GERALD Waterman leaned back in his seat and wished that it wasn’t impolite to yawn. Despite the air conditioning, the assembly chamber seemed stuffy, or perhaps it was the psychological effect of listening to too many boring speeches. Even Rayburn seemed subdued, and the visitors in the public gallery, tourists mostly, had nothing to arouse their interest but the spectacle of one senator after another rising to say what he or she had to say about the Calcutta project.
The reporters were frankly bored. In their section, half-filled with the monitoring panels of the newsfax cameras scattered throughout the chamber, they smoked and dozed and furtively played poker. The concentric rows of senators, their aides, secretaries and various officials of the World Council, sat and smoked, or doodled
