"The Pentagon will roll over you like a steamdriver, Neal. This isn't just a minor Aerospace Force program anymore, the kind you can nibble off the list and then go home and show the voters how much money you've saved them. This is the big time. Corporations like General Tech and the other big aerospace primes are coming in on this. It'll 259 mean employment for those half-empty shops and factories all across Pennsylvania."

"It will mean inflation . . . and war."

"No, dammitall!" Kinsman raised his voice. "The ABM satellites will protect us against missile attack. The cheaper we make them, the easier it becomes to replace damaged or defective ones, the safer we'll be. Right now, this minute, somebody in Russia or China or seventeen other nations can push a button and inside half an hour this whole country will be just one big mushroom cloud. There's no way to stop a missile attack! Not until the ABM satellites are deployed."

"We're going to deploy them; you're getting your Star

Wars system."

"Building them from lunar resources will make them cheaper and easier to deploy. We'll be able to protect more people, more parts of the world, sooner."

"Unless you provoke the Soviets into a preemptive strike because they're afraid we'll attack them once we have all our satellites in place."

"But they'll be putting up their own ABM satellites. You said so yourself."

"And you're building your goddamned interceptor to knock them down. What happens when the two of you start fighting in orbit? You could start a nuclear war here on the ground."

Kinsman took a swig of aie. "If that's going to happen, it'll happen whether we have a Moonbase or not. Neither one of us has any control over that."

"But I'm not going to vote to help you make it easier for them to start a war," McGrath insisted.

"But war isn't the only possibility, Neal. Look at the benefits we can get."

"Such as?"

"A solid industrial base in orbit. Shipping lunar ores to orbital factories can start the ball rolling on the solar power satellites and all the other peacetime industries in space that will help people on Earth. Opening the door to all the raw materials and energy in space. New jobs. New technologies. New industries. Space is our escape hatch, Neal. If we use it wisely we can put an end to the causes for wars on Earth. We 260 can get out of this coffin we've built for ourselves down here."

"We've been through all that before. It'll take twenty, thirty years before space industries even begin to help the poor and disadvantaged here on Earth."

"Even so," Kinsman said, "what other program do you have that can help them? Everything else is taking from Peter to pay Paul. That's what causes wars, Neal: trying to steal a bigger slice of the pie. All those welfare programs you're pushing, all they do is prolong the misery. Space operations can open up new sources of wealth, make the pie bigger."

"For the rich. For the corporations."

"For everybody! If you do it right."

"I don't believe it, Chet. And I can't vote for it. It's impossible."

"Then you'd better kiss the Minority Leadership good- bye," Kinsman said. "And maybe your seat in the Senate, too."

He stared at Kinsman for a long, silent moment. "So it boils down to that, does it?"

"You knew it would."

"All this high-flown talk about the future and the benefits to the human race ... it all comes down to the fact that you're willing to blackmail me just to get your ass up to the Moon."

"That's right."

"You are a sonofabitch. And a cold-blooded one, at that."