"Welcome, Don Aeneas," Miguel said.
Aeneas frowned. "I ask for no titles."
"Those who do do not often deserve them. It would be enough that Doña Laura says you are a good man; but I have reason to know. You do not remember me, Don Aeneas."
"No."
"It was here. Within a kilometer. You gave me a shotgun."
"Oh—the vaquero. You helped us with the Jeep."
"Si. You never returned. There was no reason why you should. But Doña Laura came here the year after you left, and I have been with her ever since."
"And why the titles?"
Miguel shrugged. "I prefer to serve those I believe may deserve them. I have no education, Don Aeneas. I am not a man who benefits from schools. But my sons will never row boats for drunken Americans."
"I see."
"I hope you see. My sons tell me I am a peasant, and they are right. They will not be peasants, and I am happy for them. I hope they will be as happy in their work as I am."
"I of all people should understand, Miguel." Aeneas found the bar and poured a tall drink for himself. Miguel accepted beer. They drank deeply. "She does many things she cannot be proud of?" Aeneas asked.
Miguel spread his hands. "You must ask her."
"I have."
Another shrug. "Some men take pride in acts that make others die of shame. Power like hers must not be judged by men like me."
"But it must be!" Aeneas shouted.
Miguel shrugged and said nothing.
The weeks passed. Aeneas learned that Hansen Enterprises reached places even he'd never suspected. Mines, factories, shipping—everywhere she was entangled with other international firms in enterprises so scattered that no one could ever understand them all. Most were operated by managers, and she saw only summaries of results; and even those took time she barely had.
"You'll kill yourself," Aeneas said.
"I don't work any harder than you did."
"No." But I worked for—for what? The memory of those years was slipping away from him. He recalled the fanatical young man he'd been, but he saw him almost as a stranger. I have no duties, he told himself. I can relax. But he could not. He buried himself in her reports.
"Why do you do it?" he asked another time. "Bribes to keep your mines open. Your agents block labor legislation, or bribe officials not to enforce the laws . . . ."
"Do you think they are good laws? Do you like this fine net of regulations that is settling over the earth?"
He had no answer to that. "Why do you do it?" he asked again. "You'll never need money. You couldn't spend what you have if you devoted your life to it."
"Heimdall absorbs everything . . . ."
"It makes money too!"
"Does it?" she asked. "Barely. Aeneas, even I couldn't have built the power plants. I don't own them, I'm only part of a syndicate. Without the power plants we can't launch, and it takes nearly everything I make to keep up the interest payments on those power installations."
He looked closer at the reports, then, and saw that it was true. Between the power plants and the laser launchers there was so much capital investment that it wouldn't be paid off for fifty years. There were other places the syndicate could have invested its money, operations with a far higher immediate profit; and Laurie Jo had to make up the difference. If she ever failed, she'd lose control.
"Now do you see?" she asked. "In the long run, Heimdall has a greater potential than any investment ever made; but it took so much capital—"
"You're at the thin edge," Aeneas said wonderingly. "It wouldn't take much and you'd lose all this."
"Yes. I'd be a very rich lady; but I wouldn't be Laurie Jo Hansen any longer. I wouldn't have the power." Without the power of Hansen Enterprises—what?
"Heimdall would still exist. It's already profitable. It would ruin your partners to shut it down."
"Certainly. Or they can sell it. Who would you like to see have it, Aeneas? A hundred nations would like to own my bridge to the stars. The United States perhaps? The Equity Trust? Another company? It would be damn easy to get out from under all this and enjoy myself again!" She had become shrill; but whether because of regret at what she'd paid to hold this empire, or terror at the thought of losing it, Aeneas didn't know. He thought it was both. "There's more," she said. "You've seen the books."
"Yes. You're investing in expansions of Heimdall. Sending up mass instead of taking out profits."
She smiled. He hadn't spent long examining her accounts; but he hadn't disappointed her. "Have you wondered why I built the launching station in Baja?" she asked. "It wasn't just sentiment, or politics. We're on a Tropic—and that makes it easier to launch into an ecliptic orbit. Heimdall was the god who guarded the bridge to the stars, but my Heimdall will build one!"
He looked up in wonder. "Where are you sending them?" he asked.
"Not sending. Going. An interplanetary explorer ship. And a Moon colony. A Moon colony can be self-supporting. It can support exploration of the other planets. It will be free of Earth and everything here!"
"Even you don't have that much money."
"I will have. Heimdall will make it for me."
"But you're very near losing it. Your deliveries are behind schedule. Haven't you risked everything on some shaky technology?"
The terror crept around her eyes again, but her voice was firm. She had no regrets. "I had to. And it wasn't technology that failed me. Aeneas, how do you keep discipline in space?"
"I never thought about it—how does any company control workers? Hire people who like to work, and pay them well to do it."
"And if someone pays agents to sabotage your factories? There are no laws in space, Aeneas. Captain Shorey has managed to keep things under control, but only barely. Most of our people are loyal—but some others slip through, and the worst we can do to them is send them down without pay. Suppose they've been offered higher pay to make mistakes aboard Heimdall? What can I do to them? Mexican courts won't prosecute non-Mexicans for crimes in space. American courts won't prosecute at all without trials and witnesses. If I have to send half a crew down to sit around a courtroom for years, I'm ruined anyway."
She came to the window next to him and looked out into the night. "But we're winning. We will win. Heimdall. Valkyrie. The Moon and planets, Aeneas. And now you know it all."
They were in the hacienda atop Finisterre, the rocky hills that overlook the town of Cabo San Lucas. On one side were the lights of the town; on the other, grey water with flashing fluorescent whitecaps. Ships moved in the harbor even this late at night, and factory lights were ablaze below.
Out beyond, in the dark of the inland hills, a green light stabbed upward; more capsules fired into orbit, raw materials for the factories in the satellite, structural materials for expansion, fuel, oxygen, the expendables that ate so much profit despite recycling. The sun was long over the horizon and Heimdall wouldn't be visible; but soon it would be coming overhead. The supply pods were always as close to the satellite as her engineers dared.
"It's time for our talk, then," Aeneas said. "Is there anything to talk about? You're what I've opposed all my life."
"Yes. But you love me. And if you fight me—who are you fighting for?"
He didn't answer.
"I love you, Aeneas. I always have, and you've always known it. Tell me what to do."
"Will you—would you throw all this away if I asked you to?"
"I don't know. Will you ask it? Remember, Aeneas. You can't destroy power. You can fragment mine, but someone else will move into the vacuum. Power doesn't vanish."
"No." And she had a dream. A dream that had been his.
"You don't trust me with all this. Would you trust yourself?"
"No."
"Then someone else. Who?"
"No one, of course."
There was no change in her pose or voice, but he sensed triumph.
"Then tell me what I should do," she said.
This time she meant
it. He felt that whatever he said, she'd do. She knew him well. She was taking no chances, because she knew what he must say. Forty billion dollars was ten dollars for every human on Earth—or the key to the planets. "I can't."
"Then join me. I need you."
"Yes."
There were no longer barriers, and sixteen years vanished as if they'd never been.
For a week there were only the two of them—and Miguel, silent, invisibly near. They slipped away from Cabo San Lucas and its power plants and factories, to find still lonely beaches where they swam to brilliant coral reefs. Afterwards they made love on the sand and desperately tried to forget the years they'd wasted.
One week and a little more; and then the phones in the camper buzzed insistently and they had to return.
She told him what she could as they drove back. "Captain Shorey has been all the authority I have up there," she said. "The station depends on the ground launching system to survive, but there's nothing I can do to control it."
"You think there's mutiny on Heimdall?" Aeneas asked incredulously.
"I don't know. I only know Shorey is dead, and Herman Eliot says he can't meet the manufacturing schedule. Without the finished goods from the station I can't pay the syndicate. I'll lose Heimdall."
There would be any number of people who might benefit from that. With over a hundred men and women in space, the odds were good that several organizations had agents aboard the satellite factory complex. "How do you select crew for Heimdall?" Aeneas asked.
The Jeep camper bounced across rutted roads toward the main highway. Ten kilometers ahead they'd meet a helicopter.
"I try to pick them myself," she said. "The pay is good, of course. Almost two hundred thousand dollars at the end of a two-year tour in space. We have plenty of volunteers, but not just for the money. I choose generalists, adaptable people, and I try to keep a balance between the intellectuals and factory people. There's a lot of construction work, and production runs mean repetitive labor that bores the big brains. I also look for people who might want to go on to the Moon colony, or be crew aboard Valkyrie. So far it's worked, but Captain Shorey was the key to it. Now he's gone."
"Tell me about Herman Eliot."
"He's been second in command. A mechanical genius. He's in charge of production and research."
"Do you think he's loyal to you?"
"I'm almost sure of it. He wants to go with Valkyrie. But he didn't tell the ground station much. Maybe he'll tell me directly. Aeneas, if I don't keep the manufacturing schedule, I'll lose the station and everything else!" She was near panic; and he'd never seen her frightened before. It upset him more than he'd thought possible.
The Jeep bounced through a dust bowl laced with a myriad of ruts. Wind blew a torrent of fine powder across the windshield, and Miguel had to start the wipers to remove it. The dust ran like rivulets of water.
Dr. Herman Eliot was nervous. It came through in his voice as he reported to Laurie Jo. "We have a nasty situation up here, Miss Hansen. Captain Shorey was murdered and the crew knows it. There's been sabotage all along, now this. Some of the engineers are saying that the Equity Trust is going to gain control of this satellite, and they'll remember who their friends were. There's even talk that people who won't help the Equity cause will be stranded, or have accidents on reentry."
"Tell them Equity will never control Heimdall!" Laurie Jo shouted into the microphone.
"I can tell them, but will they believe it? I repeat, Miss Hansen, Captain Shorey was murdered, and we all know there's no chance the killer will be punished. Who's next?"
"Do you know who did it?"
"I'm fairly sure it was an engineer named Martin Holloway."
"If you know he killed the captain, why don't you do something?" Laurie Jo demanded.
"Do what? I'm no policeman. Suppose we put Holloway under arrest. Then what? We have no jails here, and there's no court that will take jurisdiction over him. I doubt he was the only man involved in this; what if he won't go when I order him down? It could start a mutiny. The crew thinks Equity will gain control here; nobody wants that, but there aren't many who'll risk their necks for a lost cause."
"If you meet the delivery schedules, I keep Heimdall! Don't they know that?"
"If you were only fighting the Equity Trust, Miss Hansen, we could believe you'd win. But not against the United States as well."
She was silent for a long time. Since the United States had thrown away her investments in space, or had them stolen and sold out by corruption, Heimdall had been the key to regaining that position . . . . "Will you try?" she asked.
"I'll do what I can," Eliot said. The speaker went dead.
Tears welled at the corners of Laurie Jo's eyes, but her voice was firm. "I'll go up there myself with a squad of company police!"
Aeneas shook his head. "If things are that bad, they won't even meet your capsule; you can't afford to provoke an open break. Besides, you have to stay here. No one else can control your partners. With you out and away up there you'd certainly lose the station."
"Then what will I do?"
Aeneas drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was time to repay the Saracens for their hospitality . . . . "Send up Holloway's file, to begin with. Let's see who we're up against."
He took out the photographs of Martin Holloway as Laurie Jo began to read. "Five feet eleven inches, 175 pounds, hair brown, eyes green, graduated from—"
"It will be lies," Aeneas said. "His name is David Hindler."
"You know him?" Laurie Jo asked.
Aeneas smiled wistfully. "Long ago. Before Greg was President. You remember that Greg's enemies tried to have him killed . . . . David was very valuable then. He saved my life." And I his; we have no debts to each other. But once there was a bond . . . "Dr. Eliot implies that the Equity Trust is behind your difficulties. David is Greg Tolland's man. He wouldn't kill for anyone else."
She said nothing, but there was concern in her eyes; not hatred for Tolland, although that was deserved; but sorrow because she knew the pain Aeneas must now feel. He could never convince himself that Greg Tolland hadn't known . . . .
"Have your people make me a space suit and whatever else I'll need," Aeneas said.
Hope came to her—then it was gone. "You've never been in space. How can you stay alive there?"
"I'm a careful man, Laurie Jo. And I think I see what must be done."
"But I just found you again! It isn't fair, not so soon."
"I'll be back," he promised. "You've always meant to go out with Valkyrie. How can I go with you without experience? Have you anyone else you can trust with this?"
"No."
"I'll be back. Soon."
Ten gravities for ninety seconds is easily within the tolerance of a healthy man; but Aeneas had no wish to prolong the experience. He was laid flat on his back in a nylon web, encased in baggy reflective coverall and under that a tight garment resembling a diver's wet suit. The neckseal and helmet were uncomfortable, and it was an effort to exhale against the higher pressures in the helmet.
He had thought waiting for the launch the most unpleasant experience he'd ever had: lying awkwardly on his back, with no control of his destiny, enclosed in steel; then the laser cut in.
He weighed far too much. His guts ached. Like the worst case of indigestion imaginable, he thought. There was no way to estimate the time. He tried counting, but it was too difficult, and he lost count somewhere. Surely he had been at eighty seconds? He started over again.
There was noise, the loud, almost musical two-hundred-fifty-cycle tone of the explosions produced as the laser heated the air in the chamber under him—how close? he wondered. That great stabbing beam that could slice through metal aimed directly at him; he squirmed against the high gravity, and the effort was torture.
The noises changed. The explosion tone drifted down the scale. He was beyond the atmosphere, and the laser was boiling off material from the thrust chamber, reaching closer and closer
to him—
Silence. The crushing weight was gone. He was falling endlessly, with no way to know. Was he in orbit? Or was he plunging downward to his doom? He closed his eyes to wait, and then he felt he was truly falling, with the sick sensations of a boat in motion—he opened his eyes again to orient himself in the capsule.
Will they pick me up? There was no reason they shouldn't. New crewmen arrived weekly, and he was merely another. He listened for a voice, a signal, anything—
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