The man in the eager semi crouch was Francis X. MacHinery.

When he was not bent over in that absurd position, which was only his prosecutor's stance, Francis X. MacHinery looked every inch the inheritor of an unbroken line of Boston aristocrats, as in fact he was. Though he was not tall, he was very spare, and his hair had been white since he was 26 years old, giving him a look of col4 wisdom which was complemented by his hawklike nose and high cheekbones. The FBI had come down to him from his grandfather, who had somehow persuaded the then incumbent president, a stunningly popular Man-on-Horseback who dripped charisma but had no brains worth mentioning that so important a directorship should not be hazarded to the appointments of his successors, but instead ought to be handed on from father to son like a corporate office.

Hereditary pasts tend to become nominal with the passage of time, since it takes only one weak scion to destroy the importance of the office; but that had not happened yet to the MacHinery family. The current incumbent could, in fact, have taught his grandfather a thing or two. MacHinery was as full of cunning as a wolverine, and he had managed times without number to land on his feet regardless of what political disasters had been planned for him. And he was, as Paige was now discovering, the man for whom the metaphor "gimlet-eyed" had all unknowingly been invented.

"Well, Miss Abbott?"

"Colonel Russell was here yesterday," Anne said. "You may have seen him then."

The swinging doors opened and Horsefield and Gunn came in. MacHinery paid no attention to them. He said, "What's your name, soldier?"

"I'm a spaceman;" Paige said stiffly. "Colonel Paige Russell, Army Space Corps."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm on leave."

"Will you answer the question?" MacHinery said. He was, Paige noticed, not looking at Paige at all, but over his shoulder, as though he were actually paying no real heed to the conversation. "What are you doing at the Pfitzner plant?'

"I happen to be in love with Miss Abbott," Paige said sharply to his own black and utter astonishment. "I came here to see her. We had a quarrel last night and I wanted to apologize. That's all."

Anne straightened behind her desk as though a curtain rod had been driven up her spine, turning toward Paige a pair of blindly blazing eyes and a rigidly unreadable expression. Even Gunn's mouth sagged slightly to one side; he looked first at Anne, then at Paige, as if he were abruptly uncertain that he had ever seen either of them before.

MacHinery, however, shot only one quick look at Anne, and his eyes seemed to turn into bottle glass. "I'm not interested in your personal life," he said in a tone which, indeed, suggested active boredom. "I will put the question another way, so that there'll be no excuse for evading it. Why did you come to the plant in the first place? What is your business at Pfitzner, soldier?"