Privateers

by Ben Bova

  Now he stood on the uppermost platform of the original launching pad’s tower, the bright hot sun sizzling the steel deck and railings. The tower was used as a meteorological station now: no rocket had taken off from this pad since the new heavy lift boosters had entered the company’s service.

  Dan had torn through the morning at double his usual hurried pace, driven by a seething inward restlessness that surprised him with its intensity. The little entourage that accompanied him on these inspection tours looked absolutely frazzled. Dan had been rattling off orders and demands faster than they could record them on their tape machines: Tell maintenance to upgrade the electrical service to the flight control center before somebody blows all the circuit breakers with their double-damned coffee brewers. Why can’t purchasing find seals that won’t leak oil all over my coveralls? Look at them! And I want that ant colony down at the bottom of pad five exterminated; this is the last time I’m going to tell you. If I see another red ant chewing on the insulation down there, I’m going to stake out whoever’s responsible and let the ants chew on him! Can’t anybody build a structure that doesn’t leak? We shouldn’t be getting rainwater through the roof of the assembly shed, for God’s sake. When is MacReedy going to spray these handrails with plastic? For Chrissakes, we can build heat shields for space shuttles, but I still burn my hand every time I touch the railing up here!

  Pete Weston squinted through the dazzling morning sunshine at his boss. “Nobody says you can’t,” he answered, “but I’m telling you that you shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be smart to turn him down.”

  Dan felt the sun burning into his neck and shoulders. After yesterday’s interminable rain, it felt good. He stood spraddle-legged on the open steel platform, dressed in plain white coveralls and a baseball cap, fists on hips, his face set in a quizzical, puzzled expression. He felt something driving hard inside his guts, but he had yet to figure out what it was. And why.

  “You tell that handsome young commissar to go take a flying leap.”

  Weston sighed deeply. He was a lawyer, a freckle-faced, balding, soft-spoken corporation lawyer who seldom left the air-conditioned quiet of Astro’s offices in Caracas to come out to the field. Perspiration beaded his forehead and upper lip; his summer-weight suit was visibly wilting and wrinkling in the humidity and heat, even though the sea breeze wafted his tie over his shoulder now and again. The five others with

  Dan, three men and two women, stood off to one side of the high platform, back where the anemometer and other weather instruments hummed away. They were in coveralls and caps, but their boss’s furious pace this morning had soaked them with perspiration, too. Dark pools of sweat stained their white uniforms.

  “Dan, please. Calm down and listen to me.” Weston urged. “You pay me to give you legal advice, at least listen to what I have to say with an open mind.”

  Dan scowled at him.

  “The request came through the Ministry of Technology, from the Russian embassy. As formal and official as can be. The new director of the Soviet space program would like to visit Astro Manufacturing Corporation’s launch facilities while he’s in Caracas. Would it be convenient for him to come out here this afternoon, after lunch’?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re busy.” Dan snapped. “We don’t have time for VIP tours. This isn’t Disney World. And besides, that double-damned bastard is only interested in seeing what we’ve got here; he’s on a goddamned snooping mission.”

  Weston sighed again, then asked patiently. “Boss, don’t you think the Russian surveillance satellites take pictures of this facility1’ Don’t you think their people up in their space stations watch what we’re doing?”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to let them onto the grounds!”

  “I ought to remind you.” Weston added, “that legally, this facility is on property owned by the government of Venezuela. Legally, Astro Manufacturing operates under Venezuelan license and is subject to Venezuelan jurisdiction.”

  Dan hesitated a moment before replying. Then he said, “You’re telling me that the Russians could lean on the Venezuelan government to force us to let them in here.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Yeah, Hernandez would roll out a fucking red carpet for them,” Dan muttered.

  “They’re going to get in here, one way or the other,” Weston said softly.

  “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “You don’t have to be anywhere near here,” the lawyer said. “You can be back … back at … Hey …”

  Weston’s knees went rubbery and his eyes rolled up into his head. Dan grabbed him as he collapsed, held him up by his shoulders. The others rushed to them.

  “Too much sun,” Dan realized. “Get him to the elevator, quick! Bring some water.”

  They half carried, half dragged the lawyer to the shade of the elevator cab and lowered him gently to the scuffed tile floor. One of the women handed Dan a plastic cup full of tepid water. He held it to Weston’s lips. Someone else pressed a paper towel soaked in water across his balding, freckled dome.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  “Gonna have a beaut of a sunburn, though.”

  “He’s not used to being outside.”

  “Better get him a salt pill.”

  Weston opened his eyes. “Wha … How did …”

  Dan held the water to lips. “Shut up and drink this. For Chrissakes. if you want me to let the Russians in here, you just had to ask me to do it. not pull this dying swan routine on me.”

  The lawyer sipped at the water, then said weakly, “All in a day’s work, boss.”

  Malik brought his own little entourage with him, of course. Dan watched from the second-story window of the launch facility director’s office as three black limousines, each bearing little red Russian flags on their front fenders, rolled up to the visitors’ parking area. Dan counted an even dozen men entering the reception building. Malik was easy to spot: not only was he taller and blonder than the others, he was the only one wearing a decent suit, a very modish light mocha-colored outfit of Italian silk. Looks like a goddamned movie star, Dan grumbled to himself. The other Russians looked like extras. Heavies.

  Dan personally led the tour, much to Malik’s apparent delight. The Russian smiled and laughed his way through the afternoon, charming the women he met as well as the men. Dan smiled back, even told a few jokes along the way. But in his mind he thought he could hear the constant click of miniature cameras and the hum of tape recorders secreted on the bodies of the Russian visitors.

  It was hard to dislike Malik, though. The man seemed outgoing, friendly and genuinely impressed with the launching facilities.

  “Marvelous, marvelous,” he kept saying.

  Dan responded, “Your base at Tyuratam is much bigger.”

  “Yes, but not as modern. These new boosters … how many tons did you say they lift?”

  They were standing on the floor of the mammoth vertical assembly tower, where the heavy lift boosters were checked out before being trundled out to their launching pads. Two of the boosters, rising as tall and broad as Sequoias, loomed up before them. Far above, a welder was showering sparks; he was so high overhead that the flashes from his torch looked like meteors streaking across the sky.

  “Three hundred tons, to low orbit,” Dan replied. His voice echoed in the metal-walled building.

  “Three hundred tons,” Malik repeated. He seemed impressed.

  “Is that metric tons?” one of the other Russians asked.

  “Metric tons. Right,” said Dan. He imagined he heard the whirring of a tape recorder coming from the man’s suit jacket.

  “And you disassemble these boosters once they reach orbit?” Malik probed.

  “Right. We only use these big dumb boosters to lift very heavy loads. Complete machine assemblies, for example. Or a new smelting system. If we tried to put that heavy stuff up with the shuttles, it would take a dozen flights.
Old Dumbo here can lift it in one shot.”

  Malik grinned at him. “And then Dumbo is broken apart, after it has done its job.”

  Nodding, Dan explained, “The booster can’t fly back to Earth, like a shuttle can. It’s not reusable. So we break it up and use the metal as structural material for housing the equipment the booster lifted. We send the rocket engines back on a shuttle; they’re too expensive to throw away.”

  “Very ingenious,” Malik said.

  “You knew we were doing that,” said Dan.

  “Yes, I have read the reports about it. But still, it is very good to see it with one’s own eyes.”

  Finally the little group reached the meteorology tower and Dan took them up to the top. “From here you can see everything,” he said, his outstretched arm sweeping out the view.

  Malik turned slowly in a full circle, squinting against the brutal afternoon sun. The other Russians looked distinctly uncomfortable, even a little fearful. Maybe they’ll pass out, like Pete did, Dan hoped. Maybe they’ll all get sunstroke and die.

  “A tropical paradise,” Malik said. “I envy you.”

  “It is pretty,” Dan agreed.

  The Caribbean glittered alluringly under a sky of brilliant blue. Stately cumulus clouds towered like the turrets of some giant’s castle, row after row, sailing slowly across the afternoon. The sun was a molten glowing eye blazing down at them. Turning to take in the panorama, Dan saw the lush green mountains that stood between the coast and the teeming city of Caracas. They hid the city and the ugly sprawl of squatters’ shacks that huddled around it. The old airport lay across the narrow channel from the man-made island where they stood. Its long concrete runways were used only for space shuttle flights now. A massive double-decked shuttle was trundling slowly down to the end of the runway as they watched, the roaring whine of its jet engines no more than a thin keening at this distance. Riding atop the swept-wing lifter was the stubby, fat Orbiter with its delta-shaped wings and big rocket nozzles poking out from under its rakish tail fin.

  The double-decked craft hesitated at the end of the long runway for a moment, seemed to gather itself, then lumbered down the two-mile-long concrete strip, gathering speed, its engines thundering with undeniable power as it lifted its nose off the runway and then raised itself and its piggyback Orbiter off the ground and arrowed up into the blue.

  Dan glanced at his watch. “The lifter will be back in half an hour. And there’ll be an Orbiter landing in about an hour, if you want to go over to the field and watch it come in.”

  “What will it be carrying?” Malik asked.

  Frowning slightly, Dan pecked at the tiny keys on his wristwatch. He held it to his ear so that he could hear the information he had asked for, then repeated:

  “Mixed cargo of pharmaceuticals, high-strength alloys and electronics components-mostly gallium arsenide microchips, I suppose.”

  The Russians glanced uneasily at each other and began to mutter in their own language.

  “That’s La Guaira over there.” Dan pointed toward the port. A tourist cruise ship was in the harbor, its red funnel bearing the hammer and sickle insignia. It was impossible to make out the cable car tramway that led up into the mist-shrouded mountains and then down the other side into Caracas, but Dan knew it would be packed with Russians and Eastern Europeans today.

  Malik was smiling like a video star. “You picked a perfect location for your operation. A perfect location.”

  Where else could I go, Dan fumed silently, after you forced America to give up space operations? Aloud, he said merely, “It’s near the equator. That gives us some advantage from the Earth’s spin.”

  “And the Venezuelan government is very cooperative,” the Russian said.

  Dan sensed a trap ahead. “This entire operation,” he answered slowly, “belongs to the Venezuelan government. To the people of Venezuela, since this country is a democracy. Astro Manufacturing Corporation operates this facility under contract to the government. This is not a privately owned facility.” Otherwise, he added silently, you would never have gotten past the front gate without a squad of tanks.

  “Yes, of course,” Malik agreed easily, still grinning. “But you manage to make a profit from all this, even though it belongs properly to the people of Venezuela.”

  “1 manage to eke out a living,” Dan replied, smiling back at him. “And so do the people of this country. This space manufacturing operation accounts for as much of Venezuela’s gross national product as her oil exports, and twice as much as her agricultural exports.”

  “But how much profit do you make?” Malik asked, his smile looking slightly sardonic now.

  “As much as the government allows.”

  “And how much is that?”

  “Ask Seńor Hernandez. He has the figures.”

  Malik would not be deterred. “Enough to feed the poor people living in those miserable hovels outside the city? Would you say that your profits could help to feed the poor, rather than making a very rich man even richer?”

  “This operation makes jobs for thousands. …”

  “Of engineers and tax accountants.”

  “And butchers, bakers, telescope makers”-Dan found himself enjoying the challenge of argument-“cooks, babysitters, auto mechanics, salespeople of all kinds, gardeners, truck drivers-you name it. We bring money into this country, and each bolivar that space operations produces gets spent eight or ten times over, within the country’s internal economy. That’s a considerable multiplier, and it’s fed more Venezuelans than all the damned welfare programs the government’s ever funded!”

  Malik laughed derisively. “And yet there are still many hungry people, while you live in luxury.”

  Dan started to reply, but held himself in check for a moment. He saw something in Malik’s eyes, something crafty and dangerous. The other Russians were watching the two of them; even those who claimed they could not understand English could see the sparks that the two men struck off each other.

  “You really want to feed those hungry people?” Dan asked coolly.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “Then lower the prices you charge us and the other Third World space operations.”

  That caught Malik by surprise. “Lower the prices for the ores we mine from the Moon?”

  “Right,” Dan said with a grin. “All the Third World space manufacturers-even the Japanese-have to buy their raw materials from the Soviet Union. You control the lunar mines and you set the prices for the ores.”

  Malik nodded. The smile was gone from his face, replaced by a skeptical, almost worried expression.

  “Lower the prices for our raw materials, and we can lower the prices for the finished manufactured products. That means we’ll be able to sell more of our products. Which means we can increase production. Increased production means more jobs. More jobs means fewer hungry people. So if you really want to feed those hungry squatters …”

  “No, no, no!” Malik waggled a finger in Dan’s face. “You would not hire those unskilled men and women to be astronauts or engineers.”

  “Maybe not. But we’d hire some of them to drive trucks and do maintenance work. Others would get all sorts of jobs in the city, working in restaurants, driving taxicabs, all sorts of things. And we could help to build schools for their children, so that they could become astronauts and engineers.”

  “Capitalist propaganda.” Malik smirked.

  Dan laughed. “Propaganda or not, friend, that system has produced more wealth for more people than all the Socialist planning in the world.”

  The Russian shook his head.

  “Try it!” Dan urged. “Try it for one year. Just twelve months. Lower the prices you make us pay for the lunar ores, and I guarantee you that those shacks on the hills will start to disappear.”

  “No,” Malik said. “That is not the way to end poverty.”

  “Then how do you propose to do it?”

  His handsome smile returned. “In the proper Socialis
t manner, of course. The Soviet Union will increase its voluntary contribution to the International People’s Investment Council. That will provide more funds for alleviating hunger in nations such as Venezuela.”

  “Increase their dole, eh?” Dan grumbled. “Make them more dependent on the Soviet Union’s largesse.”

  “We will feed the hungry,” Malik said firmly. “Of course, to do this, it is necessary for us to generate more revenues for the Soviet treasury.”

  Dan saw it coming, but it was far too late to do anything about it. He felt like a tenpin in a bowling alley, watching the inevitable rolling toward him.

  “And to generate such increased revenue,” Malik was saying, his grin widening, “it will, of course, be necessary to raise the prices charged for lunar raw materials.”

  “Raise them,” Dan echoed.

  Malik nodded smugly. “You may not like it, but that is the decision that the Council of Ministers reached last week. The prices for all lunar ores will be increased by approximately twenty-five percent, as of the first of next month.”

  Dan’s first impulse was to take a swing at the Russian. Then he shrugged and laughed. It was all nonsense, a game that they played. The pious pronouncements they made about feeding the hungry and helping the poor was nothing more than a sham; the Russians’ real goal was to drive the last vestiges of capitalism out of the orbital factories and to monopolize every aspect of space industries. He knew it;

  Malik knew it. But still they maintained the pretense. What else was there to do but laugh?

  Malik’s dour-faced aides glanced uneasily at each other. Here the American capitalist had just been told that his costs for raw materials were going to be increased by twenty-five percent, and he was laughing. Even Malik looked surprised. Laughter was not what he had expected.