Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  She had been sleeping with Gregory Masterson before Paul, everyone knew. That was how she got on the board of directors, they thought. Now, as Paul glanced her way, she did not look terribly grieved. Instead, she glared angrily at him.

  Arnold next asked for a vote to accept the minutes of the last meeting, then called for reports from the division heads while the board members fidgeted impatiently in their chairs.

  When it came to Paul’s turn, he gave a perfunctory review of the Clippership’s profits and the firm orders from airlines around the world. Paul referred to them as aerospace lines, even the ones that were not doing any true business in orbit, because the Clipperships spent most of their brief flight times far above the atmosphere. “The way to make money,” Paul had told every airline executive he had ever wined and dined, “is to keep your Clipperships in space more than they’re on the ground.”

  Ordinarily, at least a few of the board members would ask nit-picking questions, but everyone wanted to move ahead to the election of the new CEO.

  Almost everyone.

  “What’s this I hear about your people making giant TV screens up there in the space station?” asked Alan Johansen.

  He was one of the newest board members, a handsomely vapid young protege of Arnold’s with slicked-back blond hair and the chiselled profile of a professional model.

  Surprised, Paul said, “It’s still in the developmental stage.”

  “Giant TV screens?” asked one of the women.

  “Under the weightless conditions in orbit,” Paul explained, “we can make large-crystal flat screens ten, fifteen feet across, but only a couple of inches thick.”

  “Why, you could hang them on a wall like a painting, couldn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” said Paul. “It might make a very profitable product line for us.”

  “Wall screens,” said Johansen.

  “One of our bright young technicians came up with the name Windowall.”

  “That’s good!” said Johansen. “We should copyright that name.”

  Bradley Arnold turned, slightly sour-faced, to the corporate legal counsel. “See that we register that as a trade name.”

  “Windowall, right,” said the lawyer. “How do you spell it?”

  Paul told him.

  “Now before we get to the highlight of this meeting,” Arnold said in his rumbling bullfrog voice, “we have to consider filling the seat left vacant by the sudden demise of our lamented late president and CEO.” Far from showing grief, Arnold’s bulging brown eyes seemed to be sparkling with pleasure.

  “I nominate Joanna Masterson,” said Greg immediately.

  “Second,” came a voice from farther down the table.

  Then silence.

  Arnold looked up and down the table. “Any other nominations?”

  Melissa looked as if she wanted to speak, but before she could make up her mind Arnold said, “All right then, the nominations are closed. All in favour”

  “Don’t the rules call for a secret ballot?” one of the board members asked.

  A brief flicker of annoyance ticked across Arnold’s fleshy face. “If the board wants it,” he said testily. “In this instance I think a simple show of hands will do. All in favor?”

  It was unanimous, Paul saw, although Melissa’s was the last hand raised.

  “Congratulations, Joanna,” Arnold said warmly, “and welcome aboard.” He pushed himself to his feet and started clapping his hands. The entire board rose and applauded. Joanna remained seated, smiling politely and mouthing ‘Thank you’ to them all.

  “Now then,” Arnold said once they were all seated again, “to the major business of this meeting: electing the new president and chief operating officer of Masterson Aerospace Corporation.”

  Paul felt suddenly nervous. What Joanna was going to do would not only cause a rift in the board, it would shatter her son, who expected to be elected unanimously. And marriage? Paul wondered. If I don’t get elected will she still want to marry me? Do I really want to marry her?

  “This great corporation was founded, as you all know, in the dark years of the Second World War by Elliot Masterson,” Arnold was droning in his sonorous, soporific voice. “His son, the first Gregory Masterson took over at Elliot’s retirement…”

  In all his years as an astronaut and then a corporate executive, the idea of marriage had never entered Paul’s mind. Women were plentiful, and there was no time to get hung up over one. Paul was driven by the urge to succeed. Not merely to be the best, but to get the others to acknowledge that he was the best. To get to the Moon. To make Moonbase viable. To make a success where everyone else said it was impossible.

  I never really thought about marriage, Paul was saying to himself. Maybe it’s time to settle down. Enough tail chasing. I haven’t really wanted to, anyway, since I met Joanna. Maybe that means I really love her. But does she love me or is this just going to be a business deal? Marriage for Moonbase. Some deal’… and now that Gregory Masterson II is no longer among us,” Arnold went on, “I believe it is in accord with the finest traditions of this great corporation that we ask his son, Gregory Masterson III, to accept the weighty responsibilities of president and chief operating officer of Masterson Aerospace Corporation.”

  “Second the nomination.”

  Paul swivelled his head. Melissa had seconded Greg’s nomination with the swiftness of an automaton. That was a surprise.

  Grinning coyly, Arnold asked, “Any other nominations?”

  “I nominate,” said Joanna, “Paul Stavenger.”

  A shock wave flashed along the table. Greg’s face went white. He looked as if his mother had just slapped him. Arnold’s mouth dropped open.

  “Second that,” said the man at Paul’s left, the corporation’s comptroller.

  Arnold blinked several times, looking more like a perplexed frog than ever. Finally he said, in a low angry voice, “Any other nominations?”

  None.

  “Discussion?”

  Joanna said, “I don’t want to give the board the impression that I have no confidence in my son. I simply feel that Paul has earned the right to be CEO. He pushed the Clippership program to its current highly successful status. Without the Clipperships this corporation would be in receivership.”

  “That’s something of an overstatement!” Arnold sputtered.

  Joanna made a smile for him. “Perhaps. But Paul’s shown he can be an effective CEO. My son is young enough to wait a few years. With a little patience, he’ll make a fine CEO one day.”

  Greg said nothing. He glowered at his mother in silent hatred.

  Paul knew what was irking Arnold. Old frog-face thought that he could control Greg. With Greg as CEO, Arnold would effectively be running the corporation his way. He had no desire to see a strong independent CEO elected.

  His face florid, Arnold said to Joanna, “But this corporation has always had a Masterson at its head. I thought that we all wanted to keep control in the family’s hands.”

  Joanna’s smile turned slightly wicked. “Oh, it will be in the family’s hands. Paul and I are going to be married.”

  Greg bolted up to his feet so hard he knocked his heavy padded chair over backwards. “Married!” he shouted. “To— to him.”

  Before his mother could reply, Greg pushed past his overturned chair and stamped out of the meeting room, slamming the heavy door as he left.

  Christ, Paul thought, she hadn’t told him anything about this. He’s just as shocked as the rest of them.

  “I’m afraid,” Joanna said calmly, “that Greg allows his emotions to overwhelm him, sometimes.”

  Paul stared at her. She’s like an iceberg, he thought. Implacable, unmovable. And cold as ice.

  The other board members were muttering to one another. Arnold rapped his knuckles on the table to restore order. Paul saw beads of perspiration on the chairman’s brow and upper lip. His hairpiece was slightly askew.

  “I think, in light of this unexpected
turn of events,” he said hesitantly, “that we should postpone the election of our new CEO until we have all had a chance to think and consider carefully—”

  “I disagree,” interrupted the comptroller. He was older than Paul, not as old as Arnold; a trim little man, dapper, always impeccably dressed. With just a trace of an Irish accent he said, “We all know each other here, and we all know both young Greg and Paul Stavenger. I don’t see why we should wait at all.”

  Arnold started to say, “But I—”

  “Let’s vote,” said another board member.

  “Call for the vote,” said still another.

  Visibly defeated, Arnold said, “Very well, if that is the sense of the board. Shall we use the secret ballot?”

  “I’m willing to let everyone see my hand raised,” the comptroller said.

  “Then let us take a fifteen-minute recess before we vote,” said Arnold. “I want to make sure that Greg is with us when hands are raised.”

  The tension eased a little as everyone got to their feet. The comptroller patted Paul’s shoulder and said loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m sure you’re going to make a grand CEO, my boy.”

  Paul mumbled his thanks and made his way around the table toward Joanna. He passed Melissa, who kept her face frozen.

  Joanna was walking slowly toward the big windows at the front of the meeting room. As if by instinct, the other board members drifted away from her, allowing Paul to be alone with her.

  “You didn’t tell Greg first?” he whispered urgently to her.

  She looked up at him, her eyes tired, almost tearful. “I tried to,” she said. “He didn’t show up until just a few moments before the meeting began.”

  “But… before the meeting. Christ, you two live in the same house!”

  “Not any more. Greg took an apartment here in New York. Just after his father’s death. Didn’t you know?”

  Paul shook his head. “Still… breaking it to him like that, in front of the rest of the board…”

  Joanna turned to the windows. “The Clippership from Hong Kong should be arriving in a few moments.”

  “Never mind that. You should’ve told him! Warned him, at least.”

  “I couldn’t,” she said, still staring out beyond the towers of Lower Manhattan, the harbor, the gray expanse of Brooklyn and Queens. “He hasn’t spoken to me in more than a month. Not since he found out about us.”

  “He knows?”

  Joanna breathed out a shuddering sigh. “He knows.”

  “Then — his father must’ve known.” Paul was jolted by the thought.

  “He probably did.”

  “God almighty.”

  Joanna said nothing.

  “Do you think that’s why he killed himself?” Paul asked her.

  Joanna did not answer for a long moment. Then, “I can’t picture Gregory blowing his brains out over his wife’s infidelity. Not when he’d already turned infidelity into a lifetime career.”

  She sounded bitter. But Paul knew that a man like Gregory had a totally different set of values when it came to his wife’s faithfulness. Still, he never would have thought that Gregory would kill himself, for any reason.

  “Look!” Joanna pointed. “There it is!”

  A pinpoint high in the sky, a flare of rocket flame against the gray-blue background. Paul watched the tiny dot grow into a discernible shape as the Clippership seemed to halt in midair, slide sideways slightly, then slowly descend on a pillar of flaming rocket exhaust toward the ground until it was lost to their view.

  “I still get a thrill every time I see it,” Joanna said.

  And Paul thought that maybe he did love her, after all.

  “Please be seated,” Arnold called from the head of the table. Looking around, Paul saw that Greg was still gone. Unable to face the music, Paul wondered, or too torn up by his mother’s betrayal?

  He knew about us, Paul told himself as he went back to his chair. He knew that I was fucking his mother. And if he knew, his father did, too.

  Eighteen board members took their places around the long table. Arnold called for discussion of the nominations. The board members shifted uneasily in their chairs, looked at one another. No one wanted to be first.

  “I presume,” Arnold said, seizing the initiative, “that you are still in favor of keeping Moonbase going, Paul?”

  Nodding solemnly, Paul replied, “The future of this corporation is in space, and Moonbase holds the key to profitable space commerce.”

  “But the government’s backed away from it,” Arnold pointed out. “If they won’t do it, why should we? After all, they can print money; we have to earn it.” He made a rictus of a smile to indicate humor.

  Paul hesitated, as if carefully considering his answer, even though he knew exactly what he wanted to say. After a couple of heartbeats he began, “Washington is giving us an opportunity to develop this new frontier without a lot of government red tape tying our hands. The politicians have finally realized that they can’t run anything at a profit. But we can! And we will — eventually.”

  “How long is eventually?” one of the older board members asked. “I don’t have all that much time to wait.”

  Paul smiled patiently. “Several years, at least. We’re talking about developing a new frontier here. How long did it take Pittsburgh to become the steel center of the world? How long did it take to make air travel profitable?”

  “It’s still not profitable!”

  “The Clipperships are profitable,” Paul pointed out.

  No one contradicted him.

  “I know it’s asking a lot to back Moonbase on our own, but believe me, this is the key to our future. I believe that, as firmly as I believed that the Clipperships would make money for us.”

  Joanna asked, “Isn’t the government willing to pay whoever operates Moonbase to keep the scientific work going?”

  Nodding, Paul replied, That’s right. Washington’s willing to support six scientists at Moonbase. It’s not very much money, but it’s a baseline commitment.

  “And if we decide not to continue with Moonbase,” one of the other directors asked, “what happens to those scientists?”

  “Moonbase operations will be offered to any other corporation that wants to bid on the base. If nobody bids, the base is shut down and all work on the Moon comes to an end.”

  “You’re fully committed to keeping Moonbase open?” Joanna asked him.

  “Totally,” said Paul. “Take me, take Moonbase with me. One and inseparable.”

  “Now and forever,” muttered a voice further down the table.

  The vote was an anticlimax. Arnold claimed that he had Greg’s proxy. The only other vote for Greg came from Melissa Hart. Paul Scavenger was elected president and chief operating officer of Masterson Aerospace Corporation by a vote of sixteen to three.

  “Congratulations,” smiled the comptroller. “Now when is the wedding going to take place?”

  MARE NUBIUM

  Some wedding, Paul said to himself as he sweated across the lunar regolith. Like another pissing board meeting, only bigger. The biggest society bash in Savannah. They all came out of curiosity. Too soon after Gregory’s death, they all whispered. Bad taste. But they all came and sipped the champagne and ogled at the daughter of one of the oldest families in Georgia actually marrying a black man. Lawdy, lawdy, what would Miz Scarlett say?

  The whole board of directors showed up for the wedding. All except Greg. And Melissa. Joanna planned every detail, even picked the comptroller to be my best man. So what? I had enough on my dish. Pissing company was in even worse shape than I’d thought. I could see right at the outset that saving Moonbase was going to be a bitch and a half.

  It was always there, the race thing. Even at MIT the blacks had their own clubs and cliques. Had to. Nobody hung WHITES ONLY signs in the halls, but everybody knew who was who and what was what. The classes and labs were one thing: performance counted there. It was the social life where they cut you. And
Paul got cut both ways. He wasn’t black enough to suit the militants; he was too black to please most of the whites. Especially when he dated white women.

  Learning tp fly was something else, though. Alone in a plane Paul could get away from everything and everyone, at least for a couple of hours. More than once he would squint up at the blue sky and see the pale ghost of the Moon riding out beyond his wing tip.

  I’m on my way, he would say to the distant Moon. I’ll be with you in a few years.”

  Something was wrong with his left boot It was rubbing his heel raw. A pang of fear burned through his gut. He saw Wojo again, screaming as the nanobugs ate his suit and his flesh. And Tink, screeching like a terrified monkey in a leopard’s jaws. Forget about the pissin’ nanobugs! Paul raged silently. It’s nothing but a lousy fitting boot, he insisted to himself.

  He was trying not to limp, despite the pain in his left heel every time he set his foot down. It felt awkward, walking that way.

  And then his boot slipped.

  If he had fallen forward, just tripped and gone down face-first, he would have had plenty of time to put out his hands, stop the fall, and push himself up to his feet again. Even in the cumbersome surface suit, the Moon’s gravity was so slight that he could have done that. It was an old trick among the “Lunatics,” done to impress newcomers: pretend you’re going to go splat on your face, then push yourself up to a standing position before the tenderfoot can holler, “Look out!”

  But Paul’s foot skidded out from under him on a suddenly slick piece of exposed rock and he fell over backward, onto his life-support backpack and oxygen tank, banged down heavily and skidded, yowling sudden pain and fear, down a slope so gradual he hadn’t even noticed it a moment before.

  His head banged inside his helmet, his vision blurred. He tasted blood in his mouth. For long moments he lay panting, dizzy, blinking to clear his eyes. Gradually he took stock. He was lying on his right side, his arm pinned under him, the bulky backpack and oxygen tank pressing against the back of his suit.