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reclining chair, moodily reviewing the proposed changes to the Lunar Agreement. "Do you know of a new one? Construction on the Lunar Base looks like being a barrel of snakes."
    "Listen. I've been subpoenaed to appear before a Special Commission on organized crime. They sent a set of interrogatories, with the notice. They're going to ask me a whole set of questions about you, what your background is, what you've been doing for the past twelve years, how much money you have—everything."
    Len jerked upright. "Who's behind it?"
    "Senator Macintosh. Remember, I told you once before I'd had his staff aides around to my offices in NASA, wanting to know how well I knew you."
    "Damn. I knew in my bones that it was a mistake asking you to go on that check-out trip to the Cook Islands. I was in a box for somebody who really knew his launch procedures, but we should have kept you out of it."
    "Len." Scanlon's voice was strained. "I'll protect you if I can. But I have to say this, I won't lie to the Commission. You've only hinted at some of the things you've been doing but I'll have to talk about them if I'm asked."
    "That's all right." While Len had become more and more the loner, he knew that Garry had been steadily merging into the Establishment. Over the years there were less protests about the crippling lethargy in Government, more in his casual conversations about the responsibilities of the job of Associate Administrator. "You tell them what you have to. We'll talk when you're free to do it."
    Len Martello returned to his work with a cold and furious energy. Macintosh, the old incorruptible. He had always been there on the horizon, a presence that Len couldn't convert or distract with other business. Could he be any more than a nuisance at this stage of the work?
    Len reviewed the steps that stood between him and an operating and permanent Moon Base. Thirty of them depended on people and functions based in the United States. Over the next sixty days, one by one, he substituted activities that could be handled by foreign interests.
    On the sixty-fourth day, Len's own call to Washington was delivered by an armed marshal. With it came a lengthy set of written questions.
    * * *
    "But despite all that, Mr. Martello, I believe that I can see a pattern."
    The kid gloves and the gentle touch were still in operation. Howard Macintosh, Democrat of Oregon, had handled thousands of witnesses, friendly ones and hostile ones. If he thought that Len was going to refuse to cooperate, that didn't show in his manner.
    Len cleared his throat. "The only pattern I can see, Senator, is one of simple industrial development of our only remaining frontier. I have tried to promote our interests in space, that is all."
    "And that you have done, remarkably well." Macintosh was short and thin, in his mid-sixties. Len had noticed a strange resemblance to Sal Meyer. They could pass for brothers, both from appearance and style of speech.
    "But it raises a question of what you mean by our interests," went on the Senator. "Would you agree that the road to space has become strangely clear of roadblocks in the past few years?"
    "You might think that way. I believe those 'roadblocks' were just that, impediments to progress. No one should mourn their disappearance."
    Len noticed that Garry Scanlon had slipped into the back of the room as he was speaking.
    "That is an opinion you are entitled to hold," said Macintosh. "Yet I find that there is, as I said, a pattern. Things went just the way that your group needed. Now we have a private corporation—"
    "I don't know of any such corporation, Senator."
    "—a corporation, I say, a single corporation, no matter how much its integrated nature may be disguised. This entity now occupies the Lungfish Station, and has a permanent base on the Moon. It has passed beyond the control of any national Earth government, passed beyond even the power of the United Nations. I myself have had pressure from this group, attempts to subvert