“Really?” Pancho said, keeping her expression noncommittal. She had just been informed, a few minutes earlier, that another Astro freighter had disappeared out in the Belt: the second one in as many weeks. Humphries is at it again, she thought, nibbling away. And if this guy isn’t a stalking horse for Humphries, I’ll be dipped in deep dung.

The other major thing that Pancho had learned was to maintain herself as physically youthful as possible. Rejuvenation therapies that were once regarded as expensive extravagances for the vain and video personalities were now commonplace, especially among the viciously competitive power brokers of the giant corporations. So Pancho looked, physically, much as she had when she’d been thirty: tall, leggy and slim. She had even had the tattoo on her buttocks removed, because board room politics sometimes evolved into bedroom antics, and she didn’t want a teenaged misjudgment to become a whispered rumor. She hadn’t done anything about her face, though, which she considered to be forgettably ordinary except for its unfortunate stubborn, square jaw. Her only concession to the years was that she’d allowed her closely cropped hair to go totally white. The beauticians told her it made a stunning contrast to her light mocha skin.

Pancho made a point of going counter to the fashionable styles of the moment. This season the emphasis was on bulky pullovers and heavy-looking sweaters with strategic cutouts to make them interesting to the eye. Instead, Pancho wore a tailored pantsuit of pale ivory, which accented her long, lean figure, with highlights of asteroidal jewelry at her wrists and earlobes. Her office wasn’t particularly large, as corporate suites went, but it was sumptuously decorated with modern furniture, paintings that Pancho had personally commissioned, and holowindows that could display scenery from half a dozen worlds.

“Pardon me for asking a foolish question, I’ve never been to the Moon before. Is that real wood paneling?” her visitor asked, wide-eyed.