The Precipice (Asteroid Wars) Page 11

  “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 oF 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. He 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 nanotechnol-ogy 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 sol
ar 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 resources 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 Clipper-ships. 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 deep-space 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 Uve 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.