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you invited me.” Dan replied honestly.
    “Comrade Malik,” Hernandez said, turning slightly toward the Russian, “permit me to introduce you to Mr. Daniel Hamilton Randolph, the founder and chief operating officer of the Astro Manufacturing Corporation.”
    Before Hernandez could start the other half of the introduction, Malik grabbed at Dan’s hand. “Ah, the American capitalist!”
    “Ah,” replied Dan, “the Russian commissar.”
    Malik laughed heartily. He held a glass of champagne in his left hand, a cigarette between two of his fingers.
    “You have made Venezuela the leading space power among the nations of the Third World,” Malik said without a hint of mockery. His English was perfectly American, no trace of a European accent.
    Dan answered, “Seńor Hernandez and the people of Venezuela have accomplished that. I’ve merely helped them where I can.”
    Malik feigned shock. “A modest American? Can it be?”
    “It’s no more rare than a Russian who appreciates the finer things in life,” said Dan.
    “I can see that you two will get along well,” Hernandez said, his face pinched slightly with distaste, “despite your differences.” It was his way of moving Dan off so that the guests behind him could get through the reception line.
    Dan took the hint, gave Malik a slight nod and smile, then went down the line shaking hands with other Venezuelan and Soviet officials. At least the other Russians looked more like what Dan expected: squat, suspicious and ill at ease amid foreigners. Once he had finished the last one in the line, Dan shouldered through the chattering crowd and made his way to the bar.
    He downed half a glass of champagne with his first gulp, then began scanning the crowd for people he knew. Hernandez had chosen to hold the reception in his own home rather than the ministry’s sterile building, a good choice as far as Dan was concerned. The ministry was one of those modernistic architect’s conceptions, all sharp angles and recessed lighting, like a state-built college campus hall. The Hernandez town house, on the other hand, had been built back in those gracious years before air conditioning, when labor was so cheap that individual peons were expendable, and a man could erect a gracious, high-ceilinged, ornately decorated monument to himself over the bodies of starving workers. Chandeliers dripping real crystal, hand-crafted draperies from Belgium, furniture of solid walnut and oak and mahogany. Nothing in this elaborate, crowded, noisy drawing room was less than a century old.
    Almost all of Caracas society was here, Dan saw, from ministers of government to the grande dames of the oldest families. The American ambassador stood gloomily by the tall windows, watching the rain while he knocked back straight rye whiskey. His wife, across the room, recognized Dan and waved at him. He smiled back but decided he was not in the mood for her. After a few drinks she became garrulous and indiscreet; Dan had no desire to participate in one of her scenes.
    No one else from Astro Manufacturing had been invited. Aside from the ambassador and a few of his flunkies, Dan was the only American at the reception. He chatted politely with the people clustered around the bar, talking business with the men and fashions with the women. Everyone commented on the rain. Everyone drank ST. Hernandez’s excellent champagne. Off in the library, across the foyer, a quartet of musicians began playing dance music. Dan noticed that Malik, free of the reception line at last, attracted a crowd of admirers, including many of the younger women. He stood surrounded by them. No other Russians within twenty feet. That means either that he’s wired with a transmitter, Dan thought, or he’s so powerful inside the Kremlin that the KGB isn’t allowed to listen in on his casual conversations. As if a Soviet official of his stature has any casual conversations.
    The party was a bore. Dan had two options. Either he could make his