McGrath gave a grunt that was almost a laugh. "What are we drinking to?" he asked, not looking up at Kinsman.

"To understanding," Kinsman said, stretching out on the open sofabed.

"Understanding what?"

The real world, man. The real world. "Understanding why I came over to your house last night, trying to find you. Understanding what's happening in the Pentagon and the White House, and what's going to hit the Congress in the next few days."

McGrath sat up straighter in his chair. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm not authorized to tell you, Neal, but I'm going to anyway and if anybody's snooping on this conversation they can go rush their tapes to whoever they want to."

Inadvertently McGrath's eyes scanned the room, looking for microphones.

"The Aerospace Force has been working for some time," Kinsman said, "on the development of a manned interceptor spaceplane that will be used to destroy Soviet ABM satel- lites."

"I know that. Nobody in the Pentagon has seen fit to brief me about it, but I've got my own sources."

"Okay. You know, then, that this will mean we're going to actively pursue the objective of preventing the Soviets from deploying a Star Wars type of defensive shield in orbit."

"Yeah, and they're going to try to stop us from deploying our own," McGrath said. "That's what I've been fighting against since I came to the Senate."

"You're shoveling shit against the tide, Neal. It's going to happen whether either one of us likes it or not."

McGrath muttered something unintelligible. 258

"And we're going to start building our own ABM satellites," Kinsman went on, "in orbital factories, out of materials mined from the Moon."

"The hell you are."

"The hell we're not! The whole Department of Defense is behind this one, Neal. It's not just a little hospital of a Moonbase anymore. It's not just us Luniks. The entire military-industrial complex is in the act now. And so is the White House."

Understanding dawned in McGrath's eyes. "So that's why Dreyer's people have been huddling with the committee chairman. And the big aerospace primes are starting to give cocktail parties . . ."

"They're lining up their votes."

With a stubborn shake of his head McGrath said, "Once we start mining operations on the Moon the Russians will do exactly the same thing. Or worse: once they see that you're using lunar resources to build Star Wars hardware, they'll try to stop you. World War Three could start on the Moon and spread to Earth."

"No, it won't, Neal. There won't be any fighting on the Moon. I promise you that."

"How can you—"

"I'm going to be the commander of Moonbase."

"You want to spend a hundred billion dollars on top of everything we're already spending and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war, just so you can play soldier on the Moon."

"You know me better than that, Neal. We'll keep the Moon demilitarized. There won't be any armaments on the Moon. Just the mines. And the hospital." And a graveyard, he added silently.

McGrath shifted on the chair, making its wooden legs creak. "I'll do everything I can to stop this nonsense. I'm dead-set against it."