The Precipice gt-8

by Ben Bova

  “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 tenmeter 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 swimm
ing 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.