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woman, nearly as tall as Malik in her heels. She was wearing a skirted suit of forest green over a pale green silk blouse. Her richly auburn hair was neatly coiffed up off her long graceful neck. She surveyed Malik with the cool green eyes of a Norse goddess.

    “What did you say?”

    “Good news from Copernicus,” Malik repeated. “Dan Randolph has made one clever move too many. He has fallen into a trap that I concocted for him.”

    Jane’s sculptured face gave no hint of emotion. She merely said, “You must tell me about it, after the meeting.”

    “I’ll be happy to.”

    As the meeting droned on, Malik could barely suppress his eager anticipation. Randolph had bested him in so many ways, over the years. It was Randolph who had broken the Russian monopoly on space industry, after Malik had slaved for a decade to drive all competition out of business. Randolph had married the woman Malik had been engaged to, and even though she had divorced the American eventually and had come back to him, there was no real love in their marriage. Both he and his wife were settling for second best.

    But Randolph had been in love with Jane Scanwell, once. Perhaps he still was. Perhaps that was what destroyed his marriage, really, and gave the impetus to his philandering ways. How ironic for this womanizer to desire the Ice Queen, the immovable, unobtainable Jane Scanwell! How delicious that Jane Scanwell will be the instrument of Randolph’s destruction.

    The meeting ended at last and Malik followed Scanwell to her office. It was a spacious corner room with a view of the Eiffel Tower, no less. Fit trappings for a former head of state.

    Instead of going to her desk, Jane sat in an armchair next to one of the windows.

    “Fix yourself a drink,” she said, nodding toward the bar built into the far wall.

    Malik said, “Thank you. A good idea after such a long and utterly dry meeting. Can I make something for you?”

    “Just a glass of filtered water with a twist of lime, please.”

    Malik found the bottled water and a dish of fresh limes in the little refrigerator. And vodka in the freezer compartment. When he took the two drinks back toward her, he saw that Jane was eying him carefully, her long legs crossed, the expression on her face unfathomable.

    He handed her the water, then touched his glass of vodka to hers. “Zah vahsheh zdahrovyeh,” he murmured.

    “Here’s mud in your eye,” Jane replied, with just the ghost of a smile on her lips.

    Malik took the armchair on the other side of the window and rolled it next to Jane’s.

    “Now what were you telling me about cooking Dan Randolph’s goose?” she asked.

    He grinned at her. “You are full of Americanisms this afternoon.”

    “I’m an American. What about Randolph?”

    “He has just bought out a small competitor of his, a man named Mitchell who owned a mining operation on the Moon.”

    “What of it?”

    “He bought Mitchell’s company because Mitchell was about to be hit with a stiff fine by the lunar tribunal for exceeding his allotment of ores.”

    Jane took another sip of her water, then said, “I see. Dan can afford to pay the fine but Mitchell can’t. So Dan buys him out at a bargain-basement price.”

    “Exactly so.”

    “So how does that get Dan in trouble?”

    Malik’s grin spread into a broad happy smile. “We passed a regulation last spring to the effect that any attempt to subvert or avoid the rulings of the GEC is punishable by confiscation.”

    “We did?” She looked surprised.

    Malik made an expansive gesture. “Oh, the wording is rather obscure, something about ‘joint and several liability.’ The lawyers worked very hard to phrase it so that no one would notice it. And the regulation was buried among several dozens of other minor changes to existing rules. But the regulation was passed; it exists and it is legally binding.”

    Jane’s eyes seemed to focus beyond Malik, as if she were looking at something that