The Precipice gt-8

by Ben Bova

  “That’s what he’s trying to do, all right.”

  “Dan, unless you’re going to pull some rabbit out of your hat at the meeting today, half your board is going to cash out.”

  Dan tried to grin. It came out more as a grimace. “Thanks for the warning, Hattie.

  I’ll see what kind of rabbits I’ve got for you.”

  “Good luck, Dan.”

  He went to the head of the conference table, tapped the computer stylus against the stainless steel water tumbler there, and called the meeting to order. The directors took their seats; before he sat down, Humphries complained of the glare from the window and asked that the curtains be closed.

  The agenda was brief. The treasurer’s report was gloomy. Income from the company’s final solar-power satellite construction project was tailing off as the project neared completion.

  “What about the bonus for finishing the job ahead of schedule?” asked a floridfaced graybeard. Dan thought of him as Santa Claus with hypertension. “That won’t be paid until the sunsat is beaming power to the ground,” said the treasurer.

  “Still, it’s a sizeable amount of money.”

  “It’ll keep us afloat for several months,” Dan said, waving the treasurer to silence.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we have to live off the income from existing operations. We have no new construction projects.”

  “That’s the last of the power satellites?” asked the board member that Dan had privately nicknamed Bug Eyes. His eyes were even wider than usual, as if this was the first time he’d heard the bad news.

  Dan clasped his hands as he answered carefully, “Although there are several orbital slots still available to accommodate solar power satellites, the GEC refuses to authorize any new construction.”

  “It’s those damned Chinese,” growled one of the older men. “China is not alone in this,” said a plump oriental woman sitting halfway down the table. Dan’s name for her was Mama-San. “Many nations prefer to build power stations on their own ground rather than buy electrical power from space.”

  “Even though the price for that electricity is more than twice as high as our price,” Dan pointed out. “And even higher, if you count the costs of sequestering their greenhouse gas emissions.”

  “Their governments subsidize the greenhouse amelioration,” the treasurer pointed out.

  “The people still have to pay for it, one way or another.”

  “What about beaming power from the Moon?”

  “You wouldn’t need the GEC to allocate any orbital slots for that, by god!” Santa Claus thumped the table with his fist.

  “It’s a possibility,” Dan admitted, “and we’ve talked about it with the officials of Selene—”

  “Selene doesn’t own the whole damned Moon! Go off and build solar energy farms in the Ocean of Storms. Cover the whole expanse with solar cells, for god’s sake!”

  “We’ve looked into it,” Dan said.

  “And?”

  “The problem is that no matter where the electricity is generated, it’s got to be beamed to the ground here on Earth.”

  “We know that!”

  Holding on to his temper, Dan went on, “The Pan-Asia bloc doesn’t want to import energy, whether it comes from orbit or the Moon or the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They won’t allow us to build receiving stations on their territory. The Europeans have gone along with them and, between the two blocs, they have the GEC all wrapped up.”

  “How can we generate electricity from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud?” asked Bug Eyes. “That’s quite a long distance away, isn’t it?”

  Give me strength, Dan prayed silently.

  He got them through the various departmental reports at last, fielding what seemed like seventeen thousand questions and suggestions — most of them pointless, several absolutely inane — and went on to new business. “At least here I have something positive to report,” Dan said, smiling genuinely. “Our prototype fusion drive has been assembled in lunar orbit and test-flown successfully.”

  “You are ready to go to the Asteroid Belt?” asked Mama-San.

  “As soon as we get the required crew-rating from the IAA.” From the far end of the table, Humphries spoke up. “We should have IAA approval in two to three weeks, barring any unforeseen setbacks.”

  “Setbacks?”

  “An accident,” Humphries said lightly. “Failure of the equipment, that sort of thing.”

  Or an IAA inspector on the take, Dan added silently. It happened only rarely, but it happened.

  “How much is this mission to the asteroids costing us?” asked the sprightly, dapper Swiss gentleman whom Dan had dubbed The Banker. “The mission is being fully funded by Starpower, Limited,” Dan replied.

  “Astro owns one-third of Starpower,” Humphries pointed out.

  “And you own the rest?” The Banker asked.

  “No, Humphries Space Systems owns a third, and the other third is owned by Selene.”

  “How can a city own part of a corporation?”

  “All the details are in the reports before you,” Dan said, tapping his stylus against the computer screen built into the tabletop.

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll explain it after the meeting,” Humphries said, full of graciousness.

  The Banker nodded but still looked unsatisfied.

  “The point is,” Dan told them, “that once this flight to the Asteroid Belt is accomplished, Astro’s stock is going to rise. We’ll have taken the first step in opening up a resource base that’s enormous — far bigger than all the mining operations on Earth.”

  “I can see that Starpower’s stock will go up,” Santa Claus challenged. “Astro’s will, too,” Dan said. “Because we have the corner on building the fusion engines.”

  “Not Humphries Space Systems?” They all turned to Humphries. He smiled gently, knowingly. “No, this is going to be Astro’s product. My corporation is merely supplying the capital, the funding.” Dan thought that Humphries looked like a cat eyeing a helpless canary.

  SELENE

  So there you have it,” Dan said to the IAA inspector. “The system performs as designed.” They were sitting in Starpower, Ltd’s one and only conference room, a tiny cubicle with an oval table that felt crowded even though only five people were sitting around it. The display screens on all four smartwalls showed data from the test flights of the fusion drive. The first half-dozen flights had been run remotely from the control center underground in Armstrong spaceport. The second string of six flights had been piloted by Pancho and Amanda. Pointing to the screens, Dan said, “We’ve demonstrated acceleration, thrust, specific impulse, controllability, shutdown and restart… every facet of the full test envelope.”

  The inspector nodded solemnly. He was a young man with Nordic fair skin and pale eyes, dressed rather somberly in a plain gray pullover shirt and darker slacks. His hair was a thick dirty-blond mop that he wore long, almost down to his shoulders. Despite his conservative outfit, though, he wore several small silver earrings, silver rings on his fingers, a silver bracelet on his right wrist, and a silver chain around his neck. There was a pendant of some sort hanging from the chain but most of it was hidden beneath his shirt.

  Pancho and Amanda sat flanking Dan; Humphries was on the other side of the small oval table, next to the inspector. For some long moments there was silence in the conference room. Dan could hear the background hum of the electrical equipment and the soft breath of the air circulation fans. At last, Dan asked, “Well, what do you think, Mr. Greenleaf?”

  “Dr. Greenleaf,” the IAA inspector replied. “I have a doctorate in sociology.” Dan felt his brows hike up. Why would the IAA send a sociologist to check out a new spacecraft propulsion system? And why this particular little prig of a sociologist?

  Greenleaf steepled his fingers in front of him. “You’re surprised that a sociologist is evaluating your test data?”

  “Well… yes, actually I am,” Dan said, feeli
ng decidedly uncomfortable.

  “I can assure you, Mr. Randolph—”

  “Dan.”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Randolph, that your data has been examined by the best engineers and physical scientists that the IAA has at its command,” Greenleaf said. “We are not taking your application lightly.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply anything like that,” Dan said, thinking, This guy is out for blood.

  Greenleaf shifted his gaze from Dan to the wall screen before him. “I can see that your device has performed within your design criteria quite reliably.”

  “Good,” said Dan, relieved.

  “Except in one respect,” Greenleaf went on.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Long-term reliability,” said Greenleaf. “The longest flight in your testing program was a mere two weeks, and even then it was at low power.”

  “I wouldn’t call a constant acceleration of one-tenth g low power,” Dan said, testily. “And the IAA seemed very happy with the data we got from that test flight.”

  Pancho and Amanda had flown the test rig on a parabolic trajectory that took them around Venus. The ship carried a full panoply of instrumentation for making observations of the planet as it flew by a scant thousand kilometers above Venus’s glowing clouds. A team of planetary astronomers had provided the equipment and monitored the flight, all of them from universities that belonged to the IAA, all of them ecstatically happy and grateful for the data that the flight brought back — for free.

  “Two weeks is not a sufficient endurance test,” Greenleaf said flatly.

  Pancho snapped, “It’s long enough to get us to the Belt.”

  “Under full power.”

  “What else?”

  “I cannot authorize a crewed flight to the Asteroid Belt until you have demonstrated that your propulsion system can operate reliably at full power for the time it would take to complete the mission.”

  Dan felt burning anger rising in his throat. Pancho looked as if she wanted to reach across the table and sock the guy. But then he realized that Amanda was looking not at Greenleaf, but at Humphries, who sat calmly in his chair, his face as expressionless as a professional card shark, his hands in his lap. “Even your flight past Venus was an infraction of IAA regulations,” Greenleaf said, as if justifying himself.

  “We filed the flight plan with the IAA,” Dan responded hotly.

  “But you didn’t wait for authorization, did you?”

  “It was a test flight, dammit!”

  Greenleaf’s face flashed red. And Dan finally realized what he was up against. Oh, by all the saints in New Orleans, he said to himself, he’s a New Morality bigot. They’ve infiltrated the IAA.

  “I am not going to argue with you,” Greenleaf said flatly. “You will be required to fly your device for four weeks at full power before you can receive approval for a crewed mission to the Asteroid Belt.”

  He pushed his chair back and got to his feet, stumbling in the low lunar gravity despite the weighted boots he wore.

  “Four weeks!” Dan blurted. “We can fly to the Belt and back in four weeks under full power.”

  “Then do so,” said Greenleaf, smugly. “But do it under remote control. Without any crew.”

  He headed for the door, leaving Dan sitting at the table, angry, stunned, and feeling betrayed.

  “I’d better go after him,” Humphries said, getting up from his chair. “We don’t want him angry at us.”

  “Why the hell not?” Dan grumbled.

  Humphries left the conference room. Dan sagged back in his chair. “Flying an uncrewed mission to the Belt doesn’t make a dime’s worth of sense,” he muttered. “It’s just an exercise that costs us four weeks’ time and almost as much money as a crewed mission.”

  Pancho said, “Four weeks isn’t so bad. Is it?”

  “It’s four weeks closer to bankruptcy, kid. Four weeks closer to letting that Humper take over my company.”

  In a very small voice, Amanda said, “It’s my fault, actually.”

  Dan looked at her.

  “Martin…” she hesitated, then said, “Martin doesn’t want me to go on the mission.

  I’m sure he’s had some influence on Dr. Greenleaf’s position.”

  Pancho explained, “He’s bonkers about Mandy.”

  Dan asked, “And how do you feel about him, Amanda?”

  “Trapped,” she replied immediately. “I feel as though there’s nowhere on Earth I can go to get away from him. Or the Moon, for that matter. I feel like a trapped animal.”

  Dan left the two women and went to his office. As he slipped into his desk chair he commanded the phone to locate his chief counsel, the woman who headed Astro’s corporate legal department.

  The phone computer system found her on the ski slopes in Nepal. Her image was faint and wavered noticeably. She must be holding her wrist communicator in front of her face, Dan thought. He could see a bit of utterly blue sky behind her. She was in ski togs, polarized sun goggles pushed up on her forehead, and not at all happy about being buzzed by the boss.

  “What in the nine billion names of God are you doing in Nepal?” Dan asked, irritated. Then he had to sit, fuming, for the few seconds it took for his message to reach the lawyer and her reply to get back to him.

  “Trying to get in some skiing while there’s still snow left,” she snapped, equally irked.

  “Skiing?”

  “I do get some vacation time now and then,” she said, after the usual pause. “This is the first time I’ve taken any since lord knows when.” Through gritted teeth, Dan explained the IAA inspector’s decision to her. “You could appeal,” she said, once she understood the situation, “but that would take longer than running the uncrewed test flight he wants you to do.”

  “Couldn’t we ask for another hearing, a different inspector?” Dan demanded. “This guy’s a New Morality fanatic and they’re dead-set against space exploration.” The lawyer’s face hardened when she heard Dan’s words. “Mr. Randolph,” she said, “I am a member of the New Morality and I’m not a fanatic. Nor am I against space exploration.”

  Feeling surrounded by enemies, Dan said, “Okay, okay. So I exaggerated.”

  She said nothing.

  “Can we claim an asteroid with an uncrewed spacecraft?”

  “No one can claim ownership of any body in space,” her reply came back. It was what Dan had expected. Then she went on, “No planet, moon, comet, asteroid — no celestial body of any kind. That’s been international law since the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and subsequent amendments and protocols.” Trust a lawyer to use two dozen words when one will do, Dan groused to himself. She went on, “Individuals are allowed to have exclusive use of part or all of a celestial body, for the purpose of establishing a human habitation or extracting natural resources. In that instance, corporations are regarded as individuals.”

  “So could Astro Corporation claim use of an asteroid that an uncrewed spacecraft rendezvouses with?”

  Nearly three seconds later she replied, “No. Such a claim can only be made by humans on the scene of the claim itself.”

  “But the double-dipped spacecraft would be under human control, remotely, from Selene.”

  Again the lag, and again the answer, “No, Dan. It’s not allowed. Otherwise corporations would be able to send miniprobes all over the solar system and claim everything in sight! It would be like the efforts to patent segments of DNA and living organisms, back around the turn of the century.”

  “So an uncrewed test flight wouldn’t do us any good at all,” he said. Once she heard his question, the lawyer answered, “That’s a decision that you’ll have to make, Dan. I’m just a lawyer; you’re the CEO.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Dan muttered.

  Martin Humphries had not bothered to chase after the IAA inspector. What was the point? The young bureaucrat had done precisely what Humphries had wanted. Barely able to hide his satisfaction, he rode the moving stairs down to his
home deep below the Moon’s surface.

  It’s all working out very neatly, he congratulated himself as he walked along the corridor toward the cavern. Just enough delay to break Randolph’s back. Astro’s stock is in the toilet, and the other major shareholders will be glad to sell once they hear that the asteroid mission has to be postponed for more testing. By the time they finally get the mission going, I’ll own Astro and Dan Randolph will be out on his ass.

  And better yet, he thought, once I’m in charge I’ll make certain that Amanda stays here on the ground. With me.

  LUNAR ORBIT

  She looks better now, doesn’t she?” Dan asked as their jumper coasted toward the fusion-powered spacecraft. Pancho nodded her agreement. The ship was still utilitarian, not sleek, but now the starkness of the bare engine system by itself was dwarfed by six huge, gleaming spherical propellant tanks. Big white letters stenciled along the cylindrical crew module identified the craft as STARPOWER 1; the logos of Astro Corporation, Humphries Space Systems and Selene adorned one of the propellant tanks. The jumper was little more than an ordinary lunar transfer buggy with an extra set of tankage and a bigger rocket engine for ascents from the Moon’s surface into lunar orbit and descents back to the ground again. Dan and Pancho wore tan Astro coveralls as they rode in the bulbous glassteel crew module, standing with their booted feet anchored in floor loops because seats were not needed for this brief, low-g flight. An instrument podium rose at the front of the module, its controls standing unused, since the vessel was being handled by the flight controllers back at Armstrong. Still, Dan felt good that Pancho was a qualified pilot. You never know, he thought.

  As they approached the fusion-powered vessel, Pancho whistled at the size of the propellant tanks. “That’s a lot of fuel.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dan said ruefully. “I’ve had to default on two helium-three contracts with Earthside power utilities to fill those double-damned tanks.”

  “Default?”