The Precipice gt-8
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Nodding, Dan said grimly, “Two steps closer to bankruptcy.”
Pancho decided to change the subject slightly.
“So what’ve you decided to do about the long-duration test?” Pancho asked.
Dan shook his head. “I’ve spent the past four days pulling every wire I know.”
“And?”
“Nothing so far. Zip. Nobody’s going to lift a finger to go against the IAA.”
“So you’ll have to do the test flight?”
Running a finger across his chin, Dan said reluctantly, “Looks that way.”
“Then why are we takin’ this ride?”
The shadow of a smile crossed Dan’s face. He was thinking of the time, many years earlier, when he had briefly become a privateer, a pirate, hijacking uncrewed spacecraft for their cargoes of ore. It had started as a desperation ploy, the only way a frustrated Dan Randolph could force open the space markets that had been closed by monopolists. He had won his war against monopoly and opened the solar system to free competition among individuals, corporations and governments. But at a price. His smile faded as he remembered the people who had died fighting that brief, unheralded war. He himself had come to within a whisker of being killed.
“So?” Pancho prodded, “Is this a joyride or what?”
Putting his thoughts of the past behind him, Dan replied, “I want to see the crew module for myself. And we’re going to meet the planetary geologist that Zack Freiberg’s picked out for us.”
“The asteroid specialist?”
“Yep. He’s aboard the ship now. Came up to Selene yesterday and went straight to the ship. He slept aboard last night.”
Pancho huffed. “Eager beaver. College kid, I bet.”
“He’s got a mint-new degree from Zurich Polytech.”
The flight controllers brought the jumper to a smooth rendezvous with Starpower 1. While Dan and Pancho stood watching, the little transfer buggy linked its airlock adapter section to the hatch of the bigger vessel. They floated through the womb-like adapter to the fusion ship’s airlock hatch.
The airlock opened into the midsection of the crew module. To their left, Dan saw the accordion-fold doors of a half-dozen privacy compartments lining the passageway. Further up were the galley, a wardroom with a table and six small but plush-looking chairs, and — past an open hatch — the bridge. To their right was the lavatory and a closed hatch that led to the equipment and storage bays. Dan headed left, toward the galley and the bridge.
“Chairs?” Pancho asked, looking puzzled, as they pushed weightlessly past the wardroom, floating a few centimeters above the deck’s carpeting. “You’ll be accelerating or decelerating most of the way,” Dan pointed out. “You won’t be spending much time in zero-g.”
She nodded, looking disappointed with herself. “I knew that; it just didn’t latch.” Dan understood how she felt. He’d seen the layout of the crew module hundreds of times, viewed three-d mockups and even walked through virtual reality simulations. But being in the real thing was different. He could smell the newness of the metal and fabric; he could reach his hand up and run his fingers along the plastic panels of the overhead. The bridge looked small, but shining and already humming with electrical power.
“Where’s our college boy?” Pancho asked, looking around.
“That would be me, I suppose,” said a reedy voice from behind them. Turning, Dan saw a husky-looking young man gripping the edges of the open hatch with both hands. He was a shade shorter than Dan, but broad in the shoulders, with a thick barrel chest. The build of a wrestler. His face was broad, too: a heavy jaw with wide, thin lips and small, deepset eyes. His hair was cropped so close to his skull that Dan couldn’t be sure of its true color. He wore a small glittering stone in his left ear-lobe, diamond or zircon or glass, Dan could not tell. “I heard you enter. I was in the sensor bay, checking on the equipment,” he said in a flat midwestern American accent, pronounced so precisely that he had to have learned it in a foreign school.
“Oh,” said Pancho.
“I am Lars Fuchs,” he said, extending his hand to Dan. “You must be Mr.
Randolph.”
“Pleased to meet you, Dr. Fuchs.” Fuchs’s hand engulfed his own. The young man’s grip was strong, firm. “This is Pancho Lane,” Dan went on. “She’ll be our pilot on the flight.”
Fuchs dipped his chin slightly. “Ms. Lane. And, sir, I am not Dr. Fuchs. Not yet.”
“That’s okay. Zack Freiberg recommends you highly.”
“I am very grateful to Doctor Professor Freiberg. He has been very helpful to me.”
“And my name is Dan. If you call me Mr. Randolph it’ll make me feel like an old man.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to offend you, sir!” Fuchs said, genuinely alarmed.
“Just call me Dan.”
“Yes, sir, of course. And you must call me Lars.” Turning to Pancho, he added, “Both of you.”
“That’s a deal, Lars,” said Pancho, sticking out her hand. Fuchs took it gingerly, as if not quite sure what to do. “Pancho is a woman’s name in America?”
She laughed. “It’s this woman’s name, Lars old buddy.”
Smiling uneasily, Fuchs said, “Pancho,” as if testing out the name. “You handle weightlessness very well,” Dan said. “From what Zack told me, this is your first time off-Earth.”
Fuchs said. “Thank you, sir… Dan. I came up last night so I could adapt myself to microgravity before you arrived here.”
Pancho smiled sympathetically. “Spent the night makin’ love to the toilet, huh?”
Looking flustered, Fuchs said, “I did retch a few times, yes.”
“Ever’body does, Lars,” she said. “Nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“I am not ashamed,” he said, his chin rising a notch.
Dan moved between them. “Have you picked out which cabin you want for yourself? Since you were first aboard you get first pick.”
“Hey,” Pancho griped, “I’ve been aboard this buggy before, you know. So has Amanda.”
“The privacy compartments are all exactly alike,” Fuchs said. “It doesn’t matter which one I get.”
“I’ll take the last one on the left,” Dan said, peering down the passageway that ran the length of the module. “It’s closest to the lav.”
“You?” Pancho looked surprised. “Since when are you comin’ on the mission?”
“Since about four days ago,” Dan said. “That’s when I made up my mind… about a lot of things.”
PELICAN BAR
“So here’s my plan,” Dan said, with a grin. He and Pancho were hunched over one of the postage-stamp-sized tables in the farthest corner of the Pelican bar, away from the buzzing conversations and bursts of laughter from the crowd standing at the bar itself. Their heads were almost touching, leaning together like a pair of conspirators.
Which they were. Inwardly, Dan marveled at how good he felt. Free. Happy, almost. The double-damned bureaucrats have tried to tie me up in knots. Humphries is behind it all, playing along with the IAA and those New Morality bigots. Those uptight psalm-singers don’t want us to reach the asteroids. They like the Earth just the way it is: miserable, hungry, desperate for the kind of order and control that the New Morality offers. This greenhouse warming is a blessing for them, the wrath of God smiting the unbelievers. Anything we do to try to help alleviate it, they see as a threat to their power.
Vaguely, Dan recalled from his childhood history lessons something about a group called the Nazis, back in the twentieth century. They came to power because there was an economic depression and people needed jobs and food. If he remembered his history lessons correctly.
So the New Morality has its tentacles into the IAA now, Dan thought. And the GEC too, I’ll bet. And Humphries is playing them all like a symphony orchestra, using them to stymie me long enough so he can grab Astro from me. Well, it’s not going to be that easy, partner. “What’s so funny?” Pancho asked, looking puzzled. “Funny?”
Dan took a sip of his brandy and dry, then said, “Pancho, I’ve always said that when the going gets tough, the tough get going — to where the going’s easier.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“So I’m going with you.”
“You?”
“Yep.”
“To the Belt.”
“You need a flight engineer. I know the ship’s systems as well as anybody.”
“Lordy-lord,” Pancho muttered.
“I’m still a qualified astronaut. I’m going with you.”
“But not until we do the uncrewed test flight,” she said, reaching for her beer. Leaning across the table even closer to her, Dan said in a hoarse whisper, “Screw the test flight. We’re going to the Belt. You, Amanda, Fuchs and me.” Pancho nearly choked on her mouthful of beer. She sputtered, coughed, then finally asked, “What’re you drinkin’, boss?”
Happy as a pirate on the open sea, Dan said, “We’ll let ’em think we’re doing exactly what they’ve told us to do, except that the four of us will happen to be aboard the bird when she breaks orbit.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. We’ll calculate a new flight plan once we’re underway. Instead of accelerating at one-sixth g, as we’ve planned, we’ll goose her up to one-third g and cut the flight time by more than half.”
Pancho looked unconvinced. “You better bring an astrogator aboard.”
“Nope.” Pointing a finger at her, Dan said, “You’re it, kid. You and Amanda. I’m not bringing anybody into this that we don’t absolutely need.”
“I’m not so sure about this,” Pancho said warily.
“Don’t go chicken on me, kid,” Dan said. “You two have been studying this pointand-shoot technique for a lot of weeks. If you can’t do it, I’ve been wasting money on you.”
“I can do it,” Pancho said immediately.
“Okay, then.”
“I’d just feel better if you had a real expert on board.”
“No experts. Nobody else except the four of us. I don’t want anybody tipped off about this. And that includes Humphries.”
Pancho waved a hand nonchalantly. “He hasn’t said a word to me since we moved Sis.”
“I don’t think he knows were we stashed her,” Dan said, reaching for his drink.
“He knows about ever’thing.”
“Not this flight,” Dan said firmly. “Nobody is going to know about this. Understand me? Don’t even tell Amanda or Fuchs. This is just between you and me, kid.”
“And the flight controllers,” Pancho muttered.
“What?”
“How’re you goin’ to get the flight controllers to go along with this? You can’t just waltz aboard the Starpower and light her up without them knowin’ it. Hell’s bells, Dan, you won’t even be able to hop up to the ship if they don’t let you have a jumper and give you clearance for takeoff.”
Sipping at his brandy-laced ginger beer, Dan admitted, “That’s a problem I haven’t worked out yet.”
“It’s a toughie.”
“Yep, it is,” Dan said, unable to suppress a grin.
Pancho shook her head disapprovingly. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Why not?” Dan replied. “The world’s going to hell in a handbasket, the New Morality is taking over the government, Humphries is trying to screw me out of my own company — what could be more fun than hijacking my own spacecraft and riding it out to the Belt?”
“That’s weird,” Pancho murmured.
Dan saw that his glass was empty. He pressed the button set into the table’s edge to summon one of the squat little robots trundling through the crowd. “Don’t worry about the flight controllers,” he said casually. “We’ll figure out a way around them.”
“We?”
“You and me.”
“Hey, boss, I’m a pilot, not a woman of intrigue.”
“You made a pretty good spy.”
“I was lousy at it and we both know it.”
“You hacked into Humphries’s files.”
“And he found out about it in half a minute, just about.”
“We’ll think of something,” Dan said.
Pancho nodded, then realized that she had already thought of something.
“I’ll fix the flight controllers,” she said.
“Really?” Dan’s brows rose. “How?”
“Better that you don’t know boss. Just let me do it my way.”
Dan looked skeptical, but he shrugged and said nothing.
MISSION CONTROL CENTER
The timing had to be just right.
Nervous despite being invisible, Pancho edged cautiously into the Armstrong spaceport’s mission control center. It was nearly two a. m. The center was quiet, only two controllers on duty and both of them were relaxed, one leaning back in his chair while the other poured coffee at the little hotplate off by the door to the lav. Pancho hadn’t told anyone about this caper. She thought it best to borrow the stealth suit and get the job done without bringing anyone else into the picture, not even Dan Randolph. The fewer people who knew about the stealth suit, the better. No landings or takeoffs were scheduled at this hour; the skeleton crew was in the control center strictly because prudent regulations required that the center always be manned, in case an emergency cropped up.
How could there be an emergency? Pancho asked herself as she slowly tiptoed to the console farthest from those being used by the pair of controllers. Spacecraft don’t just zoom in on the spur of the moment; even a max-thrust flight from one of the space stations orbiting Earth takes six hours to reach the Moon. Plenty time to rouse the whole crew of controllers if they were needed. The only possible emergency would be if one of the teams at a remote outpost on the lunar surface ran into a jam. Maybe if an astronomer at the Farside Observatory suddenly developed a case of appendicitis and their radio was out so they sent the poor boob on a ballistic lob to Selene without being able to alert anybody first. That was just about the only emergency Pancho could think of.
Or if an invisible woman sneaked in and jiggered the flight schedule for tomorrow’s launches. No, Pancho thought, not tomorrow’s. It’s already past two in the morning. Today’s schedule.
She sat at one of the unattended consoles, as far from the human controllers as possible, and waited for the woman at the coffee urn to return to her post. The overweight guy sitting at his console looked half asleep, feet up on the consoles, eyes closed, a pair of earphones clamped over his head. They weren’t the regulation earphones, either. The guy was listening to music; Pancho could see the rhythmic bobbing of his head.
Hope it’s a lullaby, she said to herself.
The woman controller took a sip of her coffee and made a sour face. Then she looked straight at Pancho. Inside the stealth suit, Pancho froze. The moment passed. The woman’s gaze shifted and she started back toward her console, her steaming coffee mug in one hand. Pancho began to breathe again. The woman came back to her console, next to the guy, gave him a disapproving frown, then sat down and clapped a regulation earphone and pin-mike set to her head.
Good, thought Pancho. The big chamber was too quiet to suit her. Normally the rows of consoles would be filled with controllers talking to the traffic coming in and out of Selene. There would be plenty of background chatter to hide her pecking at a keyboard. But then there wouldn’t be any empty consoles to use; they’d all be occupied during normal working hours.
Pancho tentatively tapped on the keyboard before her, once to silence the voice system, then again to call up the status board. The woman at her console did not hear the faint clicks. Or if she did, she paid no notice. The guy was definitely asleep, Pancho thought, his head lolling on his shoulders now, his bulging belly rising and falling in deep, slow breathing.
Only one craft on the schedule, Pancho saw from the status display. Due to land in
five hours. Plenty of time for her to do what she had to and get out before more controllers began filing in for the morning shift.
Slowly, cautiously, with one eye on the bored woman sitting on the other side of the room, Pancho tapped out a set of instructions for the morning’s schedule. Then she got up, quietly left the control center, and returned the stealth suit to Ike Walton’s locker up in the storage area near the catacombs. She wondered if she’d ever need it again. Maybe I ought to keep it, she thought. But then Ike would discover it was gone, sooner or later, and that would raise a stink. Better to let it stay here and just hope Ike doesn’t change the combination on the lock. Sudden panic hit Pancho. Elly was not in the locker, where she had left her. Pancho had thought that the krait would snooze away in the chilly air of the storage area; she had fed Elly a mouse only a day earlier, and that usually left the snake in a pleasantly drowsy state of digestion. But moving her to Walton’s locker must have disturbed Elly’s torpor. The snake had slithered through one of the air slits in the bottom of the locker door.
For several frantic minutes Pancho searched for the krait. She found her at last, curled on the floor in front of a heating vent. But when she tried to pick Elly up, the krait reared and hissed at her.
Pancho got down on both knees and frowned at the snake. “Don’t you go hissy on me,” she said sternly. “I know I disturbed your nap, but that’s no reason to get sore.”
The snake’s tongue flicked in and out, in and out.
“That’s right, take a good sniff. It’s me, and if you’ll just calm yourself down, I’ll wrap you around my nice warm ankle and we can get back home. Okay?” Elly relaxed and sank back into a tight little coil of glittering blue. Pancho slowly extended her hand and when Elly didn’t react, she stroked the krait’s head gently with one finger.
“Come on, girl,” she crooned, “we’re gonna take you home where you can sleep nice and comfy.”
But not for long, Pancho added silently.
HUMPHRIES TRUST RESEARCH CENTER
Martin Humphries was awakened from a dream about Amanda by the insistent shrill of his personal phone.