Privateers

by Ben Bova

  “She’s metallic all right,” Freiberg said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Got to be. Look at her. Nickel-iron, or I’ll eat it. Enough good steel in her to run this factory for ten years. Maybe more.”

  The second shift of controllers came on the job as Carstairs, Vargas and Halloran were emerging from the spacecraft’s airlock for their first EVA jaunt to the asteroid. The original shift relinquished their posts grudgingly. None of them left the control center. They clustered in the back, around Dan. eyes glued to the display screen. Dan could feel the heat

  of their bodies in the darkness, smell the excitement in them.

  Somebody passed a tray of coffee and soft drinks as the three-astronaut team jetted across the hundred yards or so between the spacecraft and the asteroid. They looked like tiny white midges next to the pitted dark bulk of the huge rock. Nobo was in charge aboard the spacecraft now, Dan knew. He saw the craft’s manipulator arms extending slowly, like a sluggish metal spider extending its many limbs.

  Carstairs was the first to reach the dark, pitted asteroid. His space-suited form reminded Dan of a knight in white armor. Vargas was carrying a video camera and he got a good close-up of Carstairs planting his boots on the rock’s barren surface. He came in slightly too fast, though, and bounced off. The jets of his backpack puffed briefly and he settled down on the bare, airless rock like a deep-sea diver gingerly touching bottom.

  “I name this little worldlet”-Carstairs’ voice sounded faint and slightly muffled inside his helmet-“after the man who made this voyage possible: Randolph One. And may there be thousands more like it.”

  Dan let out his breath. He had not thought about giving the asteroid a name. In the shadowy darkness of the crowded control center, he heard mutters from the men and women standing around him.

  “Carstairs is bucking for a raise, boss,” somebody said.

  “He’s got it,” Dan shot back.

  It turned out to be a metallic asteroid, just as Freiberg had predicted. Halloran set about testing samples of it, chipping off pieces and carrying them back to the small analysis lab aboard the spacecraft. Almost pure nickel-steel, about four million tons of it. Among the impurities he found over the next two days was platinum.

  “I estimate there’s somewhere between fifty and seventy-five tons of platinum in her,” Halloran reported, his florid face grinning into the TV camera.

  Dan grinned back at the geochemists happy image. Platinum was somewhere around $500 per troy ounce, he recalled. Fifty to seventy-five tons, he calculated swiftly, would come to $600 to $900 million. That pays for the mission all by itself! With a bit of profit besides. Sai will be ecstatic.

  The question then was whether or not the crew should attempt to alter the asteroid’s orbit so that it could be “captured” by Earth’s gravity and swung into a permanent orbit between the Earth and Moon, where it could be more easily reached and mined. Back when Randolph I had been nothing more than a numbered speck of light in an astronomical catalog, Freiberg had picked this particular asteroid for their first mission because it was close enough to reach, it appeared to be a metal-rich body and its orbit was such that it could be maneuvered into an Earth-circling orbit.

  During the two days that Halloran and the other crew members spent assaying the rock samples and filling the spacecraft’s storage tanks with them, computers in Caracas and California (thanks to Freiberg’s friends at Cal Tech) checked every facet of the orbital maneuver to twelve decimal places.

  “I don’t want to send a four-million-ton spitball into an orbit that’ll crash into the Earth,” Dan insisted.

  “You just don’t want to lose all that platinum,” Freiberg kidded back.

  “Check it again, Zach.”

  “Figures don’t lie, Dan. And they’re not going to change.”

  “Check it again.”

  The alternative was to allow the asteroid to continue on the orbit it had been following for millions of years, swinging out past the Sun and returning to Earth’s vicinity every three years. If the astronauts altered that orbit, Randolph I would end up circling the Earth at about the same distance as the Moon-a tiny new moonlet.

  The numbers checked and checked again. Dan still felt a gnawing uneasiness about the idea. He could accept, intellectually, that the asteroid would not crash into the Earth. But something deep in his guts was warning him that it was unwise to push the rock out of its natural path around the Sun.

  Nine hundred million dollars, he argued with himself, from the platinum alone. And enough nickel and iron to allow us to start a whole new operation here at the factory. The Russians don’t have any of the heavier metals; there aren’t any on the Moon.

  Reluctantly, still feeling vague forebodings, he gave the order to push the asteroid into an Earth-circling orbit. Nearly twenty million miles away, the astronaut team unrolled huge aluminized sheets of plastic-Reynolds Wrap, Dan always called them-and fitted them to the prefabricated frame of a concave solar mirror. They set it up at a mathematically chosen spot on the asteroid’s bare, dark surface. Sunlight, focused to an intensity that boiled metal, jabbed its searing finger at the asteroid’s body. The boiling metal acted like the jet exhaust of a rocket engine, exerting a force on the massive rock that altered its trajectory slightly. For two more days, as the astronauts made their preparations to leave the asteroid and return to Earth, Freiberg and a picked team of astronomers watched the asteroid carefully.

  “It all checks out,” the scientist told Dan. “She’s swerving slightly, right on the predicted course. Eleven months from now the Earth will gain an extra moon, and you’ll have a billion-dollar platinum mine at your disposal.”

  Dan smiled and shook Freiberg’s hand. “Mission accomplished,” he said. But he still had that uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He had two more months to wait while the Dolphin One made its way back to Earth. Two months to pretend to be doing business as usual, paying the Soviets their increased prices for lunar ores, playing the role of the billionaire bachelor, partying and being seen in public with the world’s most beautiful women.

  Everything in Caracas seemed to be normal. Too normal, Dan worried. The only unusual thing he could detect was that

  Malik seemed to be visiting the city every other week. His ostensible reason was to court Lucita Hernandez. But what’s his real reason? Dan asked himself. He decided that there was one person who might know: Lucita Hernandez.

  Chapter TWENTY

  Their meeting had to appear casual, yet private. Dan was under no illusions. The KGB watched every move he made, as a matter of course. He was accustomed to that. And he suspected that Malik had a team of people watching Lucita, too.

  “Two can play at that game,” Dan muttered to himself. Phoning the director of the Astro Manufacturing division that operated the company’s Earth resources satellites, Dan soon had detailed photographs of Caracas playing across the wall-sized TV screen in his office.

  The pictures were taken by satellites that kept their exquisitely sharp camera eyes and other sensors focused on the Earth, from altitudes that ranged from a few hundred to one thousand miles up. The data they recorded on videotape was sold to customers around the world who were willing to pay for such information. Commodities speculators wanted to know how grain and other crops were growing, all over the world. Geologists looked for rock formations that promised the presence of oil or other natural resources. Environmental protection agencies wanted to see sources of pollution. Commercial fishermen needed to find schools of fish. Railroad managers used the satellite data to keep track of their trains and even individual cars. The city planners of Caracas used the pictures to see, day by day, how their zoning and building laws were being obeyed.

  Much of the data that Dan’s company sold around the world was illegal. International law forbade giving up any data about a nation that had not been previously approved for release by that nation. And almost every nation in the world stoutly refused to release any data about
its own territory. Some of the individual governments, such as many in Africa, refused because they did not want foreign nations or corporations to know about their mineral wealth; they had a long history of foreign exploitation, and no desire to continue it. Other nations, like the Soviet Union, were secretive to the point of paranoia; any pictures taken of their territory were regarded as spying. Still others, such as some of the jackboot dictatorships in Latin America and Southeast Asia, did not want the world to know how harshly they were treating their own people, and how poorly the people were faring under military rule.

  Yet Astro’s satellites orbited placidly over every nation on Earth, beaming pictures and other forms of data to the corporate headquarters in Caracas. And the company sold the information to almost every nation-even those that protested the loudest against such “spying.” The entire operation was known to all. And although it was as illegal as reproducing the pages of a library book in a copying machine, or secretly videotaping a new Broadway production, it went on anyway. The protests were formalities. The reality was that nations, corporations, even private individuals were willing to pay for the satellite data. They were willing to pay for it because they needed it, for their businesses, for their national welfare and security.

  Dan needed the pictures of Caracas for a slightly different reason. With computer enhancement, he was able to watch the Hernandez home and see, day by day, when Lucita’s forest-green MG left the house and where it went. Because it was a convertible, he could even enlarge the pictures electronically to the point where he could see that the driver was dark-haired.

  “Look up,” he muttered late one night as he stared at the pictures on the huge screen in his office. “Smile for the camera.”

  Within a week he-and the computer-had determined Lucita’s pattern of movements fairly well. She was by no means a creature of habit, he saw. But there were some things she did almost every week. The problem he saw was that her little convertible was never alone for very long. At least two cars almost always accompanied her, one ahead and one behind. Possibly she did not know about her escorts; the Soviets changed cars daily, so that she would not notice the same ones from one day to the next. But Malik was having her followed, either because he wanted to protect her or because he did not trust her.

  Dan smiled to himself in the shadows of his darkened office. “I’ll bet the Russian doesn’t trust her,” he muttered. “Why would he have her followed, otherwise? She’s in no danger here; this is her home. What’s there to protect her from-except me?”

  The morning dawned hot and clear. Lucita dressed quickly in shorts and halter and hurried down to the small dining room to be certain to catch her father before he finished breakfast and left for his office.

  He was just dabbing his damask napkin to his lips, his coffee cup drained, the platter before him holding nothing but crumbs and the rind of a quarter melon.

  “Good morning,” Lucita said, beaming at him as if they had never been estranged.

  Hernandez almost frowned, a reflex of disapproval at her scanty costume. But he held the scowl in check.

  “Good morning, Lucita.”

  She perched on a corner of the heavy, stiff-backed chair at her father’s right hand. “It is a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he answered warily, almost suspiciously.

  “Father”-she reached for his hand-“we have been angry with each other long enough. What is past is past, and we cannot change it.”

  A surprised smile unbent his lips.

  “1 am finished mourning for Teresa,” she went on. “Actually, I was mourning for myself, I think. I was being a spoiled, stubborn child. I ask you to forgive me, Papa. I want you to love me again.”

  Hernandez drew in a deep, delighted breath. “I have always loved you, Lucita. Even when you caused me pain.”

  “I’m sorry for that, Papa.” Her eyes dropped.

  He reached out and lifted her chin slightly, so that he could look directly into her eyes again. “It must have been painful for you, also.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Can you truly put it all behind you?”

  “Yes. I want to.”

  He studied her for a long, wordless moment. “Last night, you went to dinner with Vasily again?”

  With a little smile, she replied, “He visits every other week, he asks me to dinner each night he is here, and I accept his invitation every time.”

  Hernandez arched an eyebrow. “Like a dutiful daughter.”

  “I will be more than dutiful from now on,” she promised. “If he still wants to marry me, and you still want me to, 1 will agree.”

  She had thought that her father would be elated by her decision. But his face was somber, his flat brown eyes held no spark of joy.

  “When you were in Russia, and then at Kosmograd, did Malik … was he a gentleman at all times?”

  Lucita laughed. “A perfect gentleman. And he still is. Sometimes I wish he weren’t. …” The laughter died off. “Papa, this is a political marriage for him, too. Perhaps we

  can learn to love each other; I think he genuinely is attracted to me. But …”

  “Are you attracted to him?”

  She started to reply, hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Not the way a romantic schoolgirl wants to feel. Not with the kind of passion that makes a woman behave foolishly.”

  “But you agree to marry him?”

  Lucita wanted to ask, What choice do I have? Where can I go in the world that I can escape from him? How can I avoid him when my own father has offered me to him?

  Instead, she replied meekly, “Yes, Papa, I will marry him. And bear his children. And live in Moscow or some Asian desert or even on Mars, if that’s where his career takes him.”

  She wanted her father to be taken aback by that, to falter, to show some slight discomfort at the idea that he might never see his daughter again. But he did not even blink an eye. He took both her hands in his and held them firmly.

  “You will learn to be happy with him, Lucita. I know you will.”

  She saw the vision in his eyes: not his daughter’s future, far from home and family. It was his own future that Hernandez was foreseeing: president of the Republic of Venezuela. And then, who knows, perhaps with the help of the Soviet Union he would make Venezuela the most powerful nation in the Western Hemisphere.

  Lucita pulled her hands free and ran from the dining room, leaving her father happily dreaming his dreams, oblivious to his daughter’s needs.

  She returned to her bedroom only long enough to grab the tiger-striped beach bag, then dashed down the back stairs to the garage, threw the bag onto the seat beside her and roared off for the beach in her MG. Reaching into the glove compartment as she swung the convertible out of the tree-shaded driveway and headed for the main highway, Lucita pulled on a pair of sunglasses. She pressed the gas pedal to the floor and the nimble little car leaped ahead, weaving from one lane to another as Lucita passed everything on the road. A pair of dark sedans tried to keep up with her for a few miles, but she outpaced them and soon left them far behind.

  The wind felt good pulling at her hair, the air was clear and clean. She never noticed the unmarked helicopter droning high above, its tiny video camera aimed squarely at her.

  She drove to the beach club, changed into a white string bikini that would have made her father frown his darkest and let one of the beach boys set up a chair and umbrella for her on the warm white sand. She stretched out on the reclining chair, soaking up the sun and staring at the gentle surf that curled in, wave after wave, endlessly. As gentle and relentless as Vasily, she thought.

  It was quite a surprise to her when Dan Randolph came walking straight up to her, rising out of the sea like some ancient water god and trudging through the sand directly to where she sat.

  “Good morning,” he said, dripping. Lucita had forgotten what a hard-muscled body he had. The water sluiced down his arms, his legs, his flat belly, darkening his body hair.
/>   “What are you doing here?” Lucita blurted.

  “I’ve come to invite you to lunch,” he said, grinning down at her. “First an invigorating swim, and then a pleasant lunch … at sea.”

  He pointed seaward and Lucita saw a trim little sloop riding at anchor out beyond the breakers. It was painted sky blue and gold.

  “It’s too early for lunch,” she said.

  With a laugh, he said, “Not if you have to catch it first!” He reached out his hand, and before she even thought about it, she lifted hers and allowed him to clasp it and pull her up to her feet.

  “My bag …” she said.

  “No problem.” Reaching into the waistband of his skintight briefs, Dan pulled out a pencil-slim roll of clear plastic. It opened up into a thin flexible pouch big enough to take Lucita’s handbag.

  “We manufacture this stuff up in orbit,” he told her. “Solocrystal is the trade name. Amazing stuff. Waterproof, too.”

  He took her hand again and they trotted to the water, waded in, then dived over a breaking wave. Side by side they swam to Dan’s sloop. Lucita saw the name stenciled across her stern: Yanqui.

  She stretched out on the forward deck to let the sun dry her, but soon turned and propped her head up on one hand, watching fascinated as Dan set the sails and hauled up the anchor: all with the help of computer-directed servo motors. The big dazzling sails filled with wind and the graceful ship bit into the water, nosing away from the beach and out to sea.

  Dan broke out light fishing tackle, beckoned Lucita back to the cockpit and baited the hook for her.

  “You catch us some lunch while I mind the radar,” he said. “I want to make sure your Russian friends aren’t following us close enough to eavesdrop.”

  “My …” Lucita’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  She looked genuinely surprised. “Don’t you know that Malik has a team of people following you whenever you leave your house?”

  “No! I don’t believe it.”

  Shrugging, Dan said, “It’s true.”