The hopeful spires of the Friendship Tower, you will recall, rose steadily, tier upon tier, throughout the year A.D. 4000 plus, despite the fact that it was beginning, more and more, to resemble a neoclassical stock exchange than it did a tower, and that the higher it climbed, the lower sank the estate of diplomatic relations among its backers, the nations of the Alliance of Inner Planets. The Venusians wanted it on Venus because, as they shrewdly noted, Venus is wide open; the vacationer's plan