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astronomy... A lot of beautiful, fascinating work, none of which had raised so much as a peep from the Gaijin.
    "And meanwhile," Dorothy went on, "there were still babies to deliver, crops to grow, politicking to pursue, and wars to fight. As my father used to say, the next morning you still had to put your pants on one leg at a time.
    "You know," she said thoughtfully, "I'm generally in favor of all this activity. Your Sports Fans, I mean. The only way we have to absorb such changes in our view of the world, and ourselves, is like this: by talking, talking, talking. At least the people here care enough to express an opinion. Look at that." It was a softscreen poster showing a download from the net: a live image returned by some powerful telescope, perhaps in orbit or on the Moon, of the asteroid belt anomalies: a dark, grainy background, a line of red stars, twinkling, blurred. "Alien industry, live from space. The most popular Internet site, I'm told. People use it as wallpaper in their bedrooms. They seem to find it comforting."
    Xenia snorted. "Sure. And you know who makes most use of that image? The astrologers. Now you can have your fortune told by the lights of Gaijin factories. I mean, Jesus... Sorry. But it says it all."
    Dorothy laughed good-naturedly.
    They drove away from the Sports Fans' pens and approached the pad itself: the true center of attention, bearing Bootstrap's first interplanetary ship, Frank Paulis's pride and joy.
    Xenia could see the lines of a rust-brown external tank, the slim pillars of solid rocket boosters. The stack was topped by a tubular cover that gleamed white in the Sun. Somewhere inside that fairing rested the Giordano Bruno, a complex robot spacecraft that would some day ride out to the asteroids and seek out the Gaijin that lurked there -- if Frank could drive the test program to completion, if Xenia could guide the corporation through the maze of legislation that still impeded them.
    As Xenia studied the ship, Dorothy studied her.
    "Frank Paulis relies on you a lot, doesn't he?" Dorothy said. "I know that formally you are head of Bootstrap's legal department..."
    "I'm the first name on Frank's call list. He relies on me to get things done."
    "And you're happy with your role."
    "We do share the same goals, you know."
    "Umm. Your ship looks something like the old space shuttle."
    "So it should," Xenia said, and she launched into a standard line. "This is what we here at Bootstrap call our Big Dumb Booster. It's actually comprised largely of superannuated space shuttle components. You'll immediately see one benefit over the standard shuttle design, which is in-line propulsion; we have a much more robust stack--"
    "I'm no more an engineer than you are, Xenia," Dorothy said with smooth humor.
    Xenia allowed herself a grin. "Sorry. It's hard to change the script after doing this so many times... This is primarily a launcher to the planets. Or the asteroids."
    Dorothy smiled. "You have built a rocket ship for America."
    Xenia bristled. "It does seem rather a scandal that America, first nation to land a human being on another planet, has let its competence degrade to the point that it has no heavy-lift space launch capability at all."
    "But the Chinese are in Earth orbit, and the Japanese are on the Moon. There's even a rumor that the Chinese are preparing a flight of their own out to the asteroids."
    Xenia squinted at the washed-out, dusty sky. "Dorothy, it's five years since the Gaijin showed up in the Solar System. But you can't call it contact. Not yet. As you said, they haven't responded to any of our signals. All they do is build, build, build. Maybe if we do manage to send a probe there, we'll achieve real contact, the kind of contact we've always dreamed of."
    "And you think America should be first."
    "If not us, who? The Chinese?"
    A siren sounded: An engine test was due. With smooth efficiency, the car's SmartDrive cut in and swept them far from danger.
     
    "We used to think that