The Precipice (Asteroid Wars)

by Ben Bova

  Humphries’s security chief instinctively hustled down to the fallen controller and yanked him to his feet while Humphries himself and his lawyer stood impassively watching the idiotic scene.

  The security man half-dragged the controller, limping, to Humphries.

  “Mr. Humphries,” the controller babbled, “we don’t know what’s going on—”

  “Isn’t that Starpower 1 accelerating out of its orbit?” Humphries asked frostily.

  “Yessir, it is, but it wasn’t scheduled to launch for another half-hour yet and I think Pancho Lane and three other people are aboard it and they don’t have the authorization for a crewed flight. The IAA is going to—”

  “Is there any way to get them back?” Humphries asked, deadly calm.

  The chief controller scratched his beard, blinking rapidly.

  “Well?”

  “Nosir. No way in hell, Mr. Humphries.”

  “Who else is aboard her?”

  “That’s just it, we don’t know if they’re aboard the vessel! They might be on the jumper but they’re not answering our calls. Maybe their radio broke down.”

  “They are aboard Starpower i,” Humphries said flatly. “Who else was with Pancho Lane?”

  “Um…” The chief controller turned to his two assistants, wincing.

  The woman called, “Amanda Cunningham, co-pilot; Lars Fuchs, planetary astronomer; and C. N. Barnard, flight surgeon.”

  “And you allowed them to go aboard my ship?” Humphries asked, his voice sharp as an icepick.

  “They had proper authorization,” the chief controller said, sweating noticeably. “IAA approval.” The other two controllers, still standing at their stations, nodded their agreement.

  “Amanda Cunningham was definitely with them?”

  All three nodded in unison.

  Humphries turned and started out of the control center. The chief controller exhaled a relieved sigh. His coveralls were stained with sweat.

  But Humphries stopped at the doorway and turned back toward him. “I want you to know that the so-called Dr. Barnard is actually Dan Randolph.”

  All three of the controllers looked stunned.

  “You never bothered to check their identifications, did you?”

  “We never…” The controller’s deep voice dwindled into silence under Humphries’s furious glare.

  “I know you work for Selene, and not for me. But I’m going to do my best to see to it that you three incompetent morons never get within a thousand kilometers of a control center again.”

  Then he went through the door and headed for the tunnel that led back to Selene proper.

  “Shall I start the proceedings for the Astro takeover?” Humphries’s lawyer asked him.

  He nodded grimly.

  With a satisfied smile, the lawyer said, “He won’t have any part of the corporation by the time he gets back here.”

  “He’s not coming back,” Humphries said darkly. “None of them are.”

  Sitting in the tiny wardroom behind Starpower’s bridge, Dan Randolph felt truly relaxed for the first time in months. The ship was accelerating smoothly. Fuchs looked a lot better now, with the feeling of weight that came from the acceleration. No more floating in zero-g; they could sit in chairs without haying to strap themselves down.

  He marveled at his good mood. The Earth’s melting down, your corporation is going broke, you’ve busted every regulation the IAA ever wrote, Humphries is after your scalp, you’re heading out for parts unknown, and you’re sitting here with a grin on your face.

  He knew why.

  I’m free, he told himself. Maybe for only a couple of weeks, but I’m free of all of them, free of all their crap. We’re on our own and nobody can bother us.

  Until we come back.

  Pancho ducked through the hatch and went straight to the juice dispenser.

  “How’s it going?” Dan asked casually.

  “All systems working jus’ fine,” she said, filling a mug and coming to the table to sit next to Dan.

  “Must be okay if you feel good enough to leave the bridge.”

  “Mandy’s up there, keepin’ an eye on ever’thing. The bird will actually fly on her own; we don’t need to be on the bridge every minute of the day.”

  “Any incoming calls?” Dan asked.

  She shrugged. “Only about six or seven million. Ever’-body from Doug Stavenger to the Global News Network wants to talk to you.”

  “Global News?” Dan’s ears perked up.

  “Lots of news media. They all want to interview you.”

  Dan stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Might not be a bad idea. If we’re going to do an interview it’ll have to be before we get so far away the time lag makes it impossible to have a real-time conversation.”

  “Better do it quick, then,” Pancho said. “Once we goose this bird to one-third g, we’ll really be sprintili’ fast”

  Dan nodded his agreement. Pointing to the phone console built into the bulkhead, he asked, “Can you patch me through?”

  “Easy.”

  “Okay… lemme talk to La Guaira.”

  The head of Astro’s corporate public relations staff was a sweet-faced brunette who was older—and much tougher— than she looked. Dan asked her if she could arrange a news conference with the world’s major news networks.

  “It has to be today,” he pressed. “We’re zipping out so fast that by tomorrow we won’t be able to talk back and forth without a four-to-five-minute lag.”

  “Understood,” said the PR woman.

  “Can you do it?”

  She arched a carefully-drawn brow. “Arrange a major news conference with the man who’s hijacked his own superduper spaceship to go out past Mars and start mining the asteroids? Just get off the line, boss, and let me get to work.”

  Dan laughed and obliged. He was glad that he had decided to keep his public relations team intact, despite the layoffs in other corporate departments. Hie the accountants and the lawyers, he reminded himself. Get rid of the paper shufflers and bean counters. But keep the people who polish your public image. They’re the last to go—except for the people who do the real work: the engineers and scientists.

  Pancho watched him as she sipped at her juice. When Dan ended his call to La Guaira, she asked, “So now what happens?”

  “Now we wait while my PR people do their jobs.”

  “Uh-huh. How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “We’ll know in an hour or so,” Dan said. “If it takes longer than that, it’s not going to go down.”

  Pancho nodded. “I could hear it. The lag between you and her’s already longer than the usual Earth-Moon delay.”

  Dan got to his feet and went to the coffee dispenser. He really wanted a pleasant glass of amontillado, but there was no alcohol on the ship.

  Remembering the story the two women had told him about the goons Humphries had sent after Amanda, Dan asked, “Whatever happened to your snake?”

  “Elly?”

  “Is that the snake’s name?”

  “Yup.”

  “So what’d you do with her?”

  Pancho reached down to her ankle and came up with the glittering blue krait.

  Dan flinched back. “You brought that thing aboard?”

  Shrugging, Pancho said, “I was gonna leave it with Pistol Pete, he’s the guy who owns the Pelican Bar. But with those goons and all, I didn’t have the time.”

  “We’ve got a poisonous snake on the ship!”

  “Relax, boss,” Pancho said easily. “I’ve got four mice in my travel bag. That’s enough to keep Elly fat and happy for more’n a month.”

  Dan stared at the snake. Its beady eyes stared back at him.

  He started to shake his head. “I don’t want that thing on this ship.”

  “Elly won’t be a problem,” Pancho insisted. “I’ll keep her in a nice, cool spot. She’ll sleep most of the time.” Then, with a smirk, she added, “And digest.”

  “But
if something should happen…”

  Pancho’s face went deadly serious. She seemed to Dan to be struggling with herself.

  He suggested, “Maybe we could freeze the snake for the duration of the flight. Thaw her out when we get back to Selene.”

  “She’s not poisonous,” Pancho blurted.

  “What?”

  “I don’t like to admit it, but EUy’s not really poisonous. I just tell people that to keep ‘em respectful. You think Selene’s safety board would let a poisonous critter into the city?”

  “But you said…”

  Looking almost apologetic, Pancho said, “Aw, you can’t believe ever’thing I say, boss. A gal’s got to protect herself, doesn’t she?”

  “But what about that guy she bit?’

  “Elly was gengineered. They modified her toxin so she produces a tranquilizer, not a lethal poison.”

  Dan gave her a hard look. Can I believe anything she says? he wondered.

  “The science guys wanted to use Elly to trank animals in the wild that they wanted to study. It never worked.”

  “And you got the snake for a pet”

  “A bodyguard,” Pancho corrected.

  “What about the antiserum?”

  She laughed. “Saline solution. Just a placebo. The guy would’ve woke up whether they used it or not”

  Dan broke into a chuckle, too. “Pancho, you’re something of a con artist.”

  “I suppose,” she admitted easily.

  Amanda’s voice came through on the intercom. “I’ve got an incoming call from La Guaira.”

  “I’ll take it here” Dan said.

  It took several frenzied hours, but Dan’s PR director finally set up an interactive news conference with reporters from virtually every major media network on Earth, plus Selene’s own news director, Edith Elgin, who happened to be Mrs. Douglas Stavenger when she wasn’t on the air.

  Dan sat back in the little plastic chair in Starpower’s wardroom and smiled into the camera of the phone console set into the bulkhead. His PR director acted as moderator, choosing which reporter was allowed to ask a question, and a backup. Dan found that the time lag from the ship to Earth worked in his favor; it gave him time to think before the next question arrived.

  It’s always smart to think before you talk, he told himself. Engage brain before putting mouth in gear.

  THE INTERVIEW

  Cable News: Why did you hijack your own ship?

  Dan Randolph: How can you call it a hijacking if it’s my own ship? And it’s only partially mine, by the way. Starpower 1 is owned by Starpower, Ltd., which in turn is owned by three organizations: Humphries Space Systems, Astro Manufacturing, and the people of Selene. Far as I know, neither Humphries nor Selene is complaining, so I don’t see this as a hijacking.

  Cable News: But the International Astronautical Authority says you have no right to be aboard Starpower L

  Dan Randolph: Bureaucratic [DELETED]. There’s no reason why a human crew can’t ride in this vessel. The IAA is just trying to strangle us in red tape.

  BBC: Why do you think the IAA refused to give permission for a human crew to fly in your vessel?

  Dan Randolph: I’ll be double-dipped in hot chocolate fudge if I know. Ask them.

  BBC: Surely you have some opinion on the matter.

  Dan Randolph: Paper shufflers tend to be conservative souls. There’s always a risk in allowing somebody to do something new, and bureaucrats hate risk-taking. Much safer for them to say no, you need more testing or another round of approvals. Buck the responsibility upstairs and don’t stick your own neck out. If the IAA had been running America’s expansion westward back in the nineteenth century, they’d still be trying to decide whether to build Chicago or St. Louis.

  Nippon News Agency: What do you hope to achieve by this flight?

  Dan Randolph: Ah, a substantive question for a change. We intend to stake out a claim to one or more asteroids. Our goal is to open up the vast resources of the Asteroid Belt for the human race.

  Nippon News Agency: Have you determined which asteroids you will investigate?

  Dan Randolph: Yes, but I’m not at liberty to reveal which they are. I don’t want anyone or anything to cloud our claim.

  Several questioners simultaneously: What do you mean by that? What are you afraid of? Who would make a rival claim?

  Dan Randolph: Whoa! Hey, one at a time. Basically, I fear that if I announce that we’re aiming for a certain asteroid, the IAA will find a reason to declare it off-limits to development, just as they’ve declared the Near-Earth Asteroids and the moons of Mars closed to development.

  Network Iberia: But the NEAs have been closed to development because there is the chance that their orbits could be perturbed and they would crash into the Earth, isn’t that so?

  Dan Randolph: That’s the IAA’s excuse for keeping the NEAs off-limits, right. Bureaucrats can always find a good excuse to prevent progress.

  Network Iberia: Are you saying, then, that the IAA has other motives in this? A hidden agenda?

  Dan Randolph: If they do, their agenda isn’t hidden terribly well. They’ve denied the resources of the NEAs to the needy people of Earth. If they could, they’d deny the resources of the Belt, as well. Why? Ask them, not me.

  Lunar News: You seem to be implying that the IAA is working against the best interests of Earth.

  Dan Randolph: I’m not implying it, I’m saying it loud and clear: The IAA is working against the best interests of Earth.

  Lunar News: If that’s the case, who do you think they are working for?

  Dan Randolph: The status quo, of course. That’s what bureaucrats always support. Their goal is to keep tomorrow exactly like today, or yesterday, even—no matter how lousy today or yesterday may have been.

  Pan Asia Information: You cast yourself in the position of helping the needy people of Earth. Yet isn’t your true goal to make billions in profits for your corporation?

  Dan Randolph: My true goal is to open up the resources of the Asteroid Belt. We are running this mission on a shoestring; we don’t intend to make a profit from this flight

  Pan Asia Information: But you hope to make profits from future missions, don’t you?

  Dan Randolph: Certainly! But more important than that, we’ll have shown that the people of Earth can tap the enormous treasures of resources waiting for us in the Belt. We’ll be glad to see other companies coming out to the Bdt to find and develop those resources.

  Columbia Broadcasting: You’d be glad to see competitors going to the Belt, but only after you yourself have claimed the best asteroids.

  Dan Randolph: That’s real flatland thinking. There are millions of asteroids in the Belt. Hundreds of millions, if you count the boulder-sized ones. We could claim a thousand of them and that wouldn’t even begin to put a dent into the total number available.

  Columbia Broadcasting: You say “claim” an asteroid. But isn’t it illegal to claim any object in space?

  Dan Randolph: It’s been illegal since 1967 to claim sovereignty over any body in space. But since the founding of Selene, it has been perfectly legal to claim use of the natural resources of a celestial body.

  Euronews: Weren’t you accused of piracy at one time? Didn’t you hijack shipments of ore on their way from the Moon to factories in Earth orbit?

  Dan Randolph: That was a long time ago, and all those legal issues have been resolved.

  Euronews: But aren’t you doing the same thing now? Stealing a ship and going out to claim resources that rightfully belong to the entire human race?

  Dan Randolph: Look, pal, I own this ship, One-third of it, at least. And those resources out in the Belt won’t do the entire human race one diddley-squat [DELETED] iota’s worth of good if somebody doesn’t go out there and start developing them.

  Anzac Supernet: Is it true that Starpower 1 runs on fusion rockets?

  Dan Randolph: Yes. For more about the Duncan Drive you should talk to Lyle Duncan, who headed the team th
at built this propulsion system. He’s at the university in Glasgow.

  Anzac Supernet: Are you really going to be able to reach the Asteroid Belt in two weeks?

  Dan Randolph: If we accelerate at one-sixth g halfway and then decelerate to our destination, yes, two weeks.

  Global News: Do you think this stunt will help the price of Astro Manufacturing stock?

  Dan Randolph [grinning]: You must be a stockholder. Yes, if we’re successful I think Astro’s price should climb considerably. But that’s just my guess. I’m in enough trouble with the IAA; I wouldn’t want the GEC’s regulators on my back, too.

  Global News: How many people are on the ship with you? Could you introduce them?

  Leaning back in his reclining chair as he watched the interview, Martin Humphries felt whipsawed by emotions. Try as he might to remain calm, he seethed inwardly with cold fury at Dan Randolph and Amanda Cunningham.

  Yet when Amanda appeared on the wallscreen, sitting at the ship’s control panel alongside Pancho Lane, looking properly businesslike in her flight coveralls and her hair pinned up, his anger melted in the light from her eyes.

  How could you? He silently asked Amanda. I offered you everything and you turned your back on me. How could you?

  After hardly a minute of seeing her on-screen he abruptly snapped the broadcast off. The wallscreen went blank.

  It’s over and done with, he told himself as he called up his appointments calendar on his desk screen. Put it behind you. Grimly he searched for the date of the next quarterly meeting of Astro Manufacturing’s board of directors. He marked the date in red. Randolph will be dead by then. I’ll be able to pick his bones and snap up Astro for a song. They’ll all be dead by then. Her too.

  Furious at the way his hands trembled, Humphries called up his most reliable dating service and began scrolling through the videos of the women who were available and ready to please him.

  None of them were as desirable as Amanda, he realized. But he began making his choices anyway.

  OUTWARD BOUND