Hoffman invited Lanier to her office for drinks that evening. He arrived at seven, after a quick dinner in the JPL cafeteria, and again checked his agents at the door. Hoffman's JPL office was as spare and utilitarian as the one in her home in New York, the major difference being more shelves of memory blocks.

"We tried," she said, handing him a Scotch neat. "Well." She toasted him with a raised Dubonnet on the rocks.

"We did," he said.

"You look tired."

"I am tired."

"Weight of the world on your shoulders," she said, looking at him cautiously.

"Weight of a couple of universes," he said. "I'm discovering how tough a bastard I am, Judith."

"Me too. I talked to the President again this afternoon."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I'm afraid I called him an idiot. I'll very likely be fired or forced to resign by the time you're in orbit."

"Good for you," Lanier said.

"Sit. Talk to me. Tell me what it's like. I want to get up there so badly. . . .” She pulled out chairs and they sat across from each other.

"Why?" Lanier asked. "You've seen the blocks, all the information."

"That's a stupid question."

"It is," Lanier admitted. They were both getting slightly tipsy before the alcohol could possible have had time to take effect. Lanier had noticed the condition before, in times of stress.

"Goddamn, I sure understand what the Russians are worried about," Hoffman said after a moment's silence. "For the last ten years we've been beating the pants off of them in every area—diplomatically, technologically. In space and on Earth. Hares to their tortoise. They're dinosaurs and they hate anything faster and more adaptable. Why, young Ivan doesn't know a computer terminal from a tractor wheel. Even the Chinese are beating them."

"The Chinese might edge ahead of us in a generation or two."

"Good. Serve us right." Hoffman said. "Now the Stone comes down, and we intercept it, claim it, let them have little useless nibbles of it in the interests of international cooperation. . . . And whatever's on the Stone, it might just as well be a tombstone for the Eastern bloc. We'll be in control of unimagined technology. Jesus. I wish we could sit down with them and reason. . . but they're too scared, and our President is too damned stupid."

"I don't think stupid is the right word. Shell-shocked, perhaps."

"He knew a little about the Stone when he ran for office."

"He knew it was coming," Lanier said. "None of us knew much more than that."

"Well, fuck him if he can't take a joke," Hoffman said, staring at the shutters on the window. "When you were a pilot, way back when," she continued, "you crashed once. Where did you want to be before your plane went down?"