?"

"Put in its crudest form, yes."

"A pretty tough job. You know that guff about Man's Pioneering Spirit."

"Yes. But we're worried about the public spirit, Mr. Blacker. If we can
dampen their ardor for space flight--only delay it, mind you, for
another few years--we can tighten our own lines of economic defense. Do
I make myself clear?"

"Not completely."

"Will you take the job?"

"What does it pay?"

"Fifty thousand."

"Where do I sit?"

* * * * *

By the afternoon, Tom Blacker was ensconced in a fair-sized office with
vaguely oriental furnishings and an ankle-deep rug. Livia's pretty
ankles visited it first.

"Here's an outline I began on the PR program," she told him briskly,
dropping a sheet of paper on his desk. "I didn't get very far with it.
I'm sure you can add a lot."

"Okay. I'll read it over this afternoon." He tipped the chair back. "How
about dinner tonight?"

"Sorry. Busy tonight. Maybe later this week."

But it wasn't until Friday, three days later, that he saw Livia Cord
again. He accomplished that by calling her in for a conference,
spreading his own typewritten notes on the desk in front of him.

"Got some rough ideas drafted on the program," he told her. "The
possibilities of this thing are really unlimited. Granted, of course,
that there's money in this picture."

"There's money all right," Livia said. "We don't have to worry about
that."

"Good. I've put down a list of leading citizens that might be enrolled
as backers for anything we might come up with, people who have been
outspoken about the expense or danger of space flight. We'll keep it on
file, and add to it as new names crop up in the press. Then here's a
listing of categories for us to develop subprograms around. Religious,
economic, social, medical--Medical's good. There's a heck of a lot of
scare-value in stories about cosmic rays, alien diseases, plagues, zero
gravity sickness, all that sort of thing. Sterility is a good gimmick;
impotence is even better."

* * * * *

Livia smiled. "I know what you mean."

"Mmm. Come to think of it, we ought to set up a special
woman's-point-of-view program, too. That'll be worth plenty. Then
there's the tax question. We'll have to see what we can set up in
Washington, some kind of anti-space lobby. Good feature story material
here, too. You know the stuff--one space vessel equals the cost of two
hundred countr