the cure to those people whose slugs have died. Sam and the Old Man join the effort in Jefferson City, Missouri, but the Old Man is possessed by the last healthy slug in the city, and he knocks Sam out. Sam regains consciousness in an air-car that the Old Man is flying to the Yucatán, where the slug intends to restart its effort to conquer humanity. With the car on autopilot, the Old Man slumps over the steering wheel and the slug begins to fission into two so that it can possess both the Old Man and Sam. In desperation, Sam kicks the controls, causing the air-car to accelerate so sharply that the Old Man is slammed back against the seat forcefully enough to crush the slug. The air-car's emergency system mitigates the resulting crash, enabling Sam and the Old Man to survive. Some years later, Sam and Mary board a spaceship headed for Saturn to take the offensive. Sam expresses the hope that a way would be found to save the small elf-like hosts whom the slugs enslaved. Characters Sam, born Elihu Nivens, is the classic Heinlein hero, multi-talented, independent, fiercely loyal to friends and an implacable enemy to foes. He is thirtyish, but has changed appearance so many times even he has doubts as to how he originally looked. Mary, born Allucquere in a religious commune in Antarctica before growing up on Venus, is Heinlein's classic heroine. She is beautiful, red-headed, hard-nosed and brilliant. Sam describes her as having the "real redheaded saurian bony structure to her skull". Her professional exterior conceals psychological scars from her encounter with the slugs as a child. Only the Old Man knows the truth about her, thanks to the deep hypnotic analysis that all agents have to undergo. The Old Man, born Andrew Nivens, is the head of a top secret government agency that he wishes did not have to exist, doing his job reluctantly because nobody else would do it properly. He represents the third of Heinlein's favorite types of character, the "wise, grumpy old man". He is the first in the line that includes Jubal Harshaw, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, and the later life of Lazarus Long. (Lazarus Long's grandfather, who has a major role in the later part of Time Enough for Love, is particularly similar in character to "The Old