“Either I meet with him personally, or there will be no agreement. It’s as simple as that, Hans.”

“I’m telling you, that’s not possible. He doesn’t hold face-to-face conferences any more; not here, or down on Earth.”

“You see him often enough.”

“Well, damn it, Judith, I am his assistant. Even he has to see a few people. But I have full legal authority to sign for him, if that’s a worry. Check with Zurich for any questions on financing. And if you want to look at anything else on the Station, tell me and I’ll arrange it.”

Hans Gibbs sounded almost pleading. They were sitting in an eighth-gee chamber halfway out from the hub of Salter Station, watching the mining operations on Elmo, a hundred kilometers above them. Electric arcs sparkled and sputtered in random sequence on the surface of the Earth-orbiting asteroid, and loaded cargo buckets were drifting lazily down along the umbilical. From this distance it was a glittering filament of silver, coiling its length down to the station refining center.

Judith Niles pulled her gaze back from the hypnotic sight of the endless bucket chain. She shook her head, and smiled at the man seated across from her. “Hans, this isn’t just me being awkward. And I’m sure that you and I could conclude the deal. It’s not something I want for myself, it’s for my team down at the Institute. I’m asking them to give up the security of government jobs and take a flier to a private industry group in an orbital facility.” “Security?” Hans Gibbs glared at her. “Judith, that’s pure crap. You know it’s crap. A job with Salter Wherry is safer than any government position. Your whole group could be wiped out tomorrow if some jackass in the U.N. decided to throw his weight around. And they have plenty of jackasses. And don’t give me any nonsense about your budget — Salter Wherry has better and earlier information about that than you do.”

“I believe it.” She sighed. “I told you, you don’t have to convince me. You’re preaching to the choir. I’ve seen our programs twisted and cut and maimed, year after year. But I need to bring twenty key scientists up here with me and I’m telling you how some of them feel. I go back to the Institute and they say to me, ‘Did Salter Wherry agree to this?’ And I say, ‘Well, no. I signed a long-term contract — but I didn’t actually see him.’ Know what they’ll say? They’ll say that this project is pretty low on Salter Wherry’s list of priorities, and maybe we should think again.”

“It’s top priority. Even down on Earth, most people know that he doesn’t hold face-to-face meetings.”

“I know.” She smiled sweetly. “That’s why it will be so impressive to my staff when they hear that I did meet with him. Think about it for a minute.” Judith Niles leaned back and recalled the last conversation with Jan de Vries and Charlene Bloom before she left. Negotiate hard. It had been the point they all agreed on. And if it didn’t work out? Well, they would live through it. The Institute would continue somehow, even with government cuts in funding. Across from her, Hans Gibbs groaned and eased to his feet. In the two days that they had spent together he had been forming his own impressions of the Institute director, adding to the odd perspective that had come from his cousin at the Institute.

“She’s weird, I mean, like she’s not shaped yet,” Wolfgang had said. “She’s pretty old, right?”

Hans glared at him. “Watch it, sonny. She’s thirty-seven. Guess that’s old if you’re still wet behind the ears.”

“Right. So she’s thirty-seven, and she has a world-wide reputation. But she’s like a little kid in some ways.” Wolfgang waved his beer glass in a circle in the air. “I mean, you tell me I act like a retard, but she’s the one you should talk to. I can’t figure her at all. I think maybe when she was younger all her energy went into science and sex. She’s just getting around to learning the rest of the world.”

“Sex?” Hans raised his eyebrows. “I was right, then. Wolf, if you say she’s sex-mad, she must be something. Been trying to sleep your way to the top, eh? And I thought she was all fixed up with that little man I met yesterday.” “You mean Jan de Vries?” Wolfgang spluttered his laughter through a mouthful of beer. “Cousin boy, you are all screwed up on that one. No chance of an affair between him and JN, not if you locked ‘em up together and fed ‘em Spanish Fly for a year. I like Jan, he’s a great guy, but he’s got his own ideas on sex. He makes friends easily with women, but for his love life he only looks at men.” “But you’re sure about her?”

“I’m sure. Not from personal experience, though. She’s not like me. JN’s discreet, she never plays bedroom games around the Institute. But she disappears for nights and weekends.”

“She could be working.”

“Bullshit. It takes one to know one. She’s horny as I am.”

Hans shrugged. His own impressions had been formed back when he first saw her photograph. “All right, so she’s horny as you are. God help her. But if she’s not shaped and still changing, what will she be like when she is shaped?” Wolfgang Gibbs’ face took on a different expression. He was silent for a moment. “She could be anything,” he said at last. “Absolutely anything. Even the cocky ones at the Institute admit it, she’s way above them on technical matters.” “Even you, cousin? Since when? I thought the mirror on the wall said you were smartest of them all.”

Wolfgang placed his beer glass down on the window sill. He looked very serious. “Even me, cousin. Remember what one of France’s old generals said when he came out of his first meeting with Napoleon? ‘I knew at once that I had met my master.’ That’s how I felt after my first one-on-one with JN. She’s a powerhouse. And when she wants something, she’s hard to stop.”

“I’ve met more than one like that. But where does she get her kicks? If we’re going to have a deal, I need to understand her motives.”

But at that point Wolfgang Gibbs had only shaken his head and picked up his beer again. And now, thought Hans, looking at Judith’s unreadable face, we’re one-on-one and I’m experiencing the push for myself. An audience with Salter, she says, or no deal. He began to move slowly toward the exit.

“Okay, Judith. I’ll try. Salter Wherry is here on the Station, and I have to see him anyway about some other stuff. Give me half an hour — if I can’t do anything in that time, I can’t do it at all. Wait here, and dial Central Services if you need anything while I’m gone. But don’t get your hopes up. The only thing I can tell you is that he wants the Institute up here so bad he can taste it — he says the narcolepsy problem is top priority. Maybe it will make him break his own rule.”

Judith Niles was left with her own thoughts. The words of Jan de Vries kept drifting back to her. “Salter Wherry is a manipulator, the best in the System.” And now she was hoping to manipulate the system he had created. Wherry didn’t know it, but she had little choice. She had her own urgencies. The experiments she wanted to do couldn’t be conducted down on Earth. If he were to suspect that…

She looked again out of the concave viewing port. Salter Station was powerful evidence of the effectiveness of that manipulative power. From where she was sitting, Elmo was continuously visible. It was the first of the

Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids to be steered into stable six-hour orbit around the Earth: but as Salter Wherry had promised the United Nations, the story had not ended there.

Looking at the panorama of development above her, Judith Niles was forced to marvel. Wherry’s asteroid mining operations had provided the base metals to create and then expand Salter Station. But at the same time, as no more than a by-product, they also extracted enough platinum, gold, iridium, chromium, and nickel to make up almost half of the world’s supply. Bans against import of products from Salter Station into most countries had been totally useless. The shipments of metal were “laundered” through neutral spaceports in the Free Trade Zones, and at last arrived where they were needed — fifty percent more expensive than they would have been on direct purchase.