by Ben Bova
“That’s already in the cost estimate,” Fuchs replied.
George huffed a mighty sigh, then said, “All right, Lars, I’m in. I guess it would be pretty good to have a base out here in the Belt with some decent gravity to it.”
Fuchs smiled. “You can always have sex aboard your own ship.”
George grinned back at him. “Believe it, mate. Believe it.”
Fuchs went with George to the ship’s main airlock and helped the bigger man get back into his hard-shell spacesuit.
“They’re testin’ lightweight suits back at Selene, y’know,” he said as he slid into the rigid torso and worked his arms through the stiff sleeves. “Flexible. Easy to put on.”
“And the radiation protection?” Fuchs asked.
“Magnetic field surrounds the suit. They claim it’s better’n this stuff.” He rapped his knuckles against the torso’s cermet carapace.
Fuchs gave a little snort of disdain. “They’ll need years of testing before I’d buy one.”
As he wormed his hands into the gloves, George said, “Me too.”
Handing the bigger man his fishbowl helmet, Fuchs said, “Thanks for agreeing, George. It means a lot to me.”
George nodded solemnly. “I know. You two want to have kids.”
Fuchs’s cheeks reddened. “It’s not that!”
“Isn’t it?”
“Well, not alone, no.” Fuchs looked away from George for a moment, then slowly admitted, “I worry about Amanda, yes. I never thought she would want to stay out here with me. I never thought I myself would be out here this long.”
“There’s a lot of money to be made here in the Belt. A lot of money.”
“Yes, yes indeed. But I worry about her. I want her to be in a safer place, with enough gravity to keep her from deconditioning.”
“And enough radiation shielding to start a family,” George said, grinning. Then he pulled on his helmet before Fuchs could think of a reply.
CHAPTER 2
Once George had cycled through Starpower 1’s airlock and jetted back to his own Waltzing Matilda, Fuchs went down the ship’s narrow central passageway to the compartment where his wife was working.
She looked up from the wallscreen as Fuchs slid the compartment door open. He saw that she was watching a fashion show beamed from somewhere on Earth: slim, slinky models in brightly colored gowns of outrageous designs. Fuchs frowned slightly: half the people of Earth displaced by floods and earthquakes, starvation rampant almost everywhere, and still the rich played their games.
Amanda blanked the wallscreen as she asked, “Has George left already?”
“Yes. And he agreed to it!”
Her smile was minimal. “He did? It didn’t take you terribly long to convince him, did it?”
She still spoke with a trace of the Oxford accent she had learned years earlier in London. She was wearing an oversized faded sweatshirt and cutoff work pants. Her golden blonde hair was pinned up off her neck and slightly disheveled. She wore not a trace of makeup. Still, she was much more beautiful than any of the emaciated mannequins of the fashion show. Fuchs pulled her to him and kissed her warmly.
“In two years, maybe less, we’ll have a decent base in orbit around Ceres with lunar-level gravity.”
Amanda gazed into her husband’s eyes, seeking something. “Kris Cardenas will be happy to hear it,” she said.
“Yes, Dr. Cardenas will be very pleased,” Fuchs agreed. “We should tell her as soon as we arrive.”
“Of course.”
“But you’re not even dressed yet!”
“It won’t take me a minute,” Amanda said. “It’s not like we’re going to a royal reception.” Then she added, “Or even to a party in Selene.”
Fuchs realized that Amanda wasn’t as happy as he’d thought she would be. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said, too quickly. “Not really.”
“Amanda, my darling, I know that when you say ‘not really’ you really mean ‘really.’ ”
She broke into a genuine smile. “You know me too well.”
“No, not too well. Just well enough.” He kissed her again, lightly this time. “Now, what’s wrong? Tell me, please.”
Leaning her cheek on his shoulder, Amanda said very softly, “I thought we’d be home by now, Lars.”
“Home?”
“Earth. Or even Selene. I never dreamt we’d stay in the Belt for three years.”
Suddenly Fuchs saw the worn, scuffed metal walls of this tiny coop of a cubicle, the narrow confines of the ship’s passageway and the other cramped compartments; smelled the stale air with its acrid tinge of ozone; felt the background vibrations that rattled through the ship every moment; consciously noticed the clatter of pumps and wheezing of the air fans. And he heard his own voice ask inanely:
“You’re not happy here?”
“Lars, I’m happy being with you. Wherever you are. You know that. But—”
“But you would rather be back on Earth. Or at Selene.”
“It’s better than living on a ship all the time.”
“He’s still at Selene.”
She pulled slightly away, looked straight into his deep-set eyes. “You mean Martin?”
“Humphries,” said Fuchs. “Who else?”
“He’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Doesn’t he?”
Now she looked truly alarmed. “Lars, you don’t think that Martin Humphries means anything to me?”
He felt his blood turning to ice. One look at Amanda’s innocent blue eyes and full-bosomed figure and any man would be wild to have her.
Coldly, calmly, he said, “I know that Martin Humphries wants you. I think that you married me to escape from him. I think—”
“Lars, that’s not true!”
“Isn’t it?”
“I love you! For god’s sake, don’t you know that? Don’t you understand it?”
The ice thawed. He realized that he held in his arms the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. That she had come to this desolate emptiness on the frontier of human habitation to be with him, to help him, to love him.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, feeling ashamed. “It’s just that… I love you so much…”
“And I love you, Lars. I truly do.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He shook his head ruefully. “Sometimes I wonder why you put up with me.”
She smiled and traced a fingertip across his stubborn, stubbled jaw. “Why not? You put up with me, don’t you?”
With a sigh, he admitted, “I thought we’d be back on Earth by now. I thought we’d be rich.”
“We are. Aren’t we?”
“On paper, perhaps. We’re better off than most of the other prospectors. At least we own this ship…”
His voice faltered. They both knew why. They owned Star-power because Martin Humphries had given it to them as a gift.
“But the bills do mount up,” Amanda said swiftly, trying to change the subject. “I was going over the accounts earlier. We can’t seem to stay ahead of the expenses.”
Fuchs made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “If you count how much we owe, we certainly are multimillionaires.”
It was a classic problem, they both knew. A prospector might find an asteroid worth hundreds of billions on paper, but the costs of mining the ores, transporting them back to the Earth/Moon region, refining them—the costs of food and fuel and air to breathe—were so high that the prospectors were almost always on the ragged edge of bankruptcy. Still they pushed on, always seeking that lode of wealth that would allow them to retire at last and live in luxury. Yet no matter how much wealth they actually found, hardly any of it stayed in their hands for long.
And I want to take ten percent of that from them, Fuchs said to himself. But it will be worth it! They’ll thank me for it, once it’s done.
“It’s not like we’re spendthrifts,” Amanda murmured. �
�We don’t throw the money away on frivolities.”
“I should never have brought you out here,” Fuchs said. “It was a mistake.”
“No!” she contradicted. “I want to be with you, Lars. Wherever you are.”
“This is no place for a woman such as you. You should be living comfortably, happily—”
She silenced him with a single slim finger across his thin lips. “I’m perfectly comfortable and happy here.”
“But you’d be happier on Earth. Or Selene.”
She hesitated a fraction of a second before replying, “Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Of course. But I’m not going back until I can give you all the things you deserve.”
“Oh, Lars, you’re all that I really want.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, then said, “Yes, perhaps. But I want more. Much more.”
Amanda said nothing.
Brightening, Fuchs said, “But as long as we’re out here, at least I can make a decent home for you in Ceres orbit!”
She smiled for her husband.
CHAPTER 3
Build a habitat big enough to house everyone living at Ceres?” asked Martin Humphries, incredulous.
“That’s what the rumble is,” said his aide, a winsome brunet with long-lashed almond eyes, full pouty lips, and a razor-sharp mind. Even though her image on his bedroom wallscreen showed only her head and shoulders and some background of her office, the sight of her set Humphries’s mind wandering.
Humphries leaned back in his wide, luxurious bed and tried to concentrate on business. He had started the morning with a vigorous tussle with a big-breasted computer analyst who nominally worked in Humphries Space Systems’ transportation department. She had spent the night in Humphries’s bed, yet even in the midst of their most passionate exertions he found himself closing his eyes and fantasizing about Amanda.
His bedmate was in the shower now, and all thoughts about her or Amanda were pushed aside as Humphries talked business with his aide, whose office was several levels up in Selene’s underground network of corridors.
“It sounds ridiculous,” Humphries said. “How reliable is this information?”
The aide let a wintry smile cross her tempting lips. “Quite reliable, sir. The prospectors are all talking about it, back and forth, from one ship to another. They’re chattering all across the Belt about it.”
“It still sounds ridiculous,” Humphries grumbled.
“Beg to differ, sir,” said the aide. Her words were deferential, but the expression on her face looked almost smug. “It makes a certain amount of sense.”
“Does it?”
“If they could build a habitat and spin it to produce an artificial gravity that approaches the grav field here on the Moon, it would be much healthier for the people living out there for months or years on end. Better for their bones and organs than sustained microgravity.”
“H’mmph.”
“In addition, sir, the habitat would have the same level of radiation shielding that the latest spacecraft have. Or even better, perhaps.”
“But the prospectors still have to go out into the Belt and claim the asteroids.”
“They are required by law to be present at an asteroid in order for their claim to be legal,” the aide agreed. “But from then on they can work the rock remotely.”
“Remotely? The distances are too big for remote operations. It takes hours for signals to cross the Belt.”
“From Ceres, sir,” the aide said stiffly, “roughly five thousand ore-bearing rocks are within one light-minute. That’s close enough for remote operations, don’t you think?”
Humphries didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting she was right. Instead he replied, “Well, we’d better be getting our own people out there claiming those asteroids before the rock rats snap them all up.”
“I’ll get on that right away,” said the aide, with enough of a smile curving her tempting lips to show that she had already thought of it. “And mining teams, too.”
“Mining operations aren’t as urgent as claiming the stupid rocks.”
“Understood,” she said. Then she added, “The board meeting is this morning at ten. You asked me to remind you.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know.” Without another word he tapped the keypad on the nightstand and her wallscreen image winked off.
Slumping deeper into the pillows, he heard the woman who’d spent the night in his bed singing in the shower. Off-key. Well, he said to himself, music isn’t her best talent.
Fuchs. The thought of Lars Fuchs pushed all other notions out of his mind. He’s out there with Amanda. I never realized she’d stay out in that wilderness with him. She doesn’t belong there, living in a crummy ship like some gypsy, some penniless drifter wandering out there in the empty wastes. She should be here, with me. This is where she belongs.
I made a mistake with him. I underestimated him. He’s no fool. He’s not just prospecting and mining. He’s building an empire out there. With Pancho Lane’s help.
The young woman appeared at the bathroom door, naked, her skin dewy and flawless. She posed enticingly and smiled for Humphries.
“Do we have time for one more? Are you up to it?” Her smile turned just a tad impudent.
Despite himself, Humphries felt stirred. But he said gruffly, “Not now. I’ve got work to do.”
And he thought, This twat could get possessive. I’d better transfer her to some job back on Earth.
Martin Humphries drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk, waiting for the lame-brained techs to make all the connections so the board meeting could get underway.
After all these years, he fumed to himself, you’d think that setting up a simple virtual reality meeting with a half-dozen idiots who refuse to leave Earth would be an easy matter. He hated waiting. He loathed being dependent on anyone or anything.
Humphries refused to leave Selene. His home was on the Moon, he told himself, not Earth. Everything he wanted was here in the underground city, and what wasn’t here could be shipped to Selene upon his order. He had fought Selene’s legal system to a standstill to prevent them from exiling him back to Earth.
Earth was crippled, dying. The greenhouse flooding had wiped out most coastal cities and turned hundreds of millions of people into homeless, starving wanderers. Farmlands withered in droughts while tropical diseases found fresh territories in what used to be temperate climates. Electrical power grids everywhere faltered and sputtered lamely. A new wave of terrorism unleashed man-made plagues while crumbling nations armed their missiles and threatened nuclear war.
It’s only a matter of time, Humphries knew. Despite all the efforts by the so-called world government, despite the New Morality’s fundamentalism and relentless grip on the political reins of power, despite the suspension of individual freedoms all across the globe, it’s only a matter of time until they start nuking each other into extinction.
Safer here on the Moon. Better to be away from all that death and destruction. What was it Dan Randolph used to say? When the going gets tough, the tough get going—to where the going is easier.
Humphries nodded to himself as he sat in his high-backed chair. He was alone in his sumptuous office, a mere twenty meters from his bedroom. Most of Humphries Space Systems’ board members also lived in Selene now, yet hardly any of them were allowed into the house. They stayed in their own homes, or came to the HSS offices up in the Grand Plaza tower.
Damned waste of time, Humphries grumbled to himself. The board’s just a rubber stamp, anyway. The only member who ever gave me any trouble was Dad, and he’s gone now. Probably trying to tell St. Peter how to run heaven. Or more likely arguing with Satan in hell.
“We’re ready now, sir,” said his aide’s silky voice in the stereo earplugs Humphries wore.
“Then do it.”
“Are your goggles in place, sir?”
“I’ve been wearing my contacts for damned near fifteen minutes!
”
“Of course.”
The young woman said nothing else. An instant later, the long conference table that existed only in Humphries’s computer chips sprang into existence before his eyes, each seat filled by a board member. Most of them looked slightly startled, but after a few seconds of turning in their chairs to see if everyone was there, they began chatting easily enough with one another. The half-dozen who were still on Earth were at a disadvantage, because it took nearly three seconds for signals to make the round-trip from Moon to Earth and back again. Humphries had no intention of holding up the proceedings for them; the six old farts had little power on the board, no need to worry about them. Of course, they each had a lot to say. Humphries wished he could silence them. Permanently.
He was in a foul mood by the time the meeting ended, cranky and tired. The meeting had accomplished nothing except very routine decisions that could have been made by a troop of baboons. Humphries called for his aide over the intercom phone. By the time he had gone to the lavatory, slipped his VR contacts out of his eyes, washed his face and combed his hair, she was standing in his office doorway, wearing a cool powder blue pantsuit accented with asteroidal sapphires.
Her name was Diane Verwoerd, born of a Dutch father and Indonesian mother, a teenaged fashion model in Amsterdam when her dark, sultry looks first attracted Humphries’s notice. She was a little on the skinny side, he thought, but he paid her way through law school anyway and watched her climb his corporate ladder without ever once succumbing to his attempted seductions. He liked her all the more for her independence; he could trust her, rely on her judgment, which was more than he could say about the women who did flop into his bed.
Besides, he thought, sooner or later she’ll give in. Even though she knows that’ll be the end of her job in my office, she’ll crawl into bed with me one of these nights. I just haven’t found the right motivation for her yet. It’s not money or status, I know that much about her. Maybe power. If it’s power she’s after, she could be dangerous. He grinned inwardly. Playing with nitroglycerine can be fun, sometimes.