" I smiled at her slightly old-fashioned way of putting it.When the dishwasher was loaded, she added some soap and started it. Then she walked over to...the desk in the corner of the kitchen and sat down. She pulled a checkbook out, wrote a check, folded it in half and put it into my hand. "Here's some pocket money for your trip. Just don't tell Kevin's dad," She winked."Thank you," I said, giving her a big hug as I fought back a flood of happy tears. His parents were accepting me in a big way,. He was doing a masterful job of calming her down. He motioned me to take a seat and I turned around to see the room filling. I quickly grabbed a seat off to the side in the front row where I could give her encouragement but wasn't in her direct line of sight to make her nervous. At exactly 4:40, Lonnie turned from Rhonda and stepped up to the podium."We have a guest speaker today and I am not going to take up any more of her time than I have to," he said to the class. "Rhonda Gordon is the. ” He seemed nervous and kept swiveling his head side to side, looking around.Clark had his senses out as well and knew they were being watched, but he didn’t feel he needed to act yet. No threat had been made so far. “You can prove this Mister?” He asked.“Barry, Barry Waters sir, yeah, I can prove it.” Said Barry. He was getting more worried every second and wanted to return to his duties before somebody higher noticed he was absent.“I will come back later today, will that be long enough?” Ask. The minerals and materials are critical to the corporations, not to the Empire. If it had been on dead worlds, there would have been no problem. The only way to extract it profitably on these worlds would have destroyed massive areas of the environment."Councilor Estebahn said "They were looking for ways to pressure the Senate to overrule the Empress. We don't think all of them realized how out of hand it had gotten until it was too late. Others were so blinded by greed that they'd do anything.