The crowd she had brought with her applauded, as did several of the senators. Kinsman snorted at the misquotation. Feminist revisionism. He saw that McGrath was smiling at the woman as she got up from the witness's chair, but not applauding her.
An aide came to McGrath's side, appearing magically 190 from behind the Senator's high-backed chair and whispering into McGrath's ear. He looked up, shading his eyes against the TV lights, and scanned the room. Then he spoke briefly to the aide, who disappeared as magically as he had arrived.
The next witness was a minister and former Army chaplain who now headed his own church in Louisiana. As he was being introduced McGrath's aide suddenly popped up beside Kinsman.
"Major Kinsman?"
Kinsman jumped as if a cop had suddenly clapped him on the shoulder.
"Yes," he whispered.
Wordlessly the young man handed him a note which read: See you in the corridor when the session ends. Diane.
It was neatly typed, even the signature. She must have phoned Neal's office. Kinsman realized. By the time he looked up from the yellow paper the aide was gone.
Kinsman sat through two more witnesses, both university professors. The first one, when he was not toying with his mustache, was an economist who showed charts which he claimed proved that private investment in space industries would help the national economy greatly, but government investment in space would only increase the inflation rate. The other, an aging, grossly overweight biophysicist, insisted that space development of any kind was unsound ecologically.
"It will cost more in energy and environmental degrada- tion," he intoned in a deep, shaking, doomsday voice, "to place large numbers of workers into space than those workers will ever be able to return to the people of this Earth in the form of energy or usable goods. Space is only good for the very rich, and it will be the poor peoples of the Earth who will pay the price for the privileged few."
As soon as Kinsman saw that the committee chairman was going to gavel the session into adjournment he ducked out the big gleaming oak double doors and into the quiet, marble-walled corridor. Diane was walking up the hall toward him.
"Perfect timing," Kinsman said, taking her by the arm.
Her smile was good to see. "I can't make it a long lunch, Chet," she warned. "I've got to meet Larry and fly up to New York for a contract negotiation." 191
"Oh."
"I'll only be gone overnight. I've got a concert up there Friday night, then the whole weekend's taken up with brief- ings and medical checkups ..."
"With what?"
The click of their footsteps on the marble floor was lost as the rest of the crowd poured out of the hearing chamber and into the corridor.
Raising her voice, Diane said, "I've been invited to fly up to the opening of Space Station Alpha. Didn't Neal tell you?"
"No, he didn't."
"I thought he had. We're going up on the special VIP shuttle Monday. Just for the day."
