'You're not going to let me finish ?' Jim said.

Sal's voice, amplified, boomed, 'No, goddam it. No!'

Standing up, Pat called back, 'You have to. He's the candidate. If he wants to hang himself, let him.'

Also on his feet, Danville said hoarsely, 'If you cut him off again I'll spill it publicly. I'll leak the entire thing how you're working him like a puppet!' He started at once toward the door of the studio; he was leaving. Evidently he meant what he had said.

Jim Briskin said, 'You better turn it back on, Sal. They' re right; you have to let me talk.' He did not feel angry, only impatient. His desire was to continue, nothing else. 'Come on, Sal,' he said quietly. 'I'm waiting.'

The party brass and Sal Heim, in the control room, conferred.

'He'll give in,' Pat said to Jim Briskin. 'I know Sal.' Her face was expressionless; she did not enjoy this, but she intended to endure it.

'Right,' Jim agreed, nodding.

'But will you watch a playback of the speech, Jim ?' She said, 'For Sal's sake. Just to be sure you intend what you say.'

'Sure,' he said. He had meant to anyhow.

Sal Heim's voice boomed from the wall speaker. 'Damn your black Col hide, Jim!'

Grinning, Jim Briskin waited, seated at his desk, his arms folded.

The read light of the central camera clicked back on.

2

After the speech Jim Briskin’s press secretary, Dorothy Gill, collared him in the corridor. 'Mr.

Briskin, you asked me yesterday to find out if Bruno Mini is still alive. He is, after a fashion.'

Miss Gill examined her notes. 'He's a buyer for a dried fruit company in Sacramento, California, now. Evidently Mini's entirely given up his planet-wetting career, but your speech just now will probably bring him back to his old grazing ground.'