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Owen-Brack surveyed the faces in front of her. The lone female amid all the male recruits, a particularly good-looking dark-haired young woman wearing a knee-length skirt and a torso-hugging jacket lifted a very manicured hand. "I'm Millicent Pearlstein from Cincinnati." She cleared her throat in embarrassment when she realized there had been no reason to say where she came from. "Okay. You're probably aware that your agreement imposes prior restraint on the First Amendment right of free speech, and as such it would stand a good chance of being thrown out by the courts."

Owen-Brack smiled sweetly. "You're obviously a lawyer, but you're missing the point," she explained with exaggerated politeness. "We're asking you to sign this form for your own safety. We're a secret organization protecting our secrets from the occasional employee who might be tempted to describe his employment in print. If someone tried to do that, he—or she—would certainly rub us the wrong way and we'd have to seriously consider terminating the offender along with the contract. So we're trying to make it legally uninviting for someone to rub us the wrong way. Hopefully the intriguing question of whether the Company's absolute need to protect its secrets outweighs the First Amendment right of free speech will never be put to the test."