It hurt like hell. We were just short of making it. We had gobs of solar power, but the Earthsiders couldn’t agree on how to receive it. With water and our giant tanks we could run a tremendous chemical plant, but timid companies stopped just short of buying in. We’d planned to set up a space hotel and sell vacations for scores of tourists at a time, but we were stymied by this “man-rating” straw man.

Our ecological recycling system had us ninety-five percent independent of Earth resupply. Our smelter was operational and waiting for customers: We had developed the aluminum engine.

But all anyone wanted to buy was the slingshot effect. We were a glorified switching yard in orbit. And the new government clearly wanted us to stay just that.

Woke kept up his soothing apologia. I had heard it all before. I wasn’t the one to fight him, anyway. That was up to our lawyers back in Washington. My job was to come up with miracles. And right now they appeared to be in short supply.

The crewcut DOD man, Bahnz, was staring at something over my shoulder. I shifted a little to look.

Out on A Deck they were readying a Defense cargo for launch. They had peeled away the blue shrouding and set the cylinders near the edge of the deck. At the right moment the package would slip off into the starry field below us, falling away from Earth in a steep ellipse. At apogee a motor would cut in, carrying the spysat the rest of the way to geosynchronous orbit.

Bahnz had a gleam in his eyes as he observed the preparations.

You want my Farm, don’t you? I thought. You peepers fought us in the beginning, but now you see we’re the one thing keeping us ahead of the other nations in space. Now you want my Tank Farm for your own.