She laughed. "I should _hope_ not," she told him. "After all, I could hardly grace the president's table as a mere UW secretary--_or_ as a New Orleans top model. Come on!" He went--and got his second shock when President Giovannini greeted Nina with a manner as close to obsequiousness as that professionally free-and-easy politician could muster. He said, "My dear Miss Norstadt-Ramirez. I do hope you'll forgive me for ordering such summary action this morning. If I'd had the slightest idea...." "I was boiling," Nina told him. "I was just about ready to order Aetnapolitan to pull the props out from under you when the riots started. Then I blessed your shiny little head and came up here." "I am honored," said the president. * * * * * Lindsay, walking through the proceedings in a fog, was even more laconic than a clipped British envoy who, along with a recovered Senator Anderson, was a member of the party. "Don't take it so hard," Anderson whispered. "Nina is just about the best-kept secret in this hemisphere. If I weren't one of the few who's been in on it all along...." He shrugged eloquently. Lindsay said nothing. He couldn't. So Nina--his fresh slatternly secretary, the courtesan of the world capital--was also Coranina Norstadt-Ramirez, the heiress who owned almost half of Earth! He felt like a quadruply-plated idiot. He knew about Norstadt-Ramirez--who didn't, whether on Earth or Mars or the space-stations circling Venus while that planet's atmosphere was being artificially altered to make it fit for human habitation? She was a fantastic glamorous lady of mystery, the ultimate heiress, the young woman to whom inexorably, thanks to North America's matriarchal era during the twentieth century, the control of most of its mightiest corporations and trust funds had descended. And she was Lindsay's secretary. No wonder, he thought miserably, she had never sounded quite sincere about calling him boss. Why, she virtually owned his home planet as well. He watched her covertly across the table, poised, amused, alert, occasionally witty--and so damnably attractive. He wished he were dead. She caught his regard, scowled and stuck her tongue out at him. He thought. _Why, you little...!_ Somehow she got them out of the chatter after dinner, got him back to his suite. There, regarding him sternly, she said, "Zale, you aren't going to be stuffy about this, are you?" "I can't help it," he replied. "If you'd only told me...." He read sympathy in her green eyes. But she merely shrugged and said, "Result of a lifetime of keeping myself under wraps." She sat on a contour chair, patted a place for him alongside.