m below, a long stretch of white with blobs of black on
either side, resolving into snow-laden black pines, a long flat
lake-top of ice and snow. Taxi-ing down, engines roaring, sucking up
snow into steam in the orange afterblast. And ahead, up from the lake,
a black blot of a house, with orange window lights reflecting warmth
and cheer against the wilderness outside--

Then Dwight McKenzie, peering out into the gloom, eyes widening in
recognition, little mean eyes with streaks of fear through them,
widening and then smiling, pumping his hand. "Dan! My god, I couldn't
_imagine_--hardly ever see anybody up here, you know. Come in, come
in, you must be half frozen. What's happened? Something torn loose
down in Washington?" And more questions, fast, tumbling over each
other, no answers wanted, talky-talk questions to cover surprise and
fear and the one large question of why Dan Fowler should be dropping
down out of the sky on _him_, which question he didn't think he wanted
answered just yet--

* * * * *

A huge, rugged room, blazing fire in a mammoth fireplace at the end,
moose heads, a rug of thick black bear hide. "Like to come up here a
day or two ahead of the party, you know," McKenzie was saying. "Does a
man good to commune with his soul once in a while. Do you like to
hunt? You should join us, Dan. Libby and Donaldson will be up tomorrow
with a couple of guides. We could find you an extra gun. They say
hunting should be good this year--"

One chair against the fireplace, a book hastily thrown down beside it,
SEXTRA SPECIAL, Cartoons by Kulp. Great book for soul-searching
Senators. Things were all out of focus after the sudden change from
the cold, but now Dan was beginning to see. One book, one chair, but
two half-filled sherry glasses at the sideboard--

"Can't wait, Dwight, I have to get back to the city, but I couldn't
find you down there, and they didn't know when you were coming back. I
just wanted to let you know that I put you to all that trouble for
nothing--we don't need the Hearing date in December, after all."

Wariness suddenly in McKenzie's eyes. "Well! Nice of you to think of
it, Dan--but it wasn't really any trouble. No trouble at all. December
15th is fine, as a matter of fact, better than the February date would
have been. Give the Committee a chance to collect itself during the
Holidays, ha, ha."

"Well, it now seems that it _wouldn't_ be so good for me, Dwight