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“I’ll be honest. My outfit, the Leadership in Robotics Institute, will be supplying software for the Phase 5 ramp. This is a big deal for us. Make or break, to be honest. The competition for UNVRP tenders is cutthroat. We’ve planned our entire investment schedule around this. If the Phase 5 ramp was canceled, it might spell doom for LiRI, too … So yeah, I’ve got a dog in this fight.”
    Lorna was acting like he’d just come clean about his motivation, but he’d said To be honest twice, which was a pretty good sign that he wasn’t being honest at all.
    More than ever, Mendoza wanted to know the real reason Lorna was interested in Mercury. He felt protective of the little planet. Elfrida was there.
    “So, bottom line,” Lorna said, “the right person has to win this election.”
    He tapped the mother-of-pearl table. It turned into a screen showing an Asian-featured woman in her forties. She had the kind of beauty that money could buy.
    “It won’t surprise you,” Lorna said, “to learn that the right person in our view, the view of everyone involved, is Angelica Lin.”
    It did surprise Mendoza. He didn’t even know who Angelica Lin was. A lightning-fast search threw up her name in connection with the death of Charles K. Pope. She had been Pope’s girlfriend.
    “Is she even running for the job?” he asked.
    “She will be.” Lorna smiled at Angelica Lin’s luscious features, kissed his fingers, and planted the kiss on her lips. The touch erased the portrait. “She’s never held public office before, but she’s the obvious choice, and I’m sure the voters will see it that way, too. But they might need a little help making up their minds … do you see where I’m heading with this?”
    Mendoza did, and he felt relieved. Lorna wanted him to use his psephological skills to help get Angelica Lin elected. This was practically business as usual. “Sure. But if I can ask a question, why not Dr. Ulysses Seth? Isn’t he the default UNVRP candidate?”
    Lorna chuckled. “He’s eighty-seven.”
    “Yes, but ….” The average lifespan in the UN was 98. Shorter for the spaceborn, but Dr. Seth had been born on Earth, a lifelong physiological advantage that no length of time in space could erode.
    “More to the point,” Lorna continued, “a vote for Seth would be a vote for Charles K. Pope’s radical agenda.”
    “Radical agenda?”
    “Come on,” Lorna said, coolly. “UNVRP is radical. Terraforming Venus? Imagining that you can turn a toxic inferno into a shirtsleeve environment, by throwing a few kilotons of green slime and iron aerosol at it? That’s not radical?”
    Mendoza frowned, confused.
    “Oh, I’m pro-UNVRP. But I’m just saying, familiarity breeds contempt. Take a step back, and you can’t deny that the Venus Project is radically ambitious. Especially in the context of the other challenges humanity has to deal with right now … such as the PLAN.”
    At the mention of the PLAN, Mendoza felt a chill run through his body. He said carefully, “Plenty of people think UNVRP is a waste of taxpayer money that should be spent on other things.” Fragger1 had written a screed about that just the other day.
    “Yes. But money was nothing to Charlie Pope. For him—now this is something you may not know—UNVRP was to be only the beginning. He planned to use the Phase 5 ramp as a stepping-stone to bigger things. Ultimately, he wanted to dismantle Mercury and turn it into a Dyson sphere.”
    “A Dyson sphere? A trillion trillion solar arrays orbiting the sun?”
    “Yeah. Sphere, swarm, call it what you like, it was a nutzoid idea when Dyson first came up with it, and it still is. But Pope thought we could do it, and not only that, we should do it.Basically, the man was crazier than a cockroach in a radioactive waste dump.”
    Lorna’s voice had a flinty edge. Mendoza suddenly remembered the internet rumors (not even rumors, really, just dead links) suggesting that Charles K. Pope had been