He stirred restlessly in his seat as the vote was being tallied, was nearly thrown from it once as a great tremor shook the massive building; excited knots of men who had begun crowding the aisles were bowled in scrambled confusion to the floor. And Stine smiled a tight, small smile to himself. Even Nature was doing her bit.
A hurrying page boy brushed past his desk in the crowded aisle, and he suddenly felt something small and hard pressed into his palm. He knew what it was by the feel of it, but it would have to wait until he could leave.
He did not have to wait long. The President-General himself announced the result of the vote, and within the next half hour an ESR would be on its way to the nearest Tinker ship. There were a few cries of "Railroad!" and "—demand a recount!" amid the noisy babble of the adjourning session, but Stine was already on his way.
A second tremor brought him to his knees at the main exit of the great chamber; it stopped the post-mortems cold, and sent the august body of Senior Congressmen scurrying for other exits themselves, and Stine's early departure went unnoticed, even by waiting newsmen who had themselves been scattered unceremoniously half the length of the wide exit corridor.
The pressurelift lowered him quickly to his basement offices.
A panel slid silently from his impressive Martian drokii-wood desk. Then it was but a matter of slipping the tiny microfilm spool from the flat, coin-sized container that the page boy had so carefully delivered to him and inserting it in the compact projector long enough to completely memorize the coded symbols.
Then he destroyed the strip and container together.
Almost casually he plucked the comphone from its cradle, but nicked a tiny stud that would keep the televideo blank.
He dialed, waited.
"Newton? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The answer is yes."