And Richard Nixon, it turned out, had knocked over a bank after all. The tapes the Supreme Court ordered him to turn over proved it, too. They showed that when he’d talked with H. R. Haldeman twice on June 23, 1972, about using the CIA to stop the FBI from investigating the Watergate break-in. The Glomar Explorer newsletter headline, surely not written by anybody who hated the president, read “Smoking Howitzer!”

Even a Republican representative like Orange County’s Charles Wiggins, who’d led Nixon’s defenders in the Judiciary Committee, said he would have voted for the articles of impeachment had he known. Three other Republicans on the committee joined him. The others announced they were “reassessing” their stance.

There was another Doonesbury where Mark chortled, “Guilty! That’s guilty, guilty, guilty!!” Some newspapers refused to run that strip, calling it too one-sided. Jerry hoped their editors felt properly foolish now. He wouldn’t have bet on it, though.

When he went into the messroom for lunch, he felt like waving the newsletter over his head and screaming, “Guilty! That’s guilty, guilty, guilty!!” himself. Only the worry that some of the divers might baptize him with hot coffee made him hold back. He even tried not to look like somebody who was gloating.

He might not have done too well, because Steve greeted him with, “Seems you were right all along.”

“Yeah, well…” Jerry shrugged. “The important thing is, we’ve gotta make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”

“If we can,” the older man said. “People aren’t perfect. The things they make aren’t perfect, either. Chances are we’ll get ourselves another power-hungry president one of these years.”

That felt more likely than Jerry wished it did. He’d been thinking about imperfections, too, in a different context. “Clementine and the pipe string have had plenty of problems, but the object is still coming up.” He kept avoiding Midlothian where anyone not in the inner circle could hear, but with luck that wouldn’t matter much longer.

“It is,” Steve said with a small nod. “Getting close now. They should be hooking Clementine up to the docking legs this afternoon. If everything works the way it should, the rent-a-frogs will get the first live look at the object then.”

“Alevai omayn!” Jerry exclaimed. Steve gave him a quizzical look. Sheepishly, he translated: “May it work the way you said.” He wasn’t sure he was the only Jew aboard the Glomar Explorer, but he thought so. No black guys at all, or Asians. The people pulling up the spaceship for the United States didn’t look just like the country they worked for.

“Ah.” Steve stayed smooth and polite, as he always did.