* *

Lindsay, walking through the proceedings in a fog, was even more laconic
than a clipped British envoy who, along with a recovered Senator
Anderson, was a member of the party.

"Don't take it so hard," Anderson whispered. "Nina is just about the
best-kept secret in this hemisphere. If I weren't one of the few who's
been in on it all along...." He shrugged eloquently.

Lindsay said nothing. He couldn't. So Nina--his fresh slatternly
secretary, the courtesan of the world capital--was also Coranina
Norstadt-Ramirez, the heiress who owned almost half of Earth!

He felt like a quadruply-plated idiot. He knew about
Norstadt-Ramirez--who didn't, whether on Earth or Mars or the
space-stations circling Venus while that planet's atmosphere was being
artificially altered to make it fit for human habitation?

She was a fantastic glamorous lady of mystery, the ultimate heiress, the
young woman to whom inexorably, thanks to North America's matriarchal
era during the twentieth century, the control of most of its mightiest
corporations and trust funds had descended.

And she was Lindsay's secretary. No wonder, he thought miserably, she
had never sounded quite sincere about calling him boss. Why, she
virtually owned his home planet as well. He watched her covertly across
the table, poised, amused, alert, occasionally witty--and so damnably
attractive. He wished he were dead.

She caught his regard, scowled and stuck her tongue out at him. He
thought. _Why, you little...!_

Somehow she got them out of the chatter after dinner, got him back to
his suite. There, regarding him sternly, she said, "Zale, you aren't
going to be stuffy about this, are you?"

"I can't help it," he replied. "If you'd only told me...."

He read sympathy in her green eyes. But she merely shrugged and said,
"Result of a lifetime of keeping myself under wraps." She sat on a
contour chair, patted a place for him alongside.

She said, "I'm the richest single person there has ever been--you know
that. It isn't my fault. It just happened. I didn't deserve or want or
need it. But it is a hell of a responsibility. Since I'm responsible for
so much it seemed important to me to know how people felt. After all we
act because we feel. And thanks to a few good friends like Fernando
Anderson I've been able to get away with it."

"Why me?" he asked her. "Why pick on me?"

Her expression softened. One of her hands crept into his. "One of the
nicest thing