after midnight."

"Oh." It was an "oh" of relief. A senator couldn't be nearly as
troublesome as a teacher.

"Don't say 'oh' like that. He'll probably close the Station tight and
we'll all be out of work. You don't realize, it, but money has been
getting harder and harder to cadge for this place. We're practically
running only the Fuels department now."

He got up, threw the bone from his pork chop into a garbage pail,
washed his hands at the sink, and sat down again.

He continued, "Wait till he finds out about those four reactor rockets
that are cooling off on the Moon, waiting for us to get there. I can
hear him scream, 'Five million dollars each! Each full of precious
equipment, to say nothing of invaluable fissionable material!' And then
this place gets shut down."

Eric had a suggestion. "Give him the old routine about how we have to
get men to the Moon or the Russians will do it first and use all the
equipment we've sent there without even thanking us."

"Umm," said his father, considering. He shook his head finally. "His
answer to that is why send good money after bad. No. I just hope he
feels better after a steak dinner. Either that or the wings fall off
his plane." He smiled wistfully at the thought. "Oh, well," he said,
"let's go to bed."

They went their separate ways, but only Eric went to bed. His father
entered the library, sat down, got his pipe going, and began to reread
_How to Win Friends and Influence People_.

* * * * *

The next day saw Dr. Brinton contemplate suicide, homicide, and voting
Republican, though not necessarily in that order. The Senator had
viewed their most inspiring onward-and-upward movies and merely asked
how much they cost to make. He had eaten a huge steak at the
commissary, and then inspected the garbage cans for waste. His visits
to various departments had been marred by his lack of interest in
anything except the number of men employed by each and their average
salaries, though he did comment that they all looked hung-over. In the
Fuels Department, he had walked out on the demonstrations, interrupting
some actual experiments that were going on outside the test room.

Dr. Brinton was now riding in the back of a jeep, explaining to the
Senator that nuclear rockets were not too efficient, and the shielding
necessary to make them safe for men weighed more than their payload.
The Senator noted down the word "inefficient."

A loudspeake