Empire Builders by Ben Bova

into politics, but I didn’t force him to take up with those other women: groupies, power-hungry bitches who slept with the high and the mighty regardless of who they might be. Then her anger dissolved as she realized that it was indeed truly her fault, all of it was her own fault. If she had let Morgan alone, allowed him to live the quiet obscure life he had originally wanted, he would be alive today and he would still love no one but her.
    But would I love him? Jane asked herself as she dressed. Did I ever really love him? Or did I merely see in Morgan a man who could be guided to greatness? Maybe I was his original groupie. Until I met Dan.
    With an effort of steel-hard will Jane shut off her thoughts. I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it.
    She had her limousine drive her to Orly , where she boarded the Air France flight for Papeete . The hypersonic jet would whisk her to Tahiti in just over two hours. There a chartered plane waited to fly her to Tetiaroa. And there, Dan Randolph would be waiting. Maybe.
    With a start, she realized that she had not told Vasily Malik that she was on her way to rendezvous with Dan. I could call him from here in the plane, she thought, before the re-entry blackout. Or at the airport in Papeete . Or, better yet, I’ll wait until I actually see Dan on Tetiaroa.
    Yes, she said to herself. I’ll wait. It will be better to make certain he’s really there before I tell Vasily the good news.

ELEVEN

    WINGING OVER THE broad Pacific, Dan thought how convenient it would be if he had a seaplane at his disposal. A flying boat that could travel at supersonic speed and land anywhere on the ocean, or a river or a lake. But supersonic speed was just not enough for a man with global interests. The Yamagata plane he was in could do Mach 3, and it was taking hours to reach Tetiaroa. A commercial hypersonic spaceplane, the kind that arched high above the atmosphere and came back down like a re-entering rocket, could cross the Pacific in less than an hour.
    I’ll have to phone Jane and tell her I’m at the island, he thought. She won’t come over until she’s certain I’m there. She never wants to be the first one there, wherever it is. She’d rather be six hours late than two minutes early.
    He felt a worrisome uneasiness about calling Jane to confirm that he was on Tetiaroa. Too many other people could find out. Somebody like Malik, or one of those other paper-pushing bureaucrats at the GEC. Dan did not like to let his enemies know his whereabouts too precisely. Not unless he was safely ensconced in one of his own strongholds, surrounded by friends.
    Friends. He thought about Nobuhiko again. Maybe I ought to at least try to work out something with him. He’s right, Sai and I would’ve put together some kind of a deal. I shouldn’t have shut him off so abruptly. No wonder he’s sore. I’ll have to get back to him, try to work out some kind of plan.
    The plane droned on. Dan was the only passenger in the six-seat compartment. The flight attendant, an attractive, slim young Japanese woman, was sitting in the front row, raptly watching a No drama on video. Dan gazed out the window at the glittering Pacific, nothing but sea and sky as far as the eye could see in any direction. And towering cumulus clouds reaching up beyond their cruising altitude.
    “Mr. Randolph-san,” the pilot’s voice came humming over the intercom, “we are being routed around a major storm system by traffic control. It will cause an unavoidable delay in our scheduled arrival, sir.”
    The flight attendant glanced back over her shoulder at him, as if to ask what he intended to do about the news. Dan shrugged at her. She turned her attention back to her video screen.
    Dan tried to work. He called his office in Caracas and then his headquarters at Alphonsus. He plugged his pocket computer into the video screen on the back of the seat in front of him and went through the day’s inputs of data. Bored by it, he switched