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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