimum equipment on their way to Kung’s Star.

Half a million metric tons!

It wasn’t just the dollar value. It was four supertankers full of fuel, all of which had to come from one of the fuel-exporting nations, which were showing signs of throwing their weight around again. The QUIP-Three interbloc conferences (Quotas for Imports and Prices) were going badly for the food-exporting countries. If Marge didn’t get the expedition well begun, with the necessary fuel tucked away in the big tank farms at Galveston or Bayonne, the increasing fuel prices would drive the costs well past even Danny Dalehouse’s estimates.

When all the figures were safely transferred from paper to the inside of her head, Marge locked her desk in the Washington office. She headed for Hearing Room 201 in the old Rayburn Office Building with the knowledge that her work was cut out for her.

The obstacles might have deterred another person. Marge did not accept deterrence. Her disciplined mind dissected the immediate problem into its components, and she concentrated her attention on the attack for each. The problem with the joint committee separated easily into four parts: the chairman, the minority leader, the chief counsel for the committee, and Senator Lenz. She prepared her strategies for each.

The minority leader was her father’s friend and could safely be left to him.

The chairman was ambitious to be president. He would be likely to make waves whenever he saw a chance for publicity. The way to deal with him was to keep a low profile and give him as little opportunity to take a campaign position as possible. After she was sworn in and read her prepared statement, he was the first to question her.

THE CHAIRMAN. Well, madam, I’m sure your motives are of the worthiest, but do you know how hard we’re working here on the Hill to keep the deficit down?

CAPT. MENNINGER: I certainly do, Mr. Senator.

THE CHAIRMAN. And yet you expect us to give you God knows how many billion dollars for this project?

That was promising! He hadn’t said “this hairbrained project” or “this preposterous extravagance.”

CAPT. MENNINGER. I don’t “expect” it, senator. I hope for it. I hope the committee will approve the proposal, because in my judgment it is an investment that will be returned manyfold for years and years to come.

THE CHAIRMAN. We can’t spend the taxpayers’ money on hopes.

CAPT. MENNINGER. I know that and appreciate it. It isn’t hope I’m asking you to share. It’s judgment. Not only mine, but the collective judgment of the best-informed experts in this area.

THE CHAIRMAN. Um. Well, there are many worthy claims based on very sound judgment. We can’t grant all of them.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Of course, senator. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t confident of your fairness and competence.

THE CHAIRMAN. Well, do any of my distinguished colleagues have questions for this witness?

They did, but they were mostly perfunctory. The important people, like Senator Lenz and the minority leader, held back for another occasion; the minor members were principally concerned with getting their own positions on record.

The chief counsel was a trickier problem. He was smart. He was also wholly dedicated to making his bosses look good by keeping the joint committee out of trouble. Margie’s hope was to make saying yes look less troublesome than saying no.

MR. GIANPAOLO. You spoke of returns on an investment. Do you mean actual cash or some abstract kind of knowledge or virtue?

CAPT. MENNINGER. Oh, both, Mr. Gianpaolo.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Really, Ms. Menninger? Dollar returns?

CAPT. MENNINGER. Based on prior experience and what is already known about this planet, yes. Definitely.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Can you give us an idea of what these dollar returns will be?

CAPT. MENNINGER. In broad terms, yes, Mr. Gianpaolo. The tactran reports indicate valuable raw materials and the presence of intelligent life — at least, a near certainty of the former and a strong possibility of the latter. Of course, these are only instrument reports.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Which, as I understand it, are subject to conflicting interpretations.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Exactly, Mr. Gianpaolo, and that is why it is necessary to send a manned expedition out. The whole reason for the expedition is to find out what we can’t find out in any other way. If we knew what it would find, we wouldn’t have to send it. But there is a different kind of return that I think is even more important. I think of it as “leadership.”

MR. GIANPAOLO. Leadership?

CAPT. MENNINGER. The whole free world of food-exporting nations looks to us for that leadership, Mr. Gianpaolo. I don’t believe any of us wants to fail them. This is an opportunity that comes only once in a lifetime. I am here because I cannot in all conscience take the responsibility for losing it. It is, in the final analysis, this committee’s burden to carry.

Since nothing would be decided in open session, Marge was confident there would be time to make the members understand that that “burden” could best be unloaded by voting her the money.

If Marge Menninger had had her druthers, the testifying would have stopped there. But Gianpaolo was orchestrating the event. He was too wise to end on the note she preferred. He blunted her dramatic impact by dragging a long series of technical data out of her — “Yes, Mr. Gianpaolo, I understand that the planet’s surface gravity is point seven six that of Earth, and its atmospheric pressure about thirty percent higher. But the oxygen level is about the same.” He read her quotes about the “semi-greenhouse effect” and asked her what was meant by someone’s remarks about “the inexhaustible reserve of outgassing from the cold side, as interior heat boils out volatiles.” He got her, and himself, into a long complication about whether the designation of the star they were talking about was really Bes-bes Geminorum 8326 or Bes-bes Geminorum 8426 according to the New OAO General Catalogue — apparently both were given, because some typist made a mistake — until the chairman got restive. Then, satisfied that the audience was more than half asleep, he called for a ten-minute recess and returned to the attack.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Captain Menninger, I’m sure you know what it costs to launch a tachyon-transmitted space vessel. First -

CAPT. MENNINGER. Yes, sir, I believe I do.

MR. GIANPAOLO. First there is the immense expense of the launching vehicle itself. The costs for that alone, I believe, are in the neighborhood of six billion dollars.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Yes, sir. But as the vice-president announced in his message to the Tenth General Assembly of the World Conference on Exobiology, we already have such a launch vehicle. It can be used for a large number of missions.

MR. GIANPAOLO. But as the vice-president also announced, the time of that vehicle is fully booked. Prelaunch aiming time is as much as thirty days.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Yes, sir.

MR. GIANPAOLO. But your schedule calls for a launch to this — what is the name of it?

CAPT. MENNINGER. It has been referred to as “Son of Kung,” sir, but that name is not official.

MR. GIANPAOLO. I hope not. You want a launch every ten days.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Yes, sir. Essential backup.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Which means canceling the mining survey mission to Procyon IV. I am sure you know that this planet has been identified as having a very dense core, with therefore a good potential for supplies of uranium and other fissiles for our power plants.

The British had sent that probe out. Meticulously they had announced that under existing international agreements they were making the telemetry public. That was all public knowledge. Gianpaolo was just getting on the record.

CAPT. MENNINGER. Yes, sir. Of course, that works out as a very marginal operation, considering the investment necessary to mine and refine uranium and to ship it to us back here. The Bes-bes Geminorum planet has much more potential — as I have already testified.

MR. GIANPAOLO. Yes, Captain Menninger, you have made us aware of your opinions.

And that was all hogwash. What the British had not announced, but what both Marge and Gianpaolo knew from previous briefing, was that British scintillation counters had found no ionizing radiation to speak of in Procyon IV’s rather unpleasant atmosphere. Uranium there might be, but if so, it was thousands of meters deep. Marge was getting on the record too, although this particular record was private.

By the time she was through testifying, she was satisfied that things were moving in the right direction.

There remained the problem of Senator Lenz. He had far more muscle in the committee, and in the Senate generally, than anyone else — even the chairman. He had to be dealt with individually and privately, and Marge had plans for that.

She booked her return to Houston the long way around, by way of Denver. Her father drove her to Dulles Airport in his own car. Well, actually it wasn’t his own. It belonged to a government agency. So did Godfrey Menninger, when you came right down to it. The car was both a perquisite of rank and an indispensable necessity in what he did for the agency; twice a day, other employees of the agency went over it with electronic sniffers and radio probes to make sure it had been neitheHbombed nor bugged.

God Menninger told his daughter, “You did pretty well at the hearing.”

“Thanks, poppa. And thanks for that Pak’s report.”

“Had what you wanted in it?”

“Yep. Will you talk to the minority leader for me?”

“Already have, honey.”

“And?”

“Oh, he’s all right. If you get past Gus Lenz, I think you’ve got the committee taken care of. He didn’t say much at the hearing.”

“I didn’t expect him to.”

Her father waited, but as Marge did not go on he did not pursue the question. He said, “There’s a follow-up on your Pakistani friend. He’s at some kind of a meeting at K’ushui, along with some pretty high-powered people.”

“K’ushui? What the hell is a K’ushui?”

“Well,” said her father, “I kind of wish I could give you a better answer than I know. It’s a place in Sinkiang province. We haven’t had, uh, very full reports yet. But it’s not far from Lop Nor and not too far from the big radio dish, and Heir-of-Mao’s been there five or six times in the past year.”

“It sounds as though they’re going to move.”

“I would say so. I plugged in your estimates, and the best interpretation is that Heir-of-Mao’s starting to do what you want us to do.”

“Shit!”

“Not to worry,” said her father. “I told that to the minority leader in strictest confidence. And I have no doubt he’ll tell Gianpaolo. So it’ll work for you, you know.”

“I wanted to be first!”

“First doesn’t always pick up the marbles, honey. How many people discovered America before the English put it in their pocket? Anyway, tell me what’s so interesting about this planet.”

Margie looked out at the high-rise apartments in the Virginia suburbs, ziggurats climbing away from the south exposure with the black-on-black textured squares of their solar heating panels.

“It was all in Ahmed Dulla’s report, poppa.”

“I didn’t read it.”

“Pity. Well, there’s a little star with a lot of crummy little planets and one big one about the size of Earth.

Gravity’s a little lighter. Air’s a little denser. It’s a lot of real estate, poppa. And it reeks of life.”

“We’ve found life before.”

“Mosses and jellyfish! Crystal things that you can call alive if you want to. This is different. This is a biota as varied as our own, maybe. Maybe even a civilization. The planet’s interesting in another way, too. It doesn’t rotate, I mean relative to its primary — like the moon doesn’t rotate relative to Earth. So the lit side of it has a sun in the sky all the time.”

Her father listened comfortably, scratching his abdomen just below the navel, while his daughter went on about the planet. When she paused for breath, he said, “Wait a minute, honey.” He leaned forward to turn on the radio; even in a routinely debugged car God Menninger didn’t take chances. Over the twang of synthetic guitars he said, “There’s something else you ought to know. The fuel countries are talking among themselves about a sixty percent price rise.”

“Jesus, poppa! I’ll never drink another shot of Scotch!”

“No, it’s not the British this time. It’s the Chinese, funnily enough.”

“But they’re people exporters!”

“They’re anything-they-like exporters,” her father corrected. “The only reason they’re in the People Bloc is that they can swing more weight there. Heir-of-Mao plays his own game. This time he slipped the word to the Greasies that China was going to raise its own prices unilaterally, whatever the bloc votes to do. So that was all the hard-liners in Caracas and Edinburgh needed. The Saudis were for it, of course. They want to stretch out what oil they’ve got left. And the Indonesians and the rest of the little ones just have to go along with the big boys.” He paused thoughtfully. “So your coming along with a chit for half a million tons of oil gets a little complicated right now.”

“I see that, poppa. What are we going to do? I don’t mean about my project, I mean the country.”

“What we are not going to do,” he said grimly, “is raise grain prices. We can’t. Heir-of-Mao’s joker is that the price rise is for export sales only. He considers any sales inside the People Bloc as domestic. So he’s selling cheap to the Peeps, and that means they’re getting what they need for irrigation and fertilizer at bargain-basement prices. If we raise the price we’ll make it worth their while to stop importing in another three or four years. We could stand it in this country, maybe. But the Soviets, the Indochinese, the Bulgarians, the Brazilians, and the rest of the Latins — they couldn’t handle it. Their economies would be wrecked. It would break up the bloc. No doubt that’s what Heir-of-Mao has in mind.”

He parked the car in the Dulles short-term lot. Before snapping off the radio he said, “It won’t happen for a couple of months, I think. So you want to get your project on the way as fast as you can.”

Marge slid out into the damp, hot evening air. The humped backs of boarding clamjets loomed over the parking lot hedge. They could hear the noise of two of them warming up and the gentler rush of another taking off.

Marge followed her father as he picked up her bag and started toward the terminal. “Poppa,” she said, “can I tell the senator about, uh, that?”

“Christ, no! Not that he doesn’t probably know it already. But you aren’t supposed to know.”

Surprisingly, she laughed. “Well, I was going to handle it a different way anyway. Hey, hold it, poppa. I’m not taking the Houston flight.”

“You’re not?”

“Uh-uh. I’m going home by a different route.”

Menninger kissed his daughter good-bye at the check-in counter for the Denver clamjet. He watched her disappear into the gate tunnel with mingled admiration and rue. He had been thinking about asking just how she proposed to handle Senator Lenz, but he didn’t have to. This was the flight Lenz would be on.

Because it was a night flight, the jet sat there for twenty minutes of preheating before it could take off. The passengers had to be aboard, and the stews scurried up and down with ear stoppers and sympathy. The best heat source there is is a jet turbine. The engines that would thrust the plane through the air in actual flight were now rotated inward, the shell-shaped baffles diverting the blast to pour countless thousands of BTUs into the clam-shaped lifting section.

Marge took advantage of the time to scrub her face, brush her hair, and change her makeup. She had seen the senator come aboard. She debated changing from her uniform into something more female and decided against it. Wasn’t necessary. Wasn’t advisable. It might look calculating, and Marge calculated carefully ways to avoid looking calculating.

The full-energy roar of the warm-up jets stopped, and everyone belted in for takeoff. That was a gentler sound. The clamjet bounced a few times and soared steeply up.

As soon as they were at cruising altitude Marge left her cubicle and ordered a drink in the forward first-class lounge. In a couple of minutes Senator Lenz was standing over her, smiling.

Adrian Lenz had two terms and two days seniority in the Senate; a friendly governor had appointed him to fill a forty-eight-hour vacancy just for the sake of the extra rank it would give him over other senators elected the same year. Even so, he was not much over forty. He looked younger than that. He had been divorced twice; the Colorado voters laughed about their swinging senator’s bad luck but reelected him without much fuss. He could have been chairman of his own committee, but had chosen instead to serve on committees that were of more interest — and more visibility. One of these days “Gus” Lenz was going to be the President of the United States, and everyone knew it.

“Margie,” he said, “I knew this was going to be a nice flight, but until now I didn’t know why.”

Margie patted the seat beside her. “You going to give me my seventeen billion?” she asked.

Lenz laughed. “You don’t waste time, Margie.”

“I don’t have time to waste. The Peeps are going to go there if we don’t. They’re probably going to go anyhow. It’s a race.”

He frowned and nodded toward the stewardess; slight, dark, she wore her United Airlines uniform like a sari. When the drinks were served he said, “I listened to your testimony, Margie. It sounded good. I don’t know if it sounded seventeen billion dollars’ worth of good.”

“There was some material in the supplementary statement you might not have had a chance to read. Did you notice the part about the planet having its own sun?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s small but not very far away. The thing mostly radiates in the lower wavelengths. There’s not too much visible light, but a hell of a lot of heat. And the planet doesn’t turn in relation to it, so it’s always hanging there.”

“So?”

“So energy, senator. Solar power! Economical.”

“I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying. You mean this substellar thing is hotter than our sun?”

“No, it’s not nearly as hot. But it’s a lot closer. The important thing is it doesn’t move. What’s the big problem with solar power here? The sun doesn’t stay put. It wanders around all over the sky, and half the time it’s not in the sky at all, because it’s night here and so the sun’s on the other side of the earth. I mean, look at our ship here. We had to preheat for nearly half an hour to get the gas light enough to lift, because it’s after dark. On the side of the planet that faces its sun — the only side that interests me, Gus — it’s never dark.”

Lenz nodded and sipped his drink, waiting for more.

“It’s never dark. It’s never winter. The sun stays put, so you don’t have to make your Fresnel lenses movable. And almost as important, the weather isn’t a problem. You know what the score is on our own solar-power installations. Not counting clamjets in the daytime — because they’re up over the clouds a lot of the time — we lose as much as twenty-five percent working time because the clouds cut out the sunlight.”

Lenz looked puzzled. “This planet doesn’t have any clouds?”

“Oh, sure. But they don’t matter. The radiation is almost all heat, and it punches right through the clouds! Figure it out. Here we lose half the solar-generating time to night; another few percent to dawn and dusk, because the sun’s so low it doesn’t yield much power; as much as sixty percent additional for half the year because it’s winter; and another twenty-five percent to cloud cover. Put them all together and we’re lucky to get ten percent utilization. On this planet a cheaper installation can get damn near a hundred percent.”

Lenz thought about that for a moment. “Sounds interesting,” he said cautiously, and signaled for a refill.

Margie left him to sort things out in his own mind. Sooner or later it would occur to him to ask what good energy some hundred light-years away was going to do the voters in the state of Colorado on Earth. She had an answer for that, too, but she was content to wait until he asked for it.

But when he asked a question it caught her by surprise. “Margie? What’ve you got against the Paks?”

“Paks? Why — nothing, really.”

“You seem to take this Ahmed’s competition pretty seriously.”

“Not on a personal level, Gus. I’m not crazy about Paks. But I’ve been on friendly terms with some. I had a Pak orderly when I was teaching at West Point. Nice kid. Kept my clothes ironed and never bothered me when I didn’t want him around.”

“That sounds like a nice Appliance to own,” Lenz observed.

“Yeah, yeah. I take your point.” She stopped to think. “That’s not where it’s at, though. I’m not against Ahmed because he’s a Pak. I’m against the Paks because they’re the other side. I can’t help it, senator. I root for my team.”

“Which is who, Margie? Just the Food Bloc? Just the United States? Maybe just the female commissioned officers of the US Army?”

She giggled comfortably. “All of them, in that order,” she agreed.

“Margie,” he said seriously, “we’re just shooting the bull here over a couple of drinks. I don’t want to get too heavy.”

“Why not, Gus? Order up a couple more drinks and let’s get to it!”

He obeyed. While they were coming he said, “You’re a nice girl, Margie, but a little too bloody-minded. Pity you went to West Point.”

“Wrong, Gus. The pity is that so few young Americans have the chance now.”

He shook his head. “I voted to phase down the service academies and cut the military budget.”

“I know you did. Worst vote you ever cast.”

“No. There was no choice. We can’t afford war, Margie. Can’t you understand that? Even Pakistan could blow us off the map! Not to mention the Chinese and the Turks and the Poles and the rest of the People Bloc. Not to mention the British, the Saudis, the Venezuelans. We can’t afford to fight anybody, and nobody can afford to fight us. And everybody knows it. They’re not our enemies—”

“But they’re competing with us, senator,” said Captain Menninger, suddenly sitting up straighter and speaking with more precision. “Economically. Politically. Every other way. Remember Clausewitz: war is the logical extension of politics. I grant,” she said quickly, “that we can’t go that far. We don’t want to blow up the planet. I know what you’re saying. It’s like that famous saying of — what was his name, the Russian cosmonaut? Years and years ago. Sevastianov, I think: ‘When I was in space I saw how tiny the world was, and realized how important it was for all of us to learn to live together on it.’ Well, sure, Gus. But learning to live together doesn’t mean that some people can’t live a little better than others. It’s a fact of life! The Fuel people keep jumping their prices. And the People people keep demanding more money for their export workers, or else they’ll keep them home, and what will we do for orderlies and airline stewardesses? And we compete back. Well, Gus, when I compete, I compete hard. I play to win! This Kung’s Star planet is something I want to win. I think there’s goodies on this planet. I want them for us. Us being defined as the Food Bloc, the United States, the state of Texas, the city of Houston, and all the other subdivisions you named or want to name, including blond ex-professors from West Point, if you like, in descending order of size of community. Whichever community you want to talk about, if it’s mine, I want it to be first, best, and most successful! I think that’s what they call patriotism, senator. I really doubt that you want to knock it.”

He looked at her thoughtfully over the new drinks, and raised his. “To you, Margie. You really are some kind of iron-pants.”

She laughed. “All right,” she said, softening. “I’ll drink to that. Now, what about my bill?”

Lenz finished his drink and put it down. “For better or worse we’re part of an economic community, and that’s a fact of life for you, Captain Margie Menninger. You can’t sell this to me as a United States venture. You might as a cooperative deal for the Food Bloc.”

“Gripes, Gus! We’d still be paying for the whole thing!”

“Maybe ninety percent of it, yes.”

“Then why not do it all and take it all?”

“Because,” he said patiently, “I won’t vote for that. So?”

Margie was silent for a moment, considering her priorities. She shrugged. “So all right,” she said. “I don’t mind if we include a few token gooks. Maybe two or three Canadians. A Brazilian. Maybe even a Bulgarian. In fact, there was a Bulgarian at the convention—”

She stopped herself. In mid-sentence it had occurred to her that in some sense she owed that Nan Whatever-it-was-ova a sort of a favor; but it had occurred to her simultaneously that the Bulgarian girl had been excessively close to the very Pak she was most worried about.

“No,” she said, “on second thought I’m not sure I want a Bulgarian. They’re too tiny a power to worry about, frankly. But maybe one or two people from the Soviets. If we send ten, and if at least six are genuine made-in-America US citizens, I can see bringing along a few from the rest of the bloc.”

“Um.” Lenz looked thoughtfully at her for a moment, moving slightly in his seat to the gentle pitching of the clamjet as it rose and fell through the night sky. “Well,” he said, “we’ll see.” He smiled at her. “What shall we do with this night God has given us, Margie? It’s too late to think hard and too early to go to sleep. Want to watch the stars for awhile?”

“Exactly what I want,” she said, finishing the last of her drink and standing up. They made their way through the nearly empty lounge to the forward observation section and leaned against the padded rail. The clamjet was swooping gently over the rolling hills of West Virginia. Ahead of them Venus followed a crescent of a moon toward the horizon. After a while Lenz put his arm around her.

“Just checking,” he said. “Old Iron-Pants.”

Margie leaned against him contentedly enough. Lenz wasn’t a big man. He wasn’t particularly handsome either, but he was warm and muscular, and his arm around her felt good. There were worse ways of lobbying for votes than this, she reflected as she turned her face to his.

He came through. The full committee reported the bill out, and on a hot Georgia afternoon two or three months later, Margie was called away from her company to take a high-priority phone call. She had not bathed for three days; summer field maneuvers were conducted as close to real war conditions as possible. She was sweating, filthy with both camouflage paint and Georgia clay, and she knew she smelled pretty high. Also, her company was just about to take a hill that she had personally spotted and attacked, so when she got to the phone she was in no good mood. “Captain Menninger,” she snarled, “and this goddamn better be important!”

Her father’s voice laughed in her ear. “You tell me,” he said cheerfully. “The President signed your bill ten minutes ago.”

Marge sank back onto the first sergeant’s immaculate chair, heedless of his looks. “Jesus, poppa,” she said, “that’s great!” She stared out at the walls of the command trailer without seeing them, calculating whether it was more important to get back to taking that hill with the rest of the weekend soldiers or to get on the phone and start Danny Dalehouse in motion.

“—what?” She had become aware that her father was still talking.

“I said there was some other news too, not quite so good. Your Pak friend.”

“What about him, poppa?”

“That, uh, vacation he was going to take? He took it last week.”