So much for the welfare of the nation, Duran thought with a taste of bitterness. Now back to politics.
But he finished off his drink, and put out his cigar, and rose to follow the Governor. Politics, after all, was the reason he had come.
t was two a.m. before Senator Vance Duran wearily dropped into bed. But he found no rest in sleep that night. For in his dreams he seemed to see a youngster walking, now through a forest, now through a city, now through an autumn countryside. And in the boy's hand was a tightly capped bottle. And the expression on his face was an enigma....
Early the next morning Jack Woodvale parked the helicopter in a lot back of the city youth detention home. Five minutes later the senator was again talking to his older son.
"I have to get back to Washington this morning, Roger," he said. "I've scheduled a committee meeting for ten-thirty. I suppose I could call it off, but we've got to do something about the Mars colony project before public apathy forces us to drop the whole thing. You understand, don't you?"
"Sure," the boy said with apparent indifference. "Maybe you should have let me volunteer. You'd have solved two problems at the same time."
"Now, Roger—" Duran began. But he stopped, suddenly alert.
"Son, you weren't ever serious about that, were you? I mean all that talk I used to hear about your wanting to go to one of the planets?"