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you, come November they’ll hand you your head. Then you’re out of office and how many wrongs can you right from there?”
    â€œYou’re talking like a campaign manager, Les, and this isn’t—”
    â€œI am your campaign manager!”
    â€œâ€”the time for it. I’m not running for anything right now. The primary campaign doesn’t open till June. A lot can happen in three months.”
    â€œHell, the minute you got elected five years ago you were running for reelection.” Suffield leaned forward, elbows on knees, earnest and intense. “You want to monkey with the sacred cow of National Defense—why don’t you just lie down on the floor right now so you won’t have so far to fall when they stick the knife in you? Down home in Tucson and Phoenix the Pentagon stands for Daddy Warbucks and Santa Clausand Jesus H. Christ all at once—and you want to charge right in on your horse and break your lance against it!”
    Spode studied his galoshes. A little pool of melted snow was drying into the carpet beneath his foot.
    Suffield hunched farther forward on the edge of his seat. “Without the defense establishment your whole constituency would dry up and blow away. It was fine for Ike to bleat about the military-industrial complex—he was retiring, he wasn’t looking for votes from the good people of Arizona. Am I getting through to you yet?”
    â€œYou’re waving an empty gun in my face, Les. I’m sorry. I’ve never attacked legitimate defense needs. There’s a difference between real needs and phony boondoggles.”
    â€œTry that persuasion on a voter with a four-second attention span.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œYou say one unkind word about the Pentagon and all they’ll remember is who got them their jobs.”
    Forrester looked at him and smiled a little but he wasn’t amused. “All right. You’ve had your say, now I’ll have mine.”
    Spode studied the hard jut of the Senator’s face. Alan Forrester went on, “If Breckenyear’s buddies have a little accident and it happens to set the planet on fire then it’ll make just a whole lot of difference how well the civil-rights fight goes in Arizona, won’t it.”
    â€œWe’ve been over all that before. They’re not going to have any little accidents. They never have before, why should they now?”
    â€œThe odds have caught up. The mathematics is no good.”
    â€œThat’s what Moskowitz told you, but he’s just one scientist. Look, suppose you’re right, suppose Moskowitz is right and they’re going to blow up the world if they get Congressional authorization. Then suppose I tell you you’re still crazy. You open you mouth in public and you’ll get an ICBM crammed right down your throat, multiple warhead and all.”
    â€œYou can’t always go by that.”
    â€œLook, I’ll tell you what, you’re so dead set on this, at least keep a low profile till November—get reelected first.”
    â€œThat would be too late, I’m afraid.”
    â€œToo late for what?”
    â€œToo late to stop the Pentagon from building the Phaeton Three system.”
    Jaime Spode sat bolt upright and blinked. The Senator added, “They’ll be rolling on it by then. The appropriation is scheduled to come out of Breckenyear’s House committee in May, eight weeks from now.”
    Spode interrupted. “Where’d you get this?”
    â€œSometimes it helps to be in high places, Top.” The Senator went back to Suffield. “Unless we make a great deal of noise between now and May, Breckenyear will follow his usual pattern: draw up the bill by himself, walk into the committee with copies already printed up, pass them around the table and give the committee half an hour to discuss it and eighteen hours to get up a minority report before he shoves it out onto the floor