DAY TWELVE

Edan McGrath, president of Global News Network, was sometimes called Edan Me Wrath. This was one of those mornings.

Unexpected because he was on vacation, he had stormed into his Atlanta office and demanded that his vice presidents for programming, news and legal meet him in his office immediately.

He was a big man who radiated power even though his once hard and muscular body was now weighed down with the fat of overindulgence. Bald, he kept the same trim moustache he had sported when he'd been a Georgia Tech football lineman. Even though his grandfather had handed him Global News as an inheritance, McGrath told anyone and everyone that being born with a platinum spoon in your mouth wasn't easy. "I've had to work to keep Global on top of the international competition," he would say. "I earn my keep!"

For an industry that rewarded egomania, his office was comparatively modest. No bigger than a minor airfield, its decor was muted Persian carpets and quiet little marble busts and statuettes from ancient Greece and Rome. No desk, but a large round table dominated the room. The walls were display screens, naturally. One of them perpetually showed the Global News feed from its Atlanta studios. The other at present displayed a trio of sleek yachts slicing through New Zealand waters in a trial heat of the Americas Cup race.

The head of the round table was wherever McGrath chose to sit. At the moment he was standing, big hands gripping the back of one of the padded chairs, a stern overweight father figure in an white open-necked sports shirt and whipcord navy blue slacks. He was deeply tanned and obviously boiling mad.

His three (out of dozens) vice presidents dutifully arrived in his office and took chairs around the table. McGrath thought of them as Larry, Moe and Curly, although his evaluation of which was which changed constantly.

"MeWrath' did not sit down. He pointed the ringers of one hand like a pistol at the vice president for news.

"This Edie Elgin works for you, doesn't she?"

The man swallowed obviously before answering with a timid, "Yes.' He was lean and sallow; he looked as if he hadn't been out-of-doors since puberty.

McGrath pointed the finger-gun at programming. "How come her report from Moonbase was aired from freakin' Kiribati instead of from Atlanta?"

Programming was made of sterner stuff. He too had been a football player and was still young enough to have retained his muscular physique.

"We agreed with the U.N. people on a blackout from Moonbase, chief. Remember? You talked to Faure yourself, weeks ago."

"But the freakin' broadcast aired out of Kiribati! We look like idiots! Every independent station on Earth is picking it up. Even our own subscribers are using it. They think it originated here!"

"We were just following your orders, chief," the news VP found the strength to say. "You told us not to air anything from Moonbase until further notice."