"No, they won't, because we'll be right alongside them on the Moon. We'll watch each other."
Colt edged forward in his chair. "Listen, man. Both sides are starting to deploy their Star Wars stuff, right? We're developing the spaceplane so we can knock out their ABM satellites as fast as they put 'em in orbit, right? They're gonna be doing the same to us, you can bet on it. There's gonna be a war in orbit, man. Maybe it'll be only the machines that get hurt, but it's gonna be a war, all the same."
"We can't tell people like McGrath that we'll be fighting in space!" Murdock's voice was quaking. "He'd have it all over the media in a hot second. We'd go down in flames."
Kinsman glanced at his wristwatch. "Sir . . . I've got to get over to the Capitol. The committee hearings resume at ten."
He left the Colonel's office like a suburban businessman fleeing a downtown pornography shop, hoping that nobody had seen him there. Once in his own office he squeezed behind his battered metal desk and punched out a phone number.
Mary-Ellen's face filled the tiny display screen on his desk. "Hello, Chet! How are you feeling this morning?"
"Okay, I guess. It was a good party. Aspirin helps."
She smiled ruefully. "I've got to get this place into some semblance of order for a dinner party tonight."
"Uh, Mary—I've got to bug out of here and get to the hearings. Is Diane there?"
Her face clouded briefly. "I don't think she's awake yet."
Dammitall! "Look . . . when she gets up, would you ask her to meet me at the hearings at noon? I've got to talk with her. It's important."
Mary-Ellen nodded as if she understood. "Certainly, Chet. I don't know if she'll be free, but I'll tell her."
"Thanks."
The District Metro connected the Pentagon with the 189
Capitol, so Kinsman did not have to go out into the bleak morning again. The subway train was bleak enough: crowded, noisy, dirty with graffiti and shreds of refuse. It was hot and rancid in the jam-packed train. Smells of human sweat, a hundred different breakfasts, cigarettes, and the special steamy reek of rain-soaked clothing.
The morning's hearing was given over to an antimilitary lobby consisting of, it seemed to Kinsman, housewives, clergymen, and public relations flaks. The old rococo hearing chamber was buzzing with witnesses and their friends, pho- tographers, reporters, senators and their scurrying aides. TV cameras were jammed into one side of the chamber, their glaring hot lights bathing the long green-topped table where the committee members sat facing the smaller table for witnesses.
Who signs the TV stations' energy permits? Kinsman wondered idly as a middle-aged woman with too much makeup on her face read from a prepared statement in a penetrating voice that jangled with New York nasality:
"We are not against the development of useful programs that will benefit the American taxpayer. We support and endorse the efforts of American industry to develop Solar Power Satellites and thereby provide new energy for our nation. But we cannot support, nor do we endorse, spending additional billions of tax dollars on military programs in space. Outer space should be a peaceful domain, not a place in which to escalate the arms race."
Kinsman slouched on a bench in the rear of the crowded hearing chamber, watching the TV monitors because they gave him a better view of the witness. He wished that he did not agree with her.
The woman looked up from her prepared text and said, "Let us never forget the words that we left on the Moon, engraved on the Apollo 11 landing craft: 'We came in peace for all humankind.'"
