Kinsman grinned at the angry, smoldering Senator who had been his friend. "Neal, a fanatic who's willing to sacrifice his life for his cause is perfectly willing to sacrifice your life for his cause."

"So you can get to the Moon. You'd wreck my career, my life, you'd wreck the whole world just to get what you want."

"You'll live through it. And the world has a way of taking care of itself. Believe me, you'll both be far better off with me on the Moon. Me. and a few thousand other Luniks."

McGrath drained the last of his ale, then hefted the empty bottle in his big hand. "I can't vote for it. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't switch my position on this. My own party would crucify me."

"Yes you can. And I'll bet those big, bad industrialists in Pennsylvania will even contribute to your re-election cam- paign if you do."

"No," McGrath said firmly.

"It's suicide to vote against the national defense appro- priation, Neal."

"I have always voted against wasteful spending."

"But this isn't wasteful! It'll create jobs, for Chrissake. Look on it as an employment program."

"That will lead us into war."

"That will lead you into the White House someday. Sure, some of your supporters will get disenchanted and turn against you—for a while. But you'll gain more supporters than you lose. You'll end up with a much wider base of support."

"By going against everything I believe in."

Suddenly exasperated, Kinsman burst out, "What the hell do you believe in, Neal? Your opinions about space are stupid! You're just as blindly ignorant about it as my father was. All those programs you back, for helping the poor and the needy—they've squandered more goddamned money on bureaucratic bullshit than anything that's ever gone through Congress. And they don't work! You've got more unem- ployed, more welfare cases right now in your own state than you did when you first came into the Congress. Look it up, I've checked the numbers."

"That's not the fault of the welfare programs."

"But those programs aren't helping! You want to be Minority Leader, you've got ambitions to head the party, but you're turning down an offer that's guaranteed to bring you more support than you've ever had because of a stubborn ideological bias that's just plain stupidly wrong. Just what the hell do you want?"

"I want to be able to live with myself."

"And with who else? Diane? Mary-Ellen? Both of them? Do you want to be able to live with those unemployed workers back home? To be an unemployed worker yourself? Take your pick."

McGrath got to his feet. For a moment Kinsman thought he was going to throw the empty bottle against the wall. But 262 he let it drop from his fingers. It bounced once on the thin carpeting and rolled toward the sofabed.

Kinsman stood up, too.

"I've heard enough," McGrath said. "I'm leaving. If I ever see you near Mary-Ellen again ..."

"You won't," Kinsman said. Then, grinning, he added, "Of course, one way to make sure of that is to send me a quarter-million miles away."

McGrath glared at him.

"You can have your Minority Leadership, Neal. All I want is the Moon."

The committee hearings were scheduled to go on for another week before the senators voted. Kinsman spent the time briefing White House staffers and key Congressional leaders, including Senator McGrath. The State Department reared its head and mewed about upsetting the delicate balance of offensive and defensive armaments that had been negotiated so painstakingly at Geneva over the past decade. But the Central Intelligence Agency cut State's legs off at the knees with evidence that the Soviets were developing a spaceplane that looked so exactly like the USAF interceptor they suspected the plans had been stolen.

Then came the critical vote on the defense budget by the Senate Appropriations Committee- The budget included a small supplemental item for Moonbase: the first year's fund- ing, "a scant fifty million," as Marcot put it, "the nose of the camel." Everyone knew, thanks to Kinsman's briefings, that the full camel would cost twenty billion or more.