Midway through the trip, Lucien and Lilith were married, the couple consummating their wedding vows in their honeymoon berth in zero-gravity, becoming the first official members of the 22,000-miles-high club.

They would not be the last. Within a few months, H.O.P.E. was shuttling four space buses a week at a cost of $100,000 per ticket. Even with its high price tag, there was still a fourteen-month waiting list. Three more planes were quickly added to the fleet, with plans announced for Space Port 1, the first space hotel designed to accommodate the paying public. When a lunar shuttle was included in the brochure, the Defense Department stepped in, declaring the moon off-limits.

Lucien was furious. Maybe the New World Order could control his freedoms on Earth, but nobody owned the moon. A high-priced law firm was engaged, lawsuits threatened.

Lilith charted her own course around the gauntlet, rendezvousing in secrecy with President John Zwawa.

A week before his twenty-sixth birthday, Lucien Mabus died of heart failure, an ailment his physician blamed on a decade of alcohol and drug abuse. Weeks after the funeral, Mabus Tech’s new female CEO was granted access to Golden Fleece, a top-secret space program overseen by NASA’s Dave Mohr.

Three months later, reports began to circulate that Lilith was pregnant. Devlin Mabus was born eleven months after Lucien’s death, confirming suspicions that the boy’s mother had been having an affair. Popular consensus around the District of Columbia was that President Zwawa had been the man who had sired the white-haired, blue-eyed infant.

They were wrong.

The black limousine follows its police escort north along scenic State Road, A1A, turning into the gated drive of the Mabus estate.

President Heather Stuart exits the vehicle, the auburn-haired Democrat escorted by her chief of staff, Ken Mulder, and National Security Advisor Donald Engle. Ignoring the bell and intercom, the 280-pound Engle bangs his fist several times against the double oak doors. Waits. Then knocks again.

Mulder casts a perturbed look at the president. ‘Is this some kind of game they’re playing?’

The second female president of the United States and the first homosexual ever to reach the executive branch nods. ‘It’s poker, Ken. Make no mistake, they’re watching and evaluating our responses.’

Mulder glances up at the surveillance camera. ‘Poker’s a game of chance. I prefer chess.’

The door opens, revealing a putty-complexioned man in his late sixties. His short-cropped hair is mouse-gray and curly, his matching piggish eyes heavy behind rose-colored spectacles. Barefoot, he is dressed in a paisley Hawaiian shirt and matching Bermuda shorts, his narrow lips sucking on a pacifier bong.

Donald Engle casts a wide shadow over the doorway. ‘Lilith Mabus?’