"Is he here yet?" whispered Woller. The Martian looked around the room before he answered.
"Not yet. Cafferty—Lieutenant Brie—Searle—Vremczyk. That's all."
The dumpling-shaped soldier in the gray-green of Pluto's militia stared at Woller. "What the devil's the matter with your face?" he spluttered.
Woller answered before Vincennes could. "I had an accident, Brie," he snapped. "Keep your fat nose out of it."
The dumpling turned purple. But he said nothing, and Nolan realized Woller's importance in this gathering. This gathering of—what?
Nolan looked around quickly, and the answer raced to his brain. An officer of Pluto's defense forces—two or three well-dressed men, apparently wealthy, with something about them that shrieked "politico"—and Woller, once overlord of the System's greatest news-dissemination agency, still a man of vast influence. It looked like the back room of a political convention—or the gathering of a cabal.
The Junta!
It had to be the Junta.
What they were saying began to make sense. A tall man in dove gray was speaking.
"We're not satisfied, candidly," he was saying. "Woller, you've had more money than our resources can afford. Everything you've asked for you got. And what have you to show for it? Three ships—not one of them fit to fly."