“No fees whatsoever?”

“At cost,” Randolph repeated.

“We would certainly want our own accountants examining your cost figures,” said the woman representing Black Africa, very seriously.

“Of course,” Randolph replied with a wan smile.

“Wait a moment,” Malik intervened. “Just what would our money be funding? You haven't told us what you actually propose to do.”

Randolph took a deep breath, then said, “We have to develop a fusion rocket system.”

Again the Board broke into querulous chatter. Malik had to tap his stylus sharply before they fell silent.

“A fusion rocket system?” he asked Randolph.

“We have developed and tested a small flight model of a fusion rocket,” Randolph said. Turning slightly in his chair, he went on, “Dr. Duncan can explain it, if you like. We sent detailed notes to each of you when we applied for this hearing; I'm sure your own technical experts have gone over them.”

Reluctant nods from the Board.

“I can show you a video of the flight tests we've done, if you wish.”

“That won't be necessary,” Malik said.

“The key to any and all operations in space is the cost of transportation,” Randolph said. “The Clipperships that Masterson Aerospace developed have brought down the costs of going into Earth orbit. They opened up the Earth-Moon system for development.”

“And encouraged Selene to thumb its nose at us,” grumbled the representative from Latin America.

“Why do we need fusion rockets?” Malik asked, raising his voice enough to cut off any possible digression into the politics of the lunar nation's insistence on remaining independent of the GEC.

“Transportation costs,” Randolph answered quickly. “Fusion rockets will cut the trip times and fuel costs for missions to the asteroids down to the point where they can be practical and profitable.”

“Profitable for whom?”

“For the entire human race,” Randolph snapped, looking slightly irked. “As I've already said, I'm willing to develop the fusion system and operate expeditions to the Asteroid Belt at cost.”

“Under GEC management?”

Randolph visibly gritted his teeth. “No. That would be a bureaucratic disaster. But I'll agree to run the show under GEC oversight. You'll have complete access to our books. That's fair enough, I think.”

Malik leaned back in his padded chair and allowed the other Board members to grill Randolph. Most of their questions were trivial, or repeated questions already asked and answered. Most of the Board members talked mainly to hear the beloved sound of their own voices, Malik knew.

He had seen the video of Randolph's flight tests. He had reviewed the technical data on the fusion rocket with the best scientists and engineers in the world. The Duncan Drive worked. There was no technical reason to believe that it would not work in a full-scale interplanetary spacecraft. It would cut the travel time to the Asteroid Belt from years to weeks, or less.

We should fund it, Malik thought. We should back Randolph to the hilt. But we won't, of course.

“But what's the fuel for this rocket?” one of the Board members was asking.

Patiently, Randolph replied, “The same as the fuel for the fusion powerplants that generate electricity here on the ground: isotopes of hydrogen and helium.”

“Like the helium-three that's mined on the Moon?”

“Right.” Randolph nodded.

“That is very expensive fuel,” muttered the representative from Greater India. “Very expensive.”

“A little goes a long way,” Dan said, with a forced smile.

The representative from the League of Islam said irritably, “Selene has raised the price of helium-three twice in the past year. Twice! I have no doubt they are preparing to raise it again.”

“We can get the fuel from space itself,” Dan said, raising his voice slightly.

“From space itself?”

“How?”

“The solar wind blows through interplanetary space. It's the solar wind that deposits helium-three and hydrogen isotopes on the lunar soil.”

“You mean regolith,” pointed out the representative from United Europe.

“Regolith, right,” Randolph admitted.

“How can you get the fuel from the solar wind?”

“The same way a jet airplane gets air for its engines,” Randolph replied. “We’ll scoop it in as we go.”

Malik saw that the Scottish engineer, sitting off to Randolph's side, squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

“Scoop it in? Really?”

“Sure,” Randolph answered. “We’ll use an electromagnetic scoop... a big funnel-shaped magnetic field. That way we'll be able to scoop in the fuel we need as we travel.”

“How large a scoop will be necessary?”

Randolph made an exaggerated shrug. “That’s for the tech people to work out. For the first missions to the Belt we'll carry the fusion fuel in tankage, just like other rockets. But eventually we'll be able to scoop fuel from the solar wind. That'll allow us to carry an even bigger payload, per unit of thrust.” Turning slightly in his chair, Randolph asked, “Isn’t that right, Lon?”

Duncan, the engineer, looked dubious, but he knew enough to answer, “Right.”

With a glance at his wristwatch, Malik tapped his stylus again on the tabletop and said, “Thank you, Mr. Randolph, for a most interesting presentation.”

Randolph fixed his gray eyes on Malik. The Russian went on, “The Hoard will discuss the question and inform you of its decision.”

“Time is of the essence,” Randolph said.

“We understand that,” said Malik. “But we must have a full and thorough discussion of this concept before we can decide whether or not to commit any funding to it.”

Reluctantly, Randolph got to his feet. “I see. Well, thanks for hearing me out. You have a tremendous opportunity here... and a tremendous responsibility.”

“We are well aware of that,” Malik said. “Thank you again.”

Randolph nodded and headed out of the conference room, followed by the engineer and the blond Californian.

Malik now had to go through the formality of a discussion with the other Board members, but he already knew what the answer would be. He was framing the Board's reply to Randolph even while Dan was leaving the conference room:

Dear Mr. Randolph: While your proposal to develop a fusion rocket system appears to be technically feasible, the Global Economic Council cannot devote such a significant portion of its resources to what is essentially a space-born venture. GEC funding is fully committed for the next five years to programs aimed at alleviating the effects of global climate shift and assisting national efforts at rebuilding and resettling displaced population groups.

 

 

 

 

 

SELENE

 

Dan went by tube train from the GEC Board meeting to the spaceport at old Heathrow. He rode a commercial Clippership to space station Galileo, then hitched a ride on a high-thrust Astro transfer buggy to Selene. He was in the offices that Astro Manufacturing rented in Selene by midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, of the day after the GEC meeting.

Duncan and his electronics engineer had gone back to Glasgow, hoping that the GEC Board would find the money to build at least a prototype spacecraft. Dan thought otherwise. He could see it in Malik's eyes: the GEC isn't going to spend diddley-squat on us.

Dan pushed through the empty office suite, ceiling lights flicking on as he entered each area and off as he breezed past, paying scant attention to the unoccupied desks and blank holowindows. He reached the private suite where he bunked down while he was in Selene, peeled off his jacket, tossed his travel bag onto the king-sized bed and stepped into the shower, still dressed in his pullover shirt and micromesh slacks. He kicked off his softboots and banged on the water. It came out at the preset temperature. He popped the plugs out of his nostrils and stripped off the rest of his clothes as the hot, steaming water began to ease the knots of tension in his back and shoulders.

It was an old and very personal indulgence of his: long, hot showers. Back when he'd been a kid working on the early construction projects in orbit and then on the Moon, a hot shower was an incredibly rare luxury. He'd had his nose broken for the second time over the right to a long shower. For years, before Moonbase became the independent nation of Selene, lunar shower stalls were rarer than ten-meter high jumps on Earth. Even when you did find an incredibly luxurious living unit with a real shower, back in those days the water shut of automatically after two minutes, and there was no way to get it to turn back on again until a full hour had elapsed.

Even now, Dan thought as he let the hot water sluice over him, being on Selene's water board carries more real political clout than being a member of the governing council.

He turned off the water at last and let the built-in jets of hot air dry him. Dan preferred old-fashioned towels, but the air blowers were cheaper.

Naked, he crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep. But his mind kept churning with his hopes, his plans, his frustrations.

Yamagata isn't going to put up any money, he realized. Nobo would have called me by now if he were going to come in with me. He hasn't called because he's reluctant to give me the bad news. Malik and the GEC are a lost cause. I shouldn't even have wasted the time to appear before them, but at least if and when we get this fusion drive going we can say we offered it to the double-damned bureaucrats and they turned us down. So they've got no claim on us whatsoever.

Astro's hanging on by the skin of its teeth, one jump ahead of the bankruptcy courts, and I need to raise a couple of billion to make this fusion system work. Humphries is dangling the money at me, but he'll want a big slice of Astro in return. I need somebody else. Who can I turn to? Who the hell else is there?

Selene, he realized. They don't have the capital, but they've got trained people, equipment, resources. If I can talk them into coming in with me...

Then it hit him. Bypass Selene's governing council. Or, at least, end-run them. Douglas Stavenger still outvotes everybody else up here. And Masterson Aerospace is his family's company. If he'll go for this, Master-son will get behind it and Selene's council will fall in step with him.

Doug Stavenger.

He fell asleep thinking about the possibilities. And dreamed of flying past Mars, out to the Asteroid Belt.

“Who's your boyfriend?” Amanda asked.

She and Pancho were exercising in Selene's big gymnasium complex, working up a fine sheen of perspiration on the weight machines. Through the long window on one side of the room Pancho could see two men strapped into the centrifuge, both of them grimacing as the big machine's arms swung round and round, faster and faster. She knew one of the men, a maintenance tech out at the tractor garage, a thoroughly nice guy.

The gym was packed with sweating, grunting, grimacing men and women working the treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight machines. The only faces that didn't look miserable were the kids; they scampered from one machine to another, laughing, sometimes shrieking so loud the adults growled at them.

Every person in Selene, adult or child, citizen or visitor, had to follow a mandatory exercise regimen or be denied transport back to Earth. The low lunar gravity quickly deconditioned muscles to the point where facing Earth's gravity became physically hazardous. Daily exercise was the only remedy, but it was boring.

Pancho wore a shapeless T-shirt and faded old shorts to the gym. Amanda dressed as if she were modeling for a fashion photographer: brand-new gym shoes, bright pink fuzzy socks, and a form-fitting leotard that had men tripping over their own feet to gawk at her. Even the women stared openly.

“I don't have a boyfriend,” Pancho replied, grunting as she pulled on the weighted hand grips. A favorite gambit of tourists was to have a picture taken while lifting a barbell loaded with enormous weights. What looked superhuman to Earth-trained eyes was merely ordinary in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon.

“You've gone out to dinner twice since we arrived here, and you're going out again tonight, aren't you?” Without waiting for an answer, Amanda added, “I have the impression it's been with the same fellow each night.”

Mandy was sitting at the machine next to Pancho, doing pectoral crunches, her arms outstretched with her hands gripping the ends of two metal bars. Then she brought her hands together in front of her, pulling the weighted “wings” and thereby strengthening her chest muscles.

The rich get richer, Pancho thought.

“So?” Amanda insisted. “Who’s your fellow?”

“It's strictly business,” Pancho said.

“Really? And what business would that be, dear?”

Pancho suppressed a sudden urge to sock Mandy in her smirking face.

“Listen,” she said, with some heat, “you go out just about every damned night, don't you? What's the matter with me havin' a date now and then?”

Mandy's expression softened. “Nothing, Pancho, really. I'm only curious, that's all. I think it's fine for you to have an enjoyable social life.”

“Yeah, sure. You're just wonderin' who my date could be, 'cause you've got all the other men in Selene sewed up for yourself.”

“Pancho, that's not true!”

“Like hell.”

“I can't help it if men are attracted to me! I don't do anything to encourage them.”

Pancho laughed out loud.

“Really, I don't.”

“Mandy, all you have to do is breathe and the men swarm around you like flies on horseshit.”

Amanda's cheeks flushed at Pancho's deliberate crudity. But then she smiled knowingly. “Well, it is rather fun to flirt. If men want to take me out to dinner, why not? I just bat my eyes at them and let them tell me how terrific they are.”

“And then you bed down with 'em and everybody's happy.”

Amanda flared with sudden anger. She started to reply, but stopped before saying a word. For several moments she stared down at her shoe-tops, then at last said in a lower voice, “Is that what you think?”

“It's the truth, ain't it?”

“Really, Pancho, I'm not a slut. I don't sleep with them, you know.”

“You don't?”

“Well... once in a while. A great while.”

Pancho looked at Amanda, really looked at her, and saw a very beautiful, very young woman trying to make her way in a world where a woman's physical appearance still categorized her in men's eyes. Jeez, she thought, Mandy prob'ly has to spend half her life keeping guys' hands off her. So she just smiles at them and jollies 'em along and splits before it gets serious. It's either that or carry a gun, I guess. Or a snake.

“Maybe we could ugly you up,” Pancho muttered.

Amanda smiled ruefully. “That’s what Mr. Randolph said.”

“Huh? Randolph?”

“He told me that if I want to go on the mission with you I'll have to stop making myself so attractive to the men that go with us.”

Pancho nodded. “We’ve gotta find you some big, bulky sweatshirts. Or maybe keep you in a spacesuit the whole damn trip.”

The two women laughed together. But after a few moments, Amanda asked again, “So tell me, Pancho, who's your boyfriend?”

Exasperated, Pancho snapped, “You want to meet him? Come on along tonight.”

“Really? Do you mean it?”

“Sure, why not?” Pancho said. “I bet he'd like to meet you.”

Pancho knew that Humphries would go ballistic over Mandy. Good. The man had been pressuring her to find out more about what Dan Randolph was up to. Humphries had been getting downright nasty about it.

Humphries had snarled at her when they'd had dinner, Pancho's first night back at Selene. The man had seemed cordial enough when he'd ushered her into that big, formal dining room in the house down at Selene's lowest level. But once he had started asking Pancho what information she had for him, and she had been forced to reply that she had little to report, his mood swiftly changed.

“That's it? That's all you've got to tell me?” Humphries had snarled.

With a helpless shrug, Pancho had answered, “He’s had us cooped up in La Guaira, studyin' the fusion system.”

“I'm paying you a small fortune and I'm not getting a damned bit of information from you! Nothing! A big, fat zero!”

It was a pretty dinky fortune, Pancho thought. Still, she had tried to placate the man. “But Mr. Humphries, other than the flight tests with that beat-up ol' cruise missile, he hasn't been doin anything.”

“He's been flitting all around the fucking world,” Humphries had snapped, “from Kyoto to New York to Geneva to London. He's been talking to bankers and development agencies—even to the GEC, and he hates the GEC!”

Pancho had tried to be reasonable. “Look, I'm just a rocket jockey. I If says he wants me to test-fly the fusion drive once it's built but it might be years before that happens.”

“So what does he have you doing in the meantime?” Humphries demanded.

Pancho shrugged. “Nothin' much. He's sent me and Mandy here to Selene. His personal orders. We're supposed to be learnin' about the asteroids out in the Belt. He's got an astronomer from the Farside Observatory tutoring us.”

Humphries's expression grew thoughtful. “Maybe he knows you're working for me. Maybe he's just put you on ice for the time being, until he figures out how to get rid of you.”

Pancho didn't want Humphries to think about the possibility that she had told Randolph everything.

“Wouldn't it be easier for him just to fire me?” she suggested mildly.

“He's on his way here right now, you know,” Humphries muttered.

“He is?” Pancho couldn't hide her surprise.

“You don't even know where he is?”

“I'm not on the mailing list for his personal itinerary,” Pancho retorted.

“Now you listen to me, lady. I got your name to the top of Astro's personnel list so that Randolph would take you into this fusion rocket program of his. I'm the one who's gotten you promoted. I want results! I want to know when Randolph goes to the toilet, I want to know when he inhales and when he exhales.”

“Then get yourself another spy,” Pancho had said, trying to hold on to her swooping temper. “Whatever he's up to, he hasn't even been on the same continent with me most of the time. I only saw him that once, at the first flight test in Venezuela. You hired the wrong person, Mr. Humphries. You want somebody who can be his mistress, not a pilot.”

Humphries had glared at her over the dinner table. “You’re probably right,” he had muttered. “Still... I want you on the job. It might take a while, but sooner or later he's going to use you to test-fly the fusion drive. That's when you'll become valuable to me. I just hired you too soon, that's all.”

He made a forced little smile. “My mistake, I guess.”

Puffing and sweating at the weight machine, Pancho thought, Yep, it's time for Humphries to meet Mandy. That might solve all my problems.

She laughed to herself. What a setup! Humphries sends Mandy after Randolph and she doesn't know that I've already told Randolph I'm supposed to be spyin' on him for the Humper. And Mandy would go for it, too; she'd love to have Randolph in her bed.

And meantime, she thought, I can be spyin' on Humphries for Randolph! Whatta they call that? I'll be a double agent. Yeah, that's it. A double agent. Terrific.

But what if Humphries drops me altogether once he sees Amanda?

That's a possibility. Then you won't be any kind of an agent; you'll be out in the cold.

Okay, so what? she told herself. So you won't be getting the extra money from Humphries, came the answer. So you'll have to maintain Sis on your Astro salary. Yeah, yeah, she argued back. I've been doin' that for years now, I can keep on doin' it.

Wait a minute, she said to herself. Humphries can't fire me. If he tried to, he'd be afraid that I'd tell Randolph everything. The Humper has to keep me on his payroll —or get rid of me altogether.

Pancho got off the weight machine and went to the exercise bike. Pedaling furiously, she thought, The trick is not to get fired by both Humphries and Randolph. I don't want to be left out in the cold. And I don't want Humphries to start thinkin' he'd be better off if I happened to get myself killed. No sir!

 

 

 

 

 

MASTERSON AEROSPACE CORP.

 

“You can't see them, Mr. Randolph.” Dan was startled by Douglas Stavenger's words. “I was staring, wasn't I?” he admitted. Stavenger smiled patiently. “Most people do, when they first meet me. But the nanomachines are all safely inside me. You can't get infected by them.”

The two men were sitting in Stavenger's spacious office, which looked more like a comfortable sitting room than a business center. Wide windows made up two of the room's walls. No desk, not even a computer screen in sight; only upholstered chairs and a small sofa off to one side of the room, with a few low tables scattered here and there. Dan had to remind himself that the windows were really transparent, not holoviews. They looked out on Selene's Grand Plaza, the only public greenspace within nearly half a million kilometers.

Douglas Stavenger's office was not buried deep underground. It was on the fifteenth floor of one of the three office towers that also served as supports for the huge dome that covered the Grand Plaza. Masterson Aerospace Corporation's offices took up the entire fifteenth floor of the tower.

Spread out beyond those windows was the six-hundred-meter-long Plaza itself, a grassy expanse with paved footpaths winding through it, flowered shrubbery and even small trees here and there. Dan could see people walking along the paths, stopping at the shopping arcades, playing lunar basketball in the big enclosed cage off by the orchestra shell. Kids were doing fantastically convoluted dives from the thirty-meter platform at one end of the Olympic-sized swimming pool, twisting and somersaulting in dreamlike slow motion before they splashed languidly into the water. A pair of tourists soared past the windows on brilliantly colored plastic wings, flying like birds on their own muscle power in the low lunar gravity.

“It's a pleasant view, isn't it?” Stavenger said.

Dan nodded his agreement. While most people on the Moon instinctively wanted to live as deep underground as possible, Stavenger stayed up here, with nothing between him and the dangers of the surface except the reinforced lunar concrete of the Plaza's dome, and a meter or so of rubble from the regolith that had been strewn over it.

And why not? Dan thought. Stavenger and his family had more or less created the original Moonbase. They had fought a brief little war against the old United Nations to win their independence—and the right to use nanotechnology even though it had been banned on Earth.

Stavenger was filled with nanomachines. Turning his gaze back to him, Dan saw a good-looking young man apparently in his thirties smiling patiently at him. Stavenger wasn't much bigger than Dan, though he appeared more solidly built. Smooth olive complexion, sparkling blue eyes. Yet Douglas Stavenger was at least his own age, Dan knew, well into his sixties. His body was filled with nanomachines, tiny, virus-sized mechanisms that destroyed invading microbes, kept his skin smooth and young, took apart plaque and fatty deposits in his blood vessels atom by atom and flushed them out of his body.

The nanomachines apparently kept him youthful as well. Far better than any of the rejuvenation therapies that Dan had investigated. There was only one drawback to the nanos: Douglas Stavenger was forbidden to return to Earth. Governments, churches, the media, and the mindless masses feared that nanomachines might somehow get loose and cause unstoppable plagues or, worse, might be turned into new genocidal bioweapons.

So Stavenger was an exile who lived on the Moon, able to see the bright beckoning Earth hanging in the dark lunar sky but eternally prohibited from returning to the world of his birth.

He doesn't look upset about it, Dan thought, studying Stavenger's face.

“Whatever they've done for you,” he said, “you look very healthy and happy.”

Stavenger laughed softly. “I suppose I'm the healthiest man in the solar system.”

“I suppose you are. Too bad the rest of us can't have nanos injected into us.”

“You can!” Stavenger blurted. Then he added, “But you wouldn't be able to go back Earthside.”

Dan nodded. “We can't even use nanomachines to help rebuild the damage from the flooding and earthquakes. It's outlawed.”

Stavenger hunched his shoulders in a slight shrug. “You can't blame them, really. More than ten billion people down there. How many maniacs and would-be dictators among them?”

“Too damned many,” Dan mumbled.

“So you'll have to rebuild without nanotechnology, I'm afraid. They won't even allow us to sell them machinery built with nanos; they're frightened that the machinery is somehow infected by them.”

“I know,” said Dan. Selene built spacecraft of pure diamond out of piles of carbon soot, using nanomachines. But they were allowed no closer to Earth than the space stations in low orbit. Stupid, Dan said to himself. Nothing but ignorant superstition. Yet that was the law, everywhere on Earth.

It also made more jobs for people on Earth, he realized. The spacecraft that Astro used to fly from Earth's surface into orbit were all made basically the same way Henry Ford would have manufactured them; no nanotechnology allowed. Typical politician's thinking, Dan thought: bow to the loudest pressure group, keep outmoded industries alive and turn your back on the new opportunities. Even with the greenhouse warming wiping out half Earth's industrial base, they still think the same old way.

Leaning back in his easy chair, Stavenger said, “I understand you're trying to raise the capital to develop a fusion drive.”

Dan smiled crookedly at him. “You’re well informed.”

“It doesn't take a genius,” Stavenger said. “You’ve had talks with Yamagata and most of the major banks.”

“Plus the double-damned GEC.”

Stavenger's brows rose slightly. “And now you're talking to me.”

“That I am.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Randolph?”

“Dan.”

“Dan, okay.”

“You can help me save those ten billion people down there on Earth. They need all the help they can get.”

Stavenger said nothing. He merely sat there, his face serious, waiting for Dan to go on.

“I want to open up the Asteroid Belt,” Dan said. “I want to move as much of Earth's industrial base into orbit as we can, and we need the re-sources from the Belt to do that.”

Stavenger sighed. “It’s a pretty dream. I believed in it myself, once, but we found that it costs more than it's worth.”

“Selene's sent spacecraft to the NEAs,” Dan pointed out.

“Not for many years, Dan. It's just too expensive. We decided a long time ago that we can live on the resources that the Moon provides. We have to. No asteroids.”

“But with fusion, it becomes economically feasible to extract resources from the NEAs. And even the Belt.”

“Are you certain of that?” Stavenger asked softly.

“Positively,” Dan agreed. “Same situation as the Clipperships. Your Clipperships brought down the cost of going into orbit to the point where it became economically feasible to build space stations and solar power satellites and full-scale factories.”

“They're not my Clipperships, Dan.”

“Masterson Corporation is your family's outfit, isn't it?”

Stavenger shifted uneasily in his chair, his smile fading. “Masterson was founded by my family, true enough. I still own a big slice of its stock, but I'm only the Chairman Emeritus. I'm not really involved in the company's operations any longer.”

“But they still listen to you.”

The smile returned, but it was more guarded now. “Sometimes,” Stavenger said.

“So how would Masterson like to come in with me on this fusion system? It'll be a gold mine.”

Stavenger hesitated before replying, “I’ve been told that Humphries Space Systems is backing your fusion program.”

“Martin Humphries has offered to, that's true,” Dan admitted.

“But you're not satisfied with his offer?”

“I don't know if I can trust him. He comes waltzing into my office and drops this fusion deal in my lap. Why? Why didn't he do it for himself? What's he want me for?”

“Maybe it's Astro Manufacturing that he wants,” Stavenger said.

Dan nodded vigorously. “Yep, that's what scares me. The man has a reputation for being a grabber. He's built Humphries Space Systems by swallowing up other companies.”

Again Stavenger hesitated. At last he said, “He’s on the verge of acquiring a majority of Masterson's stock.”

“What?” A jolt of surprise flashed through Dan.

“I'm not supposed to know, really,” Stavenger said. “It’s all been very hush-hush. Humphries is on the verge of buying out two of our biggest shareholders. If he's successful, he'll have enough clout to load the board of directors with his own people.”

“Damn,” grumbled Dan. “Double dammit to hell and back.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to play with Humphries whether you like it or not. In his court.”

Suppressing an urge to get up and pound on the walls, Dan heard himself say, “Maybe not.”

“No?”

“There's one other possibility.”

“And what might that be?” Stavenger was smiling again, as if he knew precisely where Dan was heading.

“Selene.”

“Ahh,” said Stavenger, leaning back in his cushioned chair. “I thought so.”

“Selene has trained technical personnel and manufacturing facilities. I could bring my fusion people up here and we could build the prototype together.”

“Dan,” said Stavenger gently, “who would pay Selene's technical personnel? Who would pay for using our facilities?”

“We could share the cost. I can divest a couple of Astro's operations and raise some cash that way. Selene could donate —”

The expression on Stavenger's face stopped him. It reminded Dan of the look that his geometry teacher would give him, back in high school, when he went off on the wrong tangent.

“You know something that I don't,” Dan said.

Stavenger laughed gently. “Not really. You know it, too, but you're not thinking of it. You're overlooking the obvious.”

Dan blinked, puzzled.

“You are staring at the solution to your problem,” Stavenger prompted.

“I'm looking at you and you say that I'm—” The light finally dawned in Dan's mind. “Oh for my sweet old Aunt Sadie! Nanomachines.”

Stavenger nodded. “Nanotechnology can build your fusion engine for you, and do it faster and cheaper than the orthodox way.”

“Nanotechnology,” Dan repeated.

“It would mean your spacecraft could never get any closer to Earth than low orbit.”

“So what?” Dan exclaimed. “The double-damned ship is for deepspace operations. It'll never touch down on Earth or any other planetary surface.”

“Then you should have no problem,” said Stavenger.

“You mean Selene will back us?”

Very carefully, Stavenger replied, “I believe the governing council will allocate personnel and facilities to demonstrate that a prototype fusion engine can be built by using nanotechnology.”

Dan grinned widely. “Yep, and once the prototype proves out, Selene will have a major new product line to manufacture: fusion drives.”

“And access to the asteroids.”

“Damned right! And any comets that come waltzing by, too.”

“Selene and Astro Manufacturing will be partners,” Stavenger said.

“Partners!” Dan agreed, sticking out his hand. Stavenger gripped it firmly and they shook on the deal.

 

 

 

 

 

THE CATACOMBS

 

It had started as a temporary storage section, just off Selene's small hospital, up by the main airlock and the garage that housed the tractors and other equipment for work on the surface.

Bodies were stored along the blank corridor walls, sealed into protective metal canisters to await transport back to Earth. In earlier days, most of the people who died on the Moon were workers killed in accidents, or visitors who made fatal mistakes while outside on the surface. Hardly anyone died of natural causes until later, when people began settling at Selene to live out their lives.

So the bodies awaiting shipment back Earthside were stored in the corridor between the hospital and the garage, convenient to the tunnel that led to the spaceport.

Eventually, of course, people who had spent their lives on the Moon wanted to be buried there, usually in the farms that provided food and fresh oxygen for the community. But often enough families back Earthside demanded the bodies of their deceased loved ones, despite the deceased's wishes. Some legal wrangles took years to unravel. So the bodies were put into metal dewars filled with liquid nitrogen, frozen solid at cryogenic temperature while the lawyers argued and ran up their fees.

It took several years for Selene's governing council to realize that a new trend had started. Cryonics. People were coming to Selene to be declared legally dead, then frozen into suspended animation in the hope that they could one day be cured of the disease that killed them, thawed, and returned to life once more.

Cryonics had been banned in most of the Earth's nations. The faithful of many religions considered it an affront to God, an attempt to evade the divinely-mandated limits on human lifespan. While rejuvenation therapies could be done in relative secrecy, having one's body preserved cryonically was difficult to hide. With global warming causing catastrophes all over the world and many nations barely able to feed their populations, attempts to forestall death and elongate lifespan were frowned upon, if not banned altogether.

So those who wanted to avoid death, and had the money to reach the Moon, came to Selene for their final years, or months, or days. Thus the catacombs grew, row upon row of gleaming stainless steel dewars, each filled with liquid nitrogen, each holding a human body that one day might be revived.

Pancho Lane had brought her sister to Selene, back when the teenager had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Sis was losing her memory, losing control of her body functions, losing her ability to speak or smile or even to think. Pancho had given Sis the final injection herself, had watched her younger sister's inert body being slid into the cold bloodless canister, watched the medical team seal the dewar and began the long, intricate freezing process, her tears mingling with the cold white mist emanating ghostlike from the hoses.

Six years ago, Pancho thought as she walked slowly along the quiet corridor, looking for her sister's name on the long rows of metal cylinders resting along the blank stone walls.

She had heard rumors that a few people had actually been revived from cryonic immersion, thawed back to life. And other rumors, darker, that claimed those revived had no memories, no minds at all. They were like blank-brained newborns; they even had to be toilet-trained all over again.

Doesn't matter, Pancho said to herself as she stopped in front of Sis's dewar. I'll raise you all over again. I'll teach you to walk and talk and laugh and sing. I will, Sis. No matter how long it takes. No matter what it costs. As long as I'm alive, you're not going to die.

She stared at the small metal nameplate on the dewar's endcap. SUSAN LANE. That's all it said. There was a barcode next to her name, all Sis's vital information in computer-readable form. Not much to show for a human lifetime, even if it was only seventeen years.

Her wristwatch buzzed annoyingly. Brushing at the tears in her eyes, she saw that the watch was telling her she had one hour to get cleaned up and dressed and down to Humphries's place.

With Amanda.

Mandy wore virginal white, a sleeveless mandarin-collared dress with a mid-thigh skirt that clung lovingly to her curves. She'd done her hair up in the latest piled-high fashion: some stylist's idea of neoclassical. Pancho had put on her best pantsuit, pearl gray with electric blue trim, almost the same shade of blue as Elly. Next to Amanda, though, she felt like a walking corpse.

She'd phoned Humphries several times to tell him she was bringing Amanda, and gotten the answering machine each time. It wasn't until she'd been on her way to the catacombs that Humphries had returned her calls, angrily demanding to know who this Amanda Cunningham was and why Pancho wanted to bring her to their meeting.

It was tough holding a reasonable conversation through the wrist-phone, but Pancho finally got across the information that Amanda was going to be her co-pilot on the mission and she'd thought he might be interested in recruiting her to help Pancho's espionage work.

In the wristphone's tiny screen it was almost impossible to judge the expression on Humphries's face, but his tone was clear enough.

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “Bring her along if you think she might be able to help us. No sweat.”

Pancho smiled sweetly and thanked him and clicked the phone off. No sweat, huh? she thought, laughing inwardly. He'll change his mind once he gets a look at Mandy. He'll sweat plenty.

Pancho spent the time on the electric stairways to Selene's lowest level telling Mandy everything she knew about Humphries. Everything except the fact that he'd hired her to spy on Dan Randolph.

“He's actually a billionaire?” Amanda's big blue eyes went wider than ever when Pancho described Humphries's underground palace.

“Humphries Biotech,” Pancho replied. “The Humphries Trust, lord knows what else. You can look him up in the financial nets.”

“And you're dating him!”

Frowning slightly at her incredulousness, Pancho replied, “I told you, it's strictly business. He's... eh, he's tryin' to hire me away from Astro.”

“Really?” A suspicious, supercilious tone dripped from the one word.

Pancho grinned at her. “More or less.”

Once they stepped through the airlock-type door and into Humphries's underground garden, Amanda gasped with awe. “It’s heavenly!”

“Pretty neat,” Pancho agreed.

Humphries was standing at the open door to the house, waiting for them, eying Amanda as they came up the walk.

“Martin Humphries,” Pancho said, as close to a formal introduction as she knew, “I would like you to meet—”

“Ms. Amanda Cunningham,” Humphries said, all smiles. “I looked up your dossier when I got Pancho's message that you were joining us this evening.”

Pancho nodded, impressed. Humphries can tap into Astro's personnel files. He must have Dan's offices honeycombed with snoops.

Humphries took Amanda's extended hand and bent over it, his lips barely touching her satiny white skin. Amanda looked as if she wanted to faint.

“Come in, ladies,” Humphries said, tucking Amanda's arm under his own. “Come in and welcome.”

To Pancho's surprise, Humphries didn't come on to Amanda. Not obviously, at least. A human butler served aperitifs in the library-cum-bar and Humphries showed off his collection of first editions.

“Pretty rare, some of them,” he boasted mildly. “I keep them here because of the climate control system. Back home in Connecticut it would cost a considerable sum to keep the old family home at a constant temperature and humidity. Here in Selene it comes automatically.”

“Or we breathe vacuum,” Pancho commented. Amanda gave her a knowing look.

The butler showed them to the dining room, where the women sat on either side of Humphries. A pair of squat, flat-topped robots trundled back and forth from the kitchen carrying plates and glasses. Pancho watched intently as the robots' padded claws gripped the chinaware and crystal. They didn't drop a thing, although while clearing the salad plates one of them missed Pancho's dish by a fraction of a millimeter and almost knocked it off the table. Before anyone could react, though, it recovered, grasped the plate firmly and tucked it into its recessed storage section.

“That's a pretty good optical recognition system they've got,” Pancho said.

“I don't believe it's optical,” Amanda countered. To Humphries she asked, “Is it?”

“Very sharp, Amanda,” he said, impressed. “Very sharp. The dishes have monomolecular beacons sprayed on their bottoms. The robots sense the microwave signals.”

Pancho lifted up her water tumbler and squinted at its bottom.

“The chip's too small to see with the naked eye,” Humphries said.

“What powers 'em?”

“The heat from the food or drink. They have trouble with iced drinks... and your salad.”

Pancho thought it over for half a second. “Dishes pick up residual heat when we handle them, huh?”

“That's right.”

Pancho smiled as the other robot placed a steaming plate of frogs' legs before her. Don't want Humphries to think Mandy's the only smart one here, she told herself.

All through dinner Humphries was charming, solicitous, all smiles. He paid almost as much attention to Pancho as he did to Amanda, up to the point where he encouraged Mandy to tell them about her early life. She began to talk, hesitantly at first, about growing up in London, winning a scholarship to the International Space University.

“It wasn't easy,” Amanda said, with almost childlike candor. “All the men seemed to think I was better suited to be a photographer's model than an astronaut.”

Humphries made a sympathetic murmur. Pancho nodded, understanding all over again that Mandy's good looks had been as much of a problem for her as an advantage.

“But I made it,” she finished happily, “and here we all are.”

“Good for you,” said Humphries, patting her hand. “I think you've done wonderfully well.”

As dessert was being served—fresh fruit from the botanical garden outside with soymilk ice cream—Amanda asked where the lavatory was.

Once she had left the room Pancho leaned closer to Humphries and asked in a lowered voice, “Well, whattaya think?”

He frowned with annoyance. “About what?”

“About Mandy.” She almost added, lunkhead, but stopped herself just in time.

“She's wonderful,” Humphries said, beaming. “Beautiful but brainy, too. You don't see that very often.”

Pancho thought, Women don't let you see their brains very often, not if they can get by on their looks.

Aloud, she asked, “So d'you think she'd be any good cozyin' up to Dan Randolph?”

“No!” he snapped.

“No?” Pancho was astonished. “Why not?”

“I don't want her anywhere near Randolph. He'll seduce her in a hot second.”

Pancho stared at the man. I thought that was the whole idea, she said to herself. Get Mandy into Randolph's bed. I thought that's what he'd want.

“She's much too fine a woman to be used that way,” Humphries added.

Oh, for cryin' out loud, Pancho realized. He's fallen for her! This guy who picks up women like paperclips and dumps 'em when he feels like it, he doesn't just have the hots for Mandy. He's fallen in love with her. Just like that!

 

 

 

 

 

SELENE GOVERNING COUNCIL

 

Dan couldn't help contrasting in his mind this meeting of Selene's governing council with the meeting of the GEC's executive board he'd attended a few weeks earlier in London.

The meeting took place in Selene's theater, with the council sitting at student's desks arranged up on the stage in a semi-circle. Just about every seat on the main floor and the balconies was taken, although the box seats on either side of the stage were all empty. Maybe they've been roped off for some reason, Dan thought. Must be two thousand people out there, he thought as he peeked out at the audience through the curtains screening the stage's wings. Just about every voting citizen in Selene's showed up for this meeting.

As he stood in the wing of the stage, the council members filed past him, taking their seats. For the most part they looked young, vigorous. Six women, five men, none with white hair. A couple of premature baldies among the men; they must be engineers, Dan thought. He knew that membership on the council was a part-time task assigned by lottery; no one was allowed to duck their public service, although they could take time off their regular jobs to attend to their extra duties.

“Nervous?”

Dan turned at the sound of Doug Stavenger's voice. Smiling, he answered, “When you've had to sit through as many board meetings as I have, you don't get nervous, you just want to get it the hell over with.”

Stavenger patted Dan lightly on the shoulder. “This one will be different from all the others, Dan. It's more like an old-fashioned New England town meeting than one of your board of directors' get-togethers.”

Dan agreed with a brief nod. Often in his mind he'd spelled it b-o-re-d meeting. This one would be different, he felt sure.

It was.

Stavenger served as non-voting chairman of the governing council, a largely honorary position. More pomp than circumstance, Dan thought. The chairman stood at the podium set up at one end of the stage, only a few meters from where Dan stood waiting for his turn to speak. The meeting agenda was displayed on a wallscreen along the back of the stage. Dan was dismayed to see that he was last on a list of nine.

The first five items went fairly quickly. The sixth was a new regulation tightening everyone's water allotment. Several people from the audience shot to their feet to make their opinions heard in no uncertain terms.

One of the council members was chairman of the water board, a chubby, balding, red-faced man wearing the coral-red coveralls of the Tourism Department. The student's desk at which he sat looked uncomfortably small for him.

“There's no way around it,” he said, looking flustered. “No matter how efficiently we recycle our water, it's not a hundred percent and it never will be. The more people we allow in, the less water we have to go around.”

“Then why don't we shut down tourism,” came an angry voice from the floor.

“Tourism's down to a trickle anyway,” the water chairman replied. “It’s less than five percent of our problem. Immigration is our big difficulty.”

“Refugees,” someone said in a harsh stage whisper.

“Don't let 'em in!” an angry voice snapped.

“You can't do that!”

“Why the hell not? They made the mess on Earth. Let 'em stew in their own crap.”

“Can't we find new sources of water?” a citizen asked.

Stavenger answered from the podium, “Our exploration teams have failed to locate any other than the polar ice fields we've been using all along.”

“Bring up a few loads from Earthside,” someone suggested.

“Yeah, and they'll gouge us for it.”

“But if we need it, what else can we do?”

The audience stirred restlessly. A dozen conversations buzzed through the theater.

The water board chairman raised his voice to be heard over the chatter. “We’re negotiating with the GEC for water shipments, but they want to put one of their own people onto the water board in return.”

“Hell no!”

“Never!”

“Those bastards have been trying to get control of us since day one!”

The audience roared its angry disapproval.

Stavenger, still standing at the podium, pressed his thumb on a button set into its control panel and a painfully loud hooting whistle rang through the theater, silencing the shouters. Dan covered his ears until the shriek died away.

“We've got to maintain order here,” Stavenger said in the numbed silence. “Otherwise we'll never get anywhere.”

Reluctantly, they accepted the fact that water allotments would be decreased slightly. Then the water board chairman held out a potential carrot.

“We'll have the new recycling system on-line in a few months,” he said, drumming his fingers nervously on his desktop. “If it works as efficiently as the simulations show it should, we can go back to the current water allotments—at least for a year or so.”

“And what happens if this recycling system fails?” asked a stern-faced elderly woman.

“It's being thoroughly tested,” the water chairman answered defensively.

“This is just a way for the people running the damned hotel to put up their own swimming pool and spa,” grumbled a lanky, longhaired citizen. He looked like a physicist to Dan. “Tourism is down so they want to fancy up the hotel to attract more tourists.”

Dan wondered about that. Tourism is down because the world's going down the toilet, he thought. Then he admitted, but, yeah, people running tourist facilities will try their damnedest to attract customers, no matter what. What else can they do, except go out of business altogether?

In the end, the council decided to accept the water allotment restrictions until the new recycling system had been in operation for three continuous months. Then they would have a new hearing to decide on whether they could return to the old allotments.

Two more items were swiftly disposed of, then at last Stavenger said, “The final item on our agenda tonight is a proposal by Dan Randolph, head of Astro Manufacturing.” He turned slightly and prompted, “Dan?”

There was some scattered applause as Dan stepped up to the podium. Astro employees, Dan thought. Stavenger moved off-stage.

He gripped the edges of the podium and looked over the crowd. He had no notes, no visual aids. For several moments he merely stood there, thinking hard. The audience began to murmur, whisper.

Dan began, “Halley’s Comet will be returning to the inner solar system in a few years. Last time it came by, Halley's blew out roughly thirty million tons of water vapor in six months. If I remember the numbers right, the comet lost something like three tons of water per second when it was closest to the Sun.”

He waited a heartbeat, then asked, “Do you think you could use that water?”

“Hell yes!” somebody shouted. Dan grinned when he saw that it was Pancho Lane, sitting up in the first row of the balcony.

“Then let's go get it!” Dan said.

He spent the next fifteen minutes outlining the fusion rocket system and assuring them that it had performed flawlessly in all its tests to date.

“A fusion-driven spacecraft can bring in all the water you need, either from hydrate-bearing asteroids or from comets,” Dan said. “I need your help to build a full-scale system and flight test it.”

One of the women councilors asked, “Are you asking Selene to fund your corporation? Why can't you raise the money from the regular sources?”

Dan made himself smile at her. “This project will cost between one and two billion international dollars, Earthside. None of the banks or other funding sources that I've approached will risk that kind of money. They're all fully committed to rebuilding and mitigation programs. They've got their hands full with the greenhouse warming; they're not interested in space projects.”

“Damned flatland idiots,” somebody groused.

“I agree,” Dan said, grinning. “They’re too busy doing what's urgent to even think about what's important.”

“Out of all the corporations on Earth,” someone called out, “surely you can make a deal or two to raise the capital you need.”

Dan decided to cut the discussion short. “Listen. I could probably put together a deal that would raise the money we need, but I thought I'd give you a chance to come in on this. It's the opportunity you've been waiting for.”

“Selene doesn't have that kind of money at its disposal,” said one of the councilmen.

“No,” countered Dan, “but you have the trained people and the facilities to build the fusion rocket with nanomachines.”

A hush fell over the theater. Nanotechnology. They all knew it was possible. And yet...

“Nanomachines aren't magic wands, Mr. Randolph,” said the councilor seated closest to Dan, a lean, pinch-faced young man who looked like a jogging fanatic.

“I understand that,” said Dan.

“At one time we thought we could develop nanomachines to produce water for us by taking hydrogen from the incoming solar wind and combining it with oxygen from the regolith. It was technically feasible but in practice a complete failure.”

Recognizing the councilman as one who loved the sound of his own voice, Dan said curtly, “If nanomachines can build entire Clipperships they can build fusion drives.”

Another woman councilor, with the bright red hair and porcelain-white complexion of the Irish, spoke up. “I’ve been stuck with the job of treasurer for the council, the thanks I get for being an honest accountant.”

Dan laughed, along with most of the audience.

“But it's a sad fact that we don't have the funds to spare on your program, Mr. Randolph, no matter how admirable it may be. The money just isn't in our hands.”

“I don't want money,” Dan said.

“Then what?”

“I want volunteers. I need people who are willing to devote their time to the greatest challenge of our age: developing the resources of the entire solar system.”

“Ah, but that boils down to money, now, doesn't it?”

“No it doesn't,” said a deep voice from the middle of the theater. Dan saw a squat, heavily-built black man get to his feet.

“I'm Bernie James. I retired from the nanotech lab last year. I'm only a technician, but I'll work with you on this.”

A few rows farther back, a taller man, blond hair cropped short, got to his feet. “Rolf Uhrquest, Space Transportation Department,” he said, in a clear tenor voice. “I would be willing to take my accumulated vacation time to work on this fusion project.”

Dan smiled at them both. “Thank you.”

“And I believe,” Uhrquest continued, “that Dr. Cardenas would be interested also.” Turning slightly, he called, “Dr. Cardenas, are you here?”

No one answered.

“I will find her,” Uhrquest said, very seriously. “It is a shame she is not present today.”

Dan looked expectantly out at the audience, but no one else stood up. At last he said, “Thank you,” and stepped away from the podium, back into the wings of the stage. Stavenger gave him a quick thumbs-up signal and returned to the podium for the final item on the meeting's agenda: a request from a retired couple to enlarge their living quarters so they could have enough space to start a new business for themselves.

Once the meeting broke up, Stavenger said, “If Kris Cardenas had been anywhere in Selene I would have introduced you to her. Unfortunately, she's in a space station in near-Earth orbit, working on developing nanomachines to bring down the costs of the Mars exploration centers.”

“Which station?” Dan asked.

“The one over South America.”

Dan grinned at him. “Nueva Venezuela. I helped build that sucker. Maybe it's time for me to pay a visit there.”

 

 

 

 

 

ALPHONSUS

 

Pancho watched the safety demonstration very carefully. No matter that she had put on a spacesuit and done EVA work dozens of times; she paid patient attention to every word of the demo. This was going to be on the surface of the Moon, and the differences between orbital EVAs and a moonwalk were enough to worry about.

The tourists in the bus didn't seem to give a damn. Hell, Pancho thought, if they're stinky-rich enough to afford a vacation jaunt to the Moon, they must have the attitude that nothing bad'll happen to them, and if it does they'll get their lawyers to sue the hell out of everybody between here and Mars.

They had all suited up in the garage at Selene before getting onto the bus. It was easier that way; the bus was way too tight for fourteen tourists to wriggle and squeeze into their spacesuits. They rode out to the Ranger 9 site in the hard-shell suits, their helmets in their laps.

After all these years, Pancho thought, they still haven't come up with anything better than these hard-shell suits. The science guys keep talking about softsuits and even nanomachine skins, but it's still nothing more'n talk.

Even the teenagers went quiet once they cleared the garage airlock and drove out onto the cracked, pockmarked surface of Alphonsus. A hundred and eight kilometers across, the crater floor went clear over the horizon. The ringwall mountains looked old and weary, slumped smooth from eons of being sandpapered by the constant infall of meteoric dust. It was the dust that worried Pancho. In orbital space you were floating in vacuum. On the surface of the Moon you had to walk on the powdery regolith, sort of like walking on beach sand. Except that the “sand” billowed up and covered your boots with fine gray dust. Not just your boots, either, Pancho reminded herself. She'd heard tales about lunar dust getting into a suit's joints and even into the life-support backpack. The dust was electrostatically charged from the incoming solar wind, too, and this made the freaking stuff cling like mad. If it got on your visor it could blind you; try to wipe it off with your gloves and you just smeared it worse.

They'd had some trouble finding Pancho a suit that would fit her comfortably; in the end they had to break out a brand new one, sized long. It smelled new, like pristine plastic. When the bus stopped and the guide told the tourists to put on their helmets, Pancho sort of missed the familiar scents of old sweat and machine oil that permeated the working suits she'd worn. Even the air blowing gently across her face tasted new, unused.

The tour guide and the bus driver both checked out each tourist before they let the visitors climb down from the bus's hatch onto the lunar regolith. Pancho's helmet earphones filled with “oohs” and “lookit that!” as, one by one, the tourists stepped onto the ancient ground and kicked up puffs of dust that lingered lazily in the gentle gravity of the Moon.

“Look how bright my footprints are!” someone shouted excitedly.

The guide explained, “That’s because the topmost layer of the ground has been darkened by billions of years of exposure to hard radiation from the Sun and deep space. Your bootprints show the true color of the regolith underneath. Give 'em a few million years, though, and the prints will turn dark, too.”

For all the years she'd worked in space, Pancho had never been out on a Moonwalk. She found it fascinating, once she cut off the radio frequency that carried the tourists' inane chatter and listened only to the prerecorded talk that guided visitors to the Ranger 9 site.

To outward appearances she was just another tourist from one of the three busloads that were being shepherded along the precisely-marked paths on the immense floor of Alphonsus. But Pancho knew that Martin Humphries was in one of the other buses, and her reason for being here was to report to him, not to sightsee.

She let the cluster of tourists move on ahead of her while she lingered near the parked buses. The canned tourguide explanation was telling her about the rilles that meandered near the site of the old spacecraft crash: sinuous cracks in the crater floor that sometimes vented out thin, ghostlike clouds of ammonia and methane.

“One of the reasons for locating the original Moonbase in Alphonsus's ringwall mountains was the hope of utilizing these volatiles for—”

She saw Humphries shuffling toward her, kicking up clouds of dust as if it didn't matter. It had to be him, she thought, because his spacesuit was different from the ones issued to the tourists. Not different enough to be obvious to the tenderfeet, but Pancho recognized the slightly wider, heavier build of the suit and the tiny servo motors at the joints that helped the wearer move the more massive arms and legs. Extra armor, she thought. He must worry about radiation up here.

Humphries had no name tag plastered to the torso of his suit, and until he was close enough to touch helmets she could not see into his heavily-tinted visor to identify his face. But he walked right up to her, kicking up the dust, until he almost bumped his helmet against hers. She recognized his features through the visor: round and snubby-nosed, like some freckle-faced kid, but with those cold, hard eyes peering at her.

Pancho lifted her left wrist and poised her right hand over the comm keyboard, asking Humphries in pantomime which radio frequency he wanted to use. He held up a gloved hand and she saw that he was holding a coiled wire in it. Slowly, with the deliberate care of a person who was not accustomed to working in a spacesuit, he fitted one end of the wire into the receptacle built into the side of his helmet. He held out the other end. Pancho took it and plugged into her own helmet.

“Okay,” she heard Humphries's voice, almost as clearly as if they were in a comfortable room, “now we can talk without anyone tapping into our conversation.”

Pancho remembered her childhood, when she and some of the neighborhood kids would create telephone links out of old paper cups and lengths of waxed string. They were using the same principle, linking their helmets with the wire so they could converse without using their suit radios. This'll work, Pancho thought, as long as we don't move too far apart. She judged the wire connecting their helmets to be no more than three meters long.

“You worried about eavesdroppers?” she asked Humphries.

“Not especially, but why take a chance you don't have to?”

That made sense, a little. “Why couldn't we meet down at your place, like usual?”

“Because it's not a good idea for you to be seen going down there so often, that's why,” Humphries replied testily. “How long do you think it would be before Dan Randolph finds out you're coming to my residence on a regular basis?”

Teasingly, Pancho said, “So he finds out. He'll just think you're inviting me to dinner.”

Humphries grunted. Pancho knew that he had invited Amanda to dinner at his home twice since they'd first met. And he'd stopped asking Pancho to report to him down there. Now they met at prearranged times and places: strolling in the Grand Plaza, watching low-gravity ballet in the theater, doing a tourist moonwalk on the crater floor.

Pancho would have shrugged if she hadn't been encased in the suit. She said to Humphries, “Dan made his pitch to the governing council.”

“I know. And they turned him down.”

“Well, sort of.”

“What do you mean?” he snapped.

“A couple of citizens volunteered to work on Dan's project. He's goin' down to the Venezuela space station to try to get Dr. Cardenas to head up the team.”

“Kristine Cardenas?”

“Yup. She's the top expert at nanotech,” Pancho said.

“They gave her the Nobel Prize,” Humphries muttered, “before nanotechnology was banned on Earth.”

“That's the one he's gonna talk to.”

For several long moments Humphries simply stood there unmoving, not speaking a word. Pancho thought he looked like a statue, with the spacesuit and all.

At length he said, “He wants to use nanomachines to build the rocket. I hadn't expected that.”

“It's cheaper. Prob'ly better, too.”

She sensed Humphries nodding inside his helmet. “I should've seen it coming. If he can build the system with nanos, he won't need my financing. The sonofabitch can leave me out in the cold—after I gave him the fusion idea on a silver fucking platter!”

“I don't think he'd do that.”

“Wouldn't he?” Humphries was becoming more enraged with every word. “I bring the fusion project to him, I offer to fund the work, but instead he sneaks behind my back to try to raise funding from any other source he can find. And now he's got a way to build the fucking rocket without me altogether! He's trying to cut my balls off!”

“But-”

“Shut up, you stupid bitch! I don't care what you think! That prick bastard Randolph thinks he can screw me out of this! Well, he's got another think coming! I'll break his back! I'll destroy the sonofabitch!”

Humphries yanked the wire out of Pancho's helmet, then pulled the other end out of his own. He turned and strode back to the bus that had carried him out to the Ranger 9 site, practically boiling up a dust storm with his angry stomping. If he hadn't been in the heavy spacesuit, Pancho thought, he'd hop two meters off the ground with each step. Prob'ly fall flat on his face.

She watched as he gestured furiously to the bus driver, then clambered aboard the tourist bus. The driver got in after him, closed the hatch, and started off for the garage back at Selene.

Pancho wondered if Humphries would allow the driver to come back out and pick up the other tourists, or would he leave them stranded out here? Well, she thought, they can always squeeze into the other buses.

She decided there was nothing she could do about it, so she might as well enjoy what was left of her outing. As she walked off toward the wreckage of the tiny, primitive Ranger 9, though, she thought that she'd better tell Dan Randolph about this pretty damned quick. Humphries was sore enough to commit murder, it seemed to her.

 

 

 

 

 

SPACE STATION NUEVA VENEZUEU

 

It was almost like coming home for Dan. Nueva Venezuela had been one of the first big projects for the fledgling Astro Manufacturing Corp., back in the days when Dan had moved his corporate headquarters from Texas to La Guaira and married the daughter of the future president of Venezuela.

The space station had lasted much better than the marriage. Still, the station was old and scuffed-up. As the transfer craft from Selene made its approach, Dan saw that the metal skin of her outer hulls was dulled and pitted from long years of exposure to radiation and mite-sized meteoroids. Here and there bright new sections showed where the maintenance crews were replacing the tired, eroded skin. A facelift, Dan thought, smiling. Well, she's old enough to need it. They're probably using cermet panels instead of the aluminum we started with. Lighter, tougher, maybe even cheaper if you consider the length of time they'll last before they need replacing.

Nueva Venezuela was built of a series of concentric rings. The outermost ring spun at a rate that gave the occupants inside it a feeling of normal Earthly gravity. The two other rings were placed where they would simulate Mars's one-third g and the Moon's one-sixth. The docking port at the station's center was effectively at zero gravity. The tech guys called it microgravity, but Dan always thought of it as zero g.

A great place to make love, Dan remembered. Then he chuckled to himself. Once you get over the heaves. Nearly everybody got nauseous their first few hours in weightlessness.

Dan went through customs swiftly, allowing the inspector to rummage through his one travelbag while he tried to keep himself from making any sudden movements. He could feel his sinuses starting to puff up as the liquids in his body shifted in response to weightlessness. No postnasal drips in zero g, Dan told himself. But you sure can get a beaut of a headache while the fluids build up in your sinuses before you adapt.

The main thing was to make as few head motions as possible. Dan had seen people suddenly erupt with projectile vomiting from merely turning their heads or nodding.

The inspector passed him easily enough and Dan gratefully made his way along the tube corridor that led “down” to the lunar-level wheel.

He dumped his bag in the cubbyhole compartment he'd rented for this visit, then prowled along the sloping corridor that ran through the center of the wheel, checking the numbers on each door.

Dr. Kristine Cardenas's name was neatly printed on a piece of tape stuck above her door number. Dan rapped once, and opened the door.

It was a small office, hardly enough room for the desk and the two plain plastic chairs in front of it. A good-looking young woman sat at the desk: shoulder-length sandy hair, cornflower blue eyes, broad swimmer's shoulders. She wore an unadorned jumpsuit of pastel yellow; or maybe it had once been brighter, but had faded after many washings.

“I'm looking for Dr. Cardenas,” said Dan. “She’s expecting me. I'm Dan Randolph.”

The young woman smiled up at him and extended her hand. “I’m Kris Cardenas.”

Dan blinked. “You... you're much too young to be the Dr. Cardenas.”

She laughed. Motioning Dan to one of the chairs in front of the desk, she said, “I assure you, Mr. Randolph, that I am indeed the Dr. Cardenas.”

Dan looked into those bright blue eyes. “You too, huh? Nanomachines.”

She pursed her lips, then admitted, “It was a temptation I couldn't resist. Besides, what better way to test what nanotechnology can do than to try it on yourself?”

“Like Pasteur injecting himself with the polio vaccine,” Dan said.

She gave him a sidelong look. “Your grasp of the history of science is a bit off, but you've got the basic idea.”

Dan leaned back in the plastic chair. It creaked a little but accommodated itself to his weight. “Maybe I ought to try them, too,” he said.

“If you don't have any plans to return to Earth,” Cardenas replied, with a sudden sharpness in her voice.

Dan changed the subject. “I understand you're working with the Mars exploration program.”

She nodded. “Their budget's being slashed to the bone. Beyond the bone, actually. If we can't develop nanos to take over the life-support functions at their bases, they'll have to close up shop and return to Earth.”

“But if they use nanomachines they won't be allowed to come back home.”

“Only if they use nanomachines in their own bodies,” Cardenas said, raising a finger to emphasize her point. “The IAA has graciously decided they can be allowed to use nanotechnology to maintain and repair their equipment.”

Dan caught the sarcasm in her tone. “I’ll bet the New Morality was thrilled with that decision.”

“They don't run the entire show. At least, not yet.”

Dan huffed. “Good reason to live off Earth. I've always said, When the going gets tough, the tough get going—”

“—to where the going's easier,” Cardenas finished for him. “Yes, I've heard that.”

“I don't think I'd be able to live off-Earth forever,” Dan said. “I mean... well, that's home.”

“Not for me,” Cardenas snapped. “Not for a half a dozen of the Martian explorers, either. They've accepted nanomachines. They have no intention of returning to Earth.”

Surprised, Dan said, “I didn't know that.”

“There hasn't been much publicity about it. The New Morality and their ilk have a pretty tight grip on the news media.”

Dan studied her face for a long, silent moment. Dr. Cardenas was physically youthful, quite attractive, a Nobel laureate, the leader in her chosen field of study. Yet she seemed so indignant.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “I’m grateful that you've taken the time to see me. I know you're busy.”

She broke into a pleased smile. “Your message seemed kind of...” she fished for a word,”... mysterious. It made me wonder why you wanted to see me in person, rather than by phone.”

Dan grinned back at her. “I’ve found that it's always easier to discuss matters face-to-face. Phones, mail, even VR meetings, they can't replace person-to-person contact.”

Cardenas's smile turned knowing. “It’s more difficult for someone to say 'no' to your face.”

“You got me,” Dan replied, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I need your help and I didn't want to tell you about it long-distance.”

She seemed to relax somewhat. Easing back in her chair, she asked, “So what's so important that you came up here to see me?”

“Down here. I came in from Selene.”

“What's your problem? I've been so wrapped up with this Mars work that I haven't been keeping up with current events.”

Dan took in a breath, then started, “You know I'm the head of Astro Manufacturing.”

Cardenas nodded.

“I've got a small team ready to build a prototype fusion rocket, using nanomachines.”

“A fusion rocket?”

“We've tested small models. The system works. Now we need to build a full-scale prototype and test it. We're planning a mission to the Asteroid Belt, and—”

“Spacecraft have gone to the Belt on ordinary rockets. Why do you need a fusion system?”

“Those were unmanned vehicles. This mission will carry a crew of four, maybe six.”

“To the Asteroid Belt? Why?”

“To start prospecting for the metals and minerals that the people of Earth need,” Dan said.

Cardenas's face turned stony. Coldly, she asked, “What are you trying to accomplish, Mr. Randolph?”

“I'm trying to save the Earth. I know that sounds pompous, but if we don't—”

“I see no reason to save the Earth,” Cardenas said flatly.

Dan gaped at her.

“They got themselves into this greenhouse mess. They were warned, but they paid no attention. The politicians, the business leaders, the news media... none of them lifted a finger until it was too late.”

“That's not entirely true,” Dan said softly, remembering his own struggles to get the world's leaders to recognize the looming greenhouse cliff before it struck.

“True enough,” Cardenas replied. “And then there's the New Morality and all those other ultraconservative cults. Why do you want to save them?”

“They're people,” Dan blurted. “Human beings.”

“Let them sink in their own filth,” Cardenas said, her words dripping acid. “They’ve earned whatever they get.”

“But...” Dan felt completely at sea. “I don't understand...”

“They exiled me.” She almost snarled the words. “Because I injected nanomachines into my body, they prevented me from returning to Earth. Their fanatics assassinated anyone who spoke in favor of nanotechnology, did you know that?”

Dan shook his head mutely.

“They attacked Moonbase, back before it became Selene. One of their suicide killers blew up Professor Zimmerman in his own lab. And you want me to help them?”

Shocked by her vehemence, Dan mumbled, “But that was years ago...”

“I was there, Mr. Randolph. I saw the mangled bodies. And then, when we won and even the old United Nations had to recognize our independence, those hypocritical ignoramuses passed laws exiling anyone who had accepted nanomachines into her body.”

“I understand that, but—”

“I had a husband,” she went on, blue eyes snapping. “I had two daughters. I have four grandchildren in college that I've never touched! Never held them as babies. Never sat down at the same table with them.”

Another woman might have burst into tears, Dan thought. But Cardenas was too furious for that. How the hell can I reach her? he wondered.

She seemed to recover herself. Placing both hands on her desktop, she said more mildly, “I’m sorry for the tirade. But I want you to understand why I'm not particularly interested in helping the people of Earth.”

Dan replied, “Then how about helping the people of Selene?”

Her chin went up a notch. “What do you mean?”

 “A working fusion drive can make it economical to mine hydrates from the carbonaceous asteroids. Even scoop water vapor from comets.”

She thought about that for a moment. Then, “Or even scoop fusion fuels from Jupiter, I imagine.”

Dan stared at her. Twelve lords a-leaping, I hadn't even thought of that. Jupiter's atmosphere must be loaded with hydrogen and helium isotopes.

Cardenas smiled slightly. “I presume you could make a considerable fortune from all this.”

“I've offered to do it at cost.”

Her brows rose. “At cost?”

He hesitated, then admitted, “I want to help the people of Earth. There's ten billion of them, less the millions who've already been killed in the floods and epidemics and famines. They're not all bad guys.”

Cardenas looked away from him for a moment, then admitted, “No, I suppose they're not.”

“Your grandchildren are down there.”

“That's a low blow, Mr. Randolph.”

“Dan.”

“It's still a low blow, and you know it.”

He smiled at her. “I’m not above a rabbit punch or two if it'll get the job done.”

She did not smile back. But she said, “I’ll spin this Mars work off to a couple of my students. It's mostly routine now, anyway. I'll be back in Selene within the week.”

“Thanks. You're doing the right thing,” Dan said.

“I'm not as sure of that as you are.”

He got up from his chair. “I guess we'll just have to see where it all leads.”

“Yes, we will,” she agreed.

Dan shook hands with her again and then left her office. Don't linger once you get what you want. Never give the other side the chance to reconsider. He had Cardenas's agreement, no matter that it was reluctant.

Okay, I've got the team I need. Duncan and his crew can stay Earth-side. Cardenas will direct the construction job.

Now to confront Humphries.

 

 

 

 

 

SELENE

 

And he's madder'n hell,” Pancho finished. Dan nodded somberly as they rode an electric cart through the tunnel from the spaceport to Selene proper. Pancho had been at the spaceport to meet him on his return flight from Nueva Venezuela, looking worried, almost frightened about Humphries. “I guess I'd be ticked off, too,” he said, “if our positions were reversed.”

The two of them were alone in the cart. Dan had deliberately waited until the four other passengers of the transfer ship had gone off toward the city. Then he and Pancho had clambered aboard the next cart. The automated vehicles ran like clockwork along the long, straight tunnel. “What do you want to do?” Pancho asked. Dan grinned at her. “I’ll call him and arrange a meeting.”

“At the O. K. Corral?”

“No,” he said, laughing. “Nothing so grim. It's time he and I talked about structuring a deal together.”

Frowning, Pancho asked, “Do you really need him now? I mean with the nanotech and all? Can't you run this show yourself and keep him out of it?”

“I don't think that would be the smart thing to do,” Dan replied. “After all, he did start me off on this fusion business. If I tried to cut him out altogether he'd have a legitimate gripe.”

“That's what he expects you to do.”

Dan watched the play of shadows over her face as the cart glided silently along the tunnel. Light and shadow, light and shadow, like watching a speeded-up video of the Sun going across the sky.

“I don't play the game the same way he does,” he said at last. “And I don't want this project tied up by lawyers for the next ninety-nine years.” Pancho grunted with distaste. “Lawyers.”

“Humphries brought the fusion project to me because he wants to get into Astro. I know how he works. He figures that he'll finance the fusion work in exchange for a bloc of Astro's stock. Then he'll finagle some more stock, put a couple of his clones on my board of directors, and sooner or later toss me out of my own company.”

“Can he do that?”

“That's the way he operates. He's snatched half-a-dozen corporations that way. Right now he's on the verge of taking over Masterson Aerospace.”

“Masterson?” Pancho looked shocked.

Dan said, “Yep. Half the world drowning and the rest cooking from this double-damned greenhouse, and he's using it to snatch and grab. He's a goddamned opportunist. A vampire, sucking the life out of everything he touches.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“Keep his investment in the fusion project to a minimum,” Dan said. “And keep the fusion project separate and apart from Astro Corporation.”

“Good luck,” she said glumly.

Dan grinned at her. “Hey, don't look so worried. I've been through this kind of thing before. This is what the corporate jungle is all about.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I think he'll get rough if he doesn't get his way. Real rough.”

With a brash shrug, Dan replied, “That’s why I keep Big George around.”

“Big George? Who's he?”

Dan had made his quick trip to Nueva Venezuela without George. He didn't feel the need for a bodyguard once he was off-Earth. In fact, he hadn't seen the Aussie since they'd arrived together in Selene for his meeting with Doug Stavenger.

“I'll have to introduce you to him.”

The cart reached the end of the tunnel and stopped automatically. Dan and Pancho got off; he grabbed his travel-bag and they walked to the customs inspection station. Dan saw that the two uniformed inspectors were still checking the quartet of people who had arrived on his flight. On the other side of the area, by the entrance gate, an elderly couple was saying goodbye to a young family with two children, one of them a tot squirming in her mother's arms.

“So whattaya want me to tell Humphries?” Pancho asked. “He’ll wanna know how you did with Dr. Cardenas.”

“Tell him the truth. Cardenas is joining the team. She'll be here in a few days.”

“Should I tell him you want to set up a meeting with him?”

Dan thought it over as they stepped up to the customs desk. “No,” he said at last. “I’ll call him myself as soon as we get down to our quarters.”

Humphries seemed surprised when Dan called him, but he quickly agreed to a meeting the very next morning. He insisted on having the meeting in the Humphries Space System's suite of offices, up in the same tower on the Grand Plaza that housed Doug Stavenger's office.

Dan accepted meekly enough, laughing inwardly at Humphries's gamesmanship. He tried to phone Big George, got only his answering machine, and left a message for George to call him first thing in the morning. Then he undressed, showered, and went to bed.

He dreamed about Jane. They were together on Tetiaroa, completely alone on the tropical atoll beneath a gorgeous star-strewn sky, walking along the lagoon beach while the balmy wind set the palm trees to rustling softly. A slim crescent of a Moon rode past scudding silvery clouds. Jane was wearing a filmy robe, her auburn hair undone and flowing past her shoulders. In the starlight he could see how beautiful she was, how desirable.

But he could not speak a word. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried, no sound would come out of his mouth. This is stupid, Dan raged at himself. How can you tell her you love her if you can't talk?

The clouds thickened, darkened, blotted out the Moon and stars. Beyond Jane's shadowy profile Dan could see the ocean stirring, frothing, an enormous tidal wave rising up higher, higher, a mountain of foaming water rushing down on them. He tried to warn her, tried to shout, but the water crashed down on them both with crushing force. He reached for Jane, to hold her, to save her, but she was wrenched out of his arms.

He woke, sitting up and drenched with sweat. His throat felt raw, as if he'd been screaming for hours. He didn't know where he was. In the darkness of the bedroom all he could see was the green glowing numerals on the digital clock on the night table. He rubbed at his eyes, working hard to remember. Selene. I'm in the company suite in Selene. I'm going to see Humphries first thing in the morning.

And Jane's dead.

“You've been quite a busy fellow,” Humphries said, with obviously false joviality.

Instead of meeting in his personal office, he had invited Dan to a small windowless conference room. Not even holoviews on the walls, only a few paintings and photographs of Martin Humphries with celebrities of various stripes. Dan recognized the current President of the United States, a dour-faced elderly man in black clerical garb, and Vasily Malik of the GEC.

Leaning back relaxedly in the comfortable padded chair, Dan said, “I guess I have been on the go quite a bit since we last met.”

Sitting across the table from Dan, Humphries clasped his hands together atop its gleaming surface. “To tell you the truth, Dan, I get the feeling you're trying to screw me out of this fusion operation.”

Laughing, Dan said, “I wouldn't do that, Marty, even if I could.”

Humphries laughed back at him. It seemed more than a little forced to Dan.

“Tell me something,” Dan said. “You didn't stumble across Duncan by accident, did you?”

Humphries smiled more genuinely. “Not entirely. When I started Humphries Space Systems I went out and backed more than a dozen small, long-shot research groups. I figured that one of them was bound to come through with something. You ought to see some of the kooks I had to deal with!”

“I can imagine,” Dan said, grinning. He'd had his share of earnest zanies trying to convince him of one wild scheme or another over the years.

“I got lucky with Duncan and this fusion rocket,” Humphries went on, looking pleased with himself.

“It was more than luck,” Dan said. “You were damned smart.”

“Maybe,” Humphries agreed. “It only takes one swing to hit a home run.”

“And it doesn't cost much, either, at the laboratory stage.”

Nodding, Humphries said, “If more people backed basic research we'd get ahead a lot faster.”

“I should've done it myself,” Dan admitted.

“Yes, you should have.”

“My mistake.”

“Okay then, where do we stand?” Humphries asked.

“Well... you financed Duncan's original work.”

“Including the flight tests that you saw,” Humphries pointed out.

Dan nodded. “I’ve been trying to put together the financing for building a full-scale spacecraft and sending a team out to the Belt.”

“I can finance that. I told you I'd put up the money.”

“Yep. But it'd cost me a good chunk of Astro Corporation, wouldn't it?”

“We can negotiate a reasonable price. It won't cost you a cent out of pocket.”

“But you'd wind up owning Astro,” Dan said flatly.

Something flashed in Humphries's eyes for a moment. But he quickly put on a synthetic smile. “How could I take over Astro Manufacturing, Dan? I know you wouldn't part with more than fifteen-twenty percent of your company.”

“More like five or ten percent,” Dan said.

“Even worse, for me. I'd be a minority stockholder. I wouldn't even be able to put anybody on the board—except myself, I imagine.”

Dan said, “H'mm.”

Hunching closer, Humphries said, “I hear you're going the nanotech route.”

“You hear right,” Dan replied. “Dr. Cardenas is returning to Selene to head up the job.”

“I hadn't thought about using nanomachines. Makes sense.”

“Brings the cost down.”

“Makes my investment smaller,” Humphries said, straight-faced.

Tired of the fencing, Dan said, “Look, here's the way I see this. We bring Selene in as a third partner. They provide the facilities and nanotech personnel.”

“I thought you were recruiting retirees,” Humphries said.

“Some,” Dan admitted, “but we'll still need Selene's active help.”

“So we've got a third partner,” Humphries said sullenly.

“I want to form a separate corporation, separate and apart from Astro. We'll each be one-third owners: you, me, and Selene.”

Humphries sat up straighter. “What’s the matter, Dan, don't you trust me?”

“Not as far as I can throw the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Another man might have laughed grudgingly. Humphries glared at Dan for a moment, his face reddening. But then he got himself under control and shrugged nonchalantly.

“You don't want to let me have any Astro stock, do you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Dan said pleasantly.

“But then what are you bringing into this deal? I've got the money, Selene's got the personnel and facilities. What do you offer?”

Dan smiled his widest. “My management skills. After all, I'm the one who came up with the nanotech idea.”

“I thought it was Stavenger's idea.”

Dan felt his brows hike up. And his respect for Humphries's sources of information. He didn't get that from Pancho; I didn't tell her. Does he have Stavenger's office bugged? Or infiltrated?

“Tell you what,” said Dan. “Just to show you that I'm not such a suspicious sonofabitch, I'll chip in five percent of Astro's stock. Out of my personal holdings.”

“Ten,” Humphries immediately shot back.

“Five”

“Come on, Dan. You can't get out of\this so cheaply.” Dan looked up at the paneled ceiling, took a deep breath, looked back into Humphries's icy gray eyes. Finally he said, “Seven.”

“Eight.”

Dan cocked his head slightly, then murmured, “Deal.” Humphries smiled, genuinely this time, and echoed, “Deal.” Each man extended his hand across the table. As they shook hands,

Dan said to himself, Count your fingers after he lets go.

 

 

 

 

 

SELENE NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

 

Dan was watching intently as Kris Cardenas manipulated the roller dial with one manicured finger, her eyes riveted on the scanning microscope's display screen. The image took shape on the screen, blurred, then came into crisp focus.

  The picture was grainy, gray on gray, with a slightly greenish cast. Dan could make out a pair of fuel tanks with piping that led to a spherical chamber. On the other side of the sphere was a narrow straight channel that ended in the flared bell of a rocket nozzle.

“It's the whole assembly!” he blurted.

Cardenas turned toward him with a bright California smile. “Not bad for a month's work, is it?”

Dan grinned back at her. “Kinda small, though, don't you think?”

They were alone in the nanotech lab this late at night. The other workstations were empty, all the cubicles dark, the ceiling lights turned down to their dim nighttime setting. Only in the corner where Dan and Cardenas sat on a pair of swivel stools were the overhead lights at their full brightness. The massive gray tubing of the scanning microscope loomed above them both like a hulking robot. Dan marveled inwardly that the big, bulky machine was capable of revealing individual atoms.

Cardenas said, “Size isn't important right now. It's the pattern that counts.”

“Swell,” said Dan. “If I want to send a team of bacteria to the Belt, you've got the fusion drive all set for them.”