He nagged down a dilapidated taxi and helped Diane into it. She looked puzzled. "Washington Monument," he told the driver.
The line of tourists that usually circled the monument 266 was gone by the time they arrived there.
"Is it still open?" Diane asked.
"Sure. I've never been up the top. Have you?"
"No."
"Then now's the time!" Kinsman gripped Diane's hand tightly as he led her up the grassy slope to the immense obelisk that loomed before them. On either side of the path the silvery solar panels that provided electricity for the monument's night lighting looked like miniature fairy-tale castles, stretching all around the spire. As they approached the gigantic column, with the sunset sky flaming red and orange behind it, its marble flanks began to look gray and dingy.
"The world's biggest phallic symbol," Kinsman said. "Dedicated to the Father of our Country."
Diane grinned sourly. "You would look at it that way, wouldn't you?"
There were only half a dozen other people waiting inside, speaking German and another language that Kinsman could not identify. They milled around for a few minutes and then the elevator came down, opened its doors, and discharged about twenty bedraggled tourists.
As the elevator groaned and creaked its way up to the top of the monument, Diane whispered, "Is this thing safe?"
Kinsman shrugged. "I'd feel a lot better if it had wings on it."
Finally the elevator stopped and its doors wheezed open. They stepped out and went to a tiny barred window. The entire city lay sprawled below them, smothered in muggy, smoggy heat. The sun was touching the horizon now, and lights were beginning to twinkle in the buildings that stretched as far as the eye could see.
"If I have some good luck," Kinsman said, "this is the last time I'll see Washington."
Diane asked, "Why did you call me, Chet? What do you expect from me?"
Surprised, he answered quickly, "Nothing! Not a damned thing. I just wanted to ... well, sort of apologize. To you, and to Neal. He won't even talk to me on the phone, so I sort of figured I'd tell you."
"Apologize?"
"For . . . using you both, as you put it. I think it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. Somebody else would have twisted Neal's arm the way I did. But I was his friend and now I've made him into an enemy."
"You certainly have," she said.
"And you?"
She looked out at the city, so far below. "His enemies are my enemies. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?"
"So I've heard."
He stood beside her, gazing out at the buildings and the scurrying buses and cars, all those people down there, all the cities and nations and people of the entire planet. Suddenly, finally, the enormity of it hit him. Grasping the iron bars set into the stone window frame. Kinsman could feel himself falling, swirling out into emptiness. Good God, he thought. All those people! I've set myself up against all of them. I've forced them to do what I want, without a thought for their side of it. What if I'm wrong? What if it's not the right thing?
Almost wildly he searched for the Moon in the darkening sky but it was nowhere in sight.
"Neal says you're going to start a war in space," Diane said, her voice low but knife-edged. "He says your Moonbase is going to lead to World War Three. You're going to kill us all."
"No." The word was out of his mouth before he knew he had spoken it. "Neal and the rest of you, you just don't understand. The most important thing we'll ever do is to set up permanent habitats in space. It's time for the human race to expand its ecological niche, time we stopped restricting ourselves to just one planet. Our salvation lies out there, Diane, maybe the only chance for salvation we'll ever have."
