Of course the artificial satellite, Albertus (named in honor of Dr. Einstein), kept a watchful telescope on Project Star. But in that year of 1970 it seemed to most men that all the caution and secrecy was overly dramatic. After the collapse of Soviet Russia a decade before, from internal causes precipitated by the successful fixing of the American-controlled satellite Albertus in the heavens, and after the almost Carthaginian peace imposed on Argentina when its dictator A-bombed London, the world had quieted down considerably. America was top dog in the nations and her supervision of the science of other countries left little possibility of successful attack or even of effective sabotage within the many colonies which worked on advancements in weapons and other civilized phenomena, and on space flight. * * * * * Nearly everyone believed that the purpose of Project Star was to construct "flying saucers" (the inadequate name had stuck through the years) for use in reaching out to the other planets. Only the men who were working there, and a few others in government and in the military forces, knew that the disks were not intended for extra-terrestrial flight--there were rocket projects galore for that--but for journeys in the atmosphere or slightly above it, at speeds incredible even in 1970. The name Project Star had not been chosen to mislead anyone, but it had done so and nobody bothered to correct the impression. Secrecy had become an ingrained national habit in the past thirty-odd years. Dr. Alan Rackham was one of the scientists who worked on the problem of fuel for the disks. He was not a member of the vastly important handful who headed the colony and came equipped with everything sacred and untouchable except halos, but he was considered of enough consequence to rate a house of his own and an assistant who was also an efficient bodyguard. This was Brave, whose proper name was John Kiwanawatiwa.