at the boiling sea of humanity below, but moodily at the domed roof.

"Hi!" she said.

He turned, recognized her with a faintly absent glare. "Hello, Cam. What're you doing here?"

She repressed a desire to run her fingers through his hair. Darkly exciting hair it was. "Covering," she said vaguely. "Imagine us running into each other here. Why, you ought to be down there with the Vips. The rest of them, I mean."

He snarled. "There's too many on the proscenium now. The flooring will warp. I warned them about it." He grumbled at length about the stinginess of the Government, and the cupidity of certain fly-by-night contractors. It was a familiar tirade. She listened patiently until he was finished. It didn't matter to Camilla what he talked about it. She just loved to hear his voice.

"I think it's wonderful," she said. "I mean a place that will hold a hundred thousand people. It's a shame that you can stand right here among all these people, and nobody even recognizes you—the man who built it."

"I like it this way," he said. "Supposing it falls down tomorrow. Then where would I be?"

She started to laugh, and his look froze her. Camilla bit her lip. "I don't see you around much lately," she said, desperately changing the subject.

"I've been pretty busy."

"I know." A lag in the conversation. They watched the panorama below. Loudspeakers were blaring out the names of the delegates as they arrived.

The loudspeaker: "HIS EXCELLENCY, LORD CHANCELLOR OF MORDANA, THIRD DISTRICT, MARS."

A red beetle-being, scarcely four feet tall, followed by a retinue of twenty guards and assistants, scurried along the roped-off aisle to the central council table.

"THE HONORABLE YUN BROOL, REPRESENTATIVE, SECTOR 263, JUPITER."

A dark-suited group of humanoids, faintly alien in aspect, walking close together. They looked faintly disdainful of the proceedings. Which was Yun Brool? They were identically dressed.

"You can bet the one in the middle is Brool," Camilla said to Chris. "Jovians are always afraid of being assassinated."

"Umm," said Christopher Berthold, gazing suspiciously at a rubberneck a 

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