“It’s usually the most honest hour he gets.”

Eleanor stopped at the stairwell and put two fingers on my sleeve.

“Don’t leave this building,” she said.

“I have a board call at three forty-five, and it will run twenty minutes.

Then I want to hear the rest of the Venus story.”

“There isn’t much after Venus.”

“There’s Mars.

I’ve been doing this too long to be wrong about that.”