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Throughout, half his mind—but no more than that—remained attentive to the continuing prattle coming from the National Security Adviser. The rest of his mind was busy recalling every NSA who'd passed through Washington in the years that Hughes had sat in the director's office. Had any of them been quite the unmitigated ass that Jensen was?



The answer kept coming up: no. Close, in one or two cases, but no cigar.



"—charges of treason not out of the question, I tell you!"



Enough was enough. He'd listened politely, now, for well over fifteen minutes.



"That is perhaps the silliest statement I've ever heard in this office, George—and I've heard quite a few."



He swiveled his chair to look at the NSA sitting on the couch some distance away. Jensen had insisted on the couch, as usual. This time, though, Hughes had insisted on remaining at his desk.



"The charge of treason is a very specific one, whose parameters are clearly spelled out in the Constitution. You couldn't find a shyster anywhere—not even in this town, not even in the Justice Department—who'd agree to bring that charge against Madeline



Fathom. They'd be afraid of being disbarred for incompetence."



A pity we can't do the same for NSAs. But he left that unsaid.



"George," he continued, "if you do so much as try to charge her with violating this or that security law—oh, you could certainly find something, we've got so many of them—you'd still come out of it on the short end of the stick. 'Short end' as in—"



He held up his pudgy hand, with only a millimeter or two separating the tips of his thumb and forefinger. "—you'll be clutching the itty-bit tip fighting desperately for your political survival, while Fathom uses the great big meaty part of it to club you silly. Well . . . not her, personally. She'd stay out of it, directly. If I know Madeline—and I do—she won't even make any statements to the press. Doesn't matter. The media will beat you to death."



He leaned forward, plucked a small stack of magazines from the top of his desk, and flicked them over to the coffee table.



Hughes had been a pretty good basketball player in his youth, until the certain knowledge that he'd never be taller than five and a half feet put paid to that ambition. All but one of the magazines landed squarely on the table. Even that one landed face up on the carpet.



Madeline Fathom's face up, to be precise. That was Celebrities Today, which, as usual, had gone for a full-face glamor shot. Most of the other magazines, being news magazines, had run a different picture—the image taken by A.J. Baker's recorders as he'd first found Madeline in the collapse of the ice tunnel.



"She was on the cover of half the magazines in America, that week. With 'America's Supergirl' as the banner in most of them. She's better known to the public than you are these days, George, and—I guarantee you this much—one hell of a lot more popular."



He chuckled heavily and added, in an exaggerated Southern drawl, "A popular security agent, if that don't beat all! Created one heck of a problem for us, o' course. The HIA's been flooded with applications since, at least half of them girls about to graduate from high school. Betcha that a few months from now, 'Madeline' will be the most popular name for newborn girl babies. Give you ten-to-one odds."



Jensen was staring at the magazines as he might stare at so many venomous snakes set loose from a cage.



"Face facts," Hughes said coldly. "Start with the fact that she's way smarter than you think. There was not a single military secret in that entire transmission. Not one. That was her assignment. Defined in precise and narrow terms, I admit, but that's exactly how a hostile press will define it—and what are you going to say? Much less charge her with? 'She failed to read our minds properly'?"



"Who cares, Andy?" Jensen exploded, half-rising from the couch. He was so agitated he lapsed into profanity, something he normally avoided. "The whole fucking transmission's a violation of national security! She told the whole world everything, God damn it!"



Now, he did rise fully to his feet, and dramatically started counting off on his fingers.



"Start with item one. The whole world now knows that such a thing as a reactionless drive is possible. Which means that every relevant university lab and research institute in the world—not just ours—will be kicking into high gear to figure out how to make one.



"Item two. The whole world now knows that we've found the key to translating the Bemmie language."



Almost—not quite—he sneered at Hughes. "So big deal if it'll take years to decipher that key, assuming the linguists are right—and who's to say they haven't been compromised? One of them is a foreign national, you know."