The Precipice gt-8

by Ben Bova

  “Humphries brought the fusion project to me because he wants to get into Astro. I know how he works. He figures that he’ll finance the fusion work in exchange for a bloc of Astro’s stock. Then he’ll finagle some more stock, put a couple of his clones on my board of directors, and sooner or later toss me out of my own company.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “That’s the way he operates. He’s snatched half-a-dozen corporations that way.

  Right now he’s on the verge of taking over Masterson Aerospace.”

  “Masterson?” Pancho looked shocked.

  Dan said, “Yep. Half the world drowning and the rest cooking from this doubledamned greenhouse, and he’s using it to snatch and grab. He’s a goddamned opportunist. A vampire, sucking the life out of everything he touches.”

  “So what are you gonna do?”

  “Keep his investment in the fusion project to a minimum,” Dan said. “And keep the fusion project separate and apart from Astro Corporation.”

  “Good luck,” she said glumly.

  Dan grinned at her. “Hey, don’t look so worried. I’ve been through this kind of thing before. This is what the corporate jungle is all about.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but I think he’ll get rough if he doesn’t get his way. Real rough.”

  With a brash shrug, Dan replied, “That’s why I keep Big George around.”

  “Big George? Who’s he?”

  Dan had made his quick trip to Nueva Venezuela without George. He didn’t feel the need for a bodyguard once he was off-Earth. In fact, he hadn’t seen the Aussie since they’d arrived together in Selene for his meeting with Doug Stavenger. “I’ll have to introduce you to him.”

  The cart reached the end of the tunnel and stopped automatically. Dan and Pancho got off; he grabbed his travel-bag and they walked to the customs inspection station. Dan saw that the two uniformed inspectors were still checking the quartet of people who had arrived on his flight. On the other side of the area, by the entrance gate, an elderly couple was saying goodbye to a young family with two children, one of them a tot squirming in her mother’s arms. “So whattaya want me to tell Humphries?” Pancho asked. “He’ll wanna know how you did with Dr. Cardenas.”

  “Tell him the truth. Cardenas is joining the team. She’ll be here in a few days.”

  “Should I tell him you want to set up a meeting with him?”

  Dan thought it over as they stepped up to the customs desk. “No,” he said at last.

  “I’ll call him myself as soon as we get down to our quarters.” Humphries seemed surprised when Dan called him, but he quickly agreed to a meeting the very next morning. He insisted on having the meeting in the Humphries Space System’s suite of offices, up in the same tower on the Grand Plaza that housed Doug Stavenger’s office.

  Dan accepted meekly enough, laughing inwardly at Humphries’s gamesmanship. He tried to phone Big George, got only his answering machine, and left a message for George to call him first thing in the morning. Then he undressed, showered, and went to bed.

  He dreamed about Jane. They were together on Tetiaroa, completely alone on the tropical atoll beneath a gorgeous star-strewn sky, walking along the lagoon beach while the balmy wind set the palm trees to rustling softly. A slim crescent of a Moon rode past scudding silvery clouds. Jane was wearing a filmy robe, her auburn hair undone and flowing past her shoulders. In the starlight he could see how beautiful she was, how desirable.

  But he could not speak a word. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried, no sound would come out of his mouth. This is stupid, Dan raged at himself. How can you tell her you love her if you can’t talk?

  The clouds thickened, darkened, blotted out the Moon and stars. Beyond Jane’s shadowy profile Dan could see the ocean stirring, frothing, an enormous tidal wave rising up higher, higher, a mountain of foaming water rushing down on them. He tried to warn her, tried to shout, but the water crashed down on them both with crushing force. He reached for Jane, to hold her, to save her, but she was wrenched out of his arms.

  He woke, sitting up and drenched with sweat. His throat felt raw, as if he’d been screaming for hours. He didn’t know where he was. In the darkness of the bedroom all he could see was the green glowing numerals on the digital clock on the night table. He rubbed at his eyes, working hard to remember. Selene. I’m in the company suite in Selene. I’m going to see Humphries first thing in the morning.

  And Jane’s dead.

  “You’ve been quite a busy fellow,” Humphries said, with obviously false joviality. Instead of meeting in his personal office, he had invited Dan to a small windowless conference room. Not even holoviews on the walls, only a few paintings and photographs of Martin Humphries with celebrities of various stripes. Dan recognized the current President of the United States, a dour-faced elderly man in black clerical garb, and Vasily Malik of the GEC. Leaning back relaxedly in the comfortable padded chair, Dan said, “I guess I have been on the go quite a bit since we last met.”

  Sitting across the table from Dan, Humphries clasped his hands together atop its gleaming surface. “To tell you the truth, Dan, I get the feeling you’re trying to screw me out of this fusion operation.”

  Laughing, Dan said, “I wouldn’t do that, Marty, even if I could.”

  Humphries laughed back at him. It seemed more than a little forced to Dan. “Tell me something,” Dan said. “You didn’t stumble across Duncan by accident, did you?”

  Humphries smiled more genuinely. “Not entirely. When I started Humphries Space Systems I went out and backed more than a dozen small, long-shot research groups. I figured that one of them was bound to come through with something. You ought to see some of the kooks I had to deal with!”

  “I can imagine,” Dan said, grinning. He’d had his share of earnest zanies trying to convince him of one wild scheme or another over the years. “I got lucky with Duncan and this fusion rocket,” Humphries went on, looking pleased with himself.

  “It was more than luck,” Dan said. “You were damned smart.”

  “Maybe,” Humphries agreed. “It only takes one swing to hit a home run.”

  “And it doesn’t cost much, either, at the laboratory stage.” Nodding, Humphries said, “If more people backed basic research we’d get ahead a lot faster.”

  “I should’ve done it myself,” Dan admitted.

  “Yes, you should have.”

  “My mistake.”

  “Okay then, where do we stand?” Humphries asked.

  “Well… you financed Duncan’s original work.”

  “Including the flight tests that you saw,” Humphries pointed out. Dan nodded. “I’ve been trying to put together the financing for building a fullscale spacecraft and sending a team out to the Belt.”

  “I can finance that. I told you I’d put up the money.”

  “Yep. But it’d cost me a good chunk of Astro Corporation, wouldn’t it?”

  “We can negotiate a reasonable price. It won’t cost you a cent out of pocket.”

  “But you’d wind up owning Astro,” Dan said flatly.

  Something flashed in Humphries’s eyes for a moment. But he quickly put on a synthetic smile. “How could I take over Astro Manufacturing, Dan? I know you wouldn’t part with more than fifteen-twenty percent of your company.”

  “More like five or ten percent,” Dan said.

  “Even worse, for me. I’d be a minority stockholder. I wouldn’t even be able to put anybody on the board — except myself, I imagine.”

  Dan said, “H’mm.”

  Hunching closer, Humphries said, “I hear you’re going the nanotech route.”

  “You hear right,” Dan replied. “Dr. Cardenas is returning to Selene to head up the job.”

  “I hadn’t thought about using nanomachines. Makes sense.”

  “Brings the cost down.”

  “Makes my investment smaller,” Humphries said, straight-faced. Tired of the fencing, Dan said, “Look, here’s the way I see this. We bring Selene i
n as a third partner. They provide the facilities and nanotech personnel.”

  “I thought you were recruiting retirees,” Humphries said.

  “Some,” Dan admitted, “but we’ll still need Selene’s active help.”

  “So we’ve got a third partner,” Humphries said sullenly. “I want to form a separate corporation, separate and apart from Astro. We’ll each be one-third owners: you, me, and Selene.”

  Humphries sat up straighter. “What’s the matter, Dan, don’t you trust me?”

  “Not as far as I can throw the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  Another man might have laughed grudgingly. Humphries glared at Dan for a moment, his face reddening. But then he got himself under control and shrugged nonchalantly.

  “You don’t want to let me have any Astro stock, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Dan said pleasantly.

  “But then what are you bringing into this deal? I’ve got the money, Selene’s got the personnel and facilities. What do you offer?”

  Dan smiled his widest. “My management skills. After all, I’m the one who came up with the nanotech idea.”

  “I thought it was Stavenger’s idea.”

  Dan felt his brows hike up. And his respect for Humphries’s sources of information. He didn’t get that from Pancho; I didn’t tell her. Does he have Stavenger’s office bugged? Or infiltrated?

  “Tell you what,” said Dan. “Just to show you that I’m not such a suspicious sonofabitch, I’ll chip in five percent of Astro’s stock. Out of my personal holdings.”

  “Ten,” Humphries immediately shot back.

  “Five”

  “Come on, Dan. You can’t get out ofthis so cheaply.” Dan looked up at the paneled ceiling, took a deep breath, looked back into Humphries’s icy gray eyes. Finally he said, “Seven.”

  “Eight.”

  Dan cocked his head slightly, then murmured, “Deal.” Humphries smiled, genuinely this time, and echoed, “Deal.” Each man extended his hand across the table. As they shook hands, Dan said to himself, Count your fingers after he lets go.

  SELENE NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

  Dan was watching intently as Kris Cardenas manipulated the roller dial with one manicured finger, her eyes riveted on the scanning microscope’s display screen. The image took shape on the screen, blurred, then came into crisp focus. The picture was grainy, gray on gray, with a slightly greenish cast. Dan could make out a pair of fuel tanks with piping that led to a spherical chamber. On the other side of the sphere was a narrow straight channel that ended in the flared bell of a rocket nozzle.

  “It’s the whole assembly!” he blurted.

  Cardenas turned toward him with a bright California smile. “Not bad for a month’s work, is it?”

  Dan grinned back at her. “Kinda small, though, don’t you think?” They were alone in the nanotech lab this late at night. The other workstations were empty, all the cubicles dark, the ceiling lights turned down to their dim nighttime setting. Only in the corner where Dan and Cardenas sat on a pair of swivel stools were the overhead lights at their full brightness. The massive gray tubing of the scanning microscope loomed above them both like a hulking robot. Dan marveled inwardly that the big, bulky machine was capable of revealing individual atoms. Cardenas said, “Size isn’t important right now. It’s the pattern that counts.”

  “Swell,” said Dan. “If I want to send a team of bacteria to the Belt, you’ve got the fusion drive all set for them.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Dan.”

  “I was trying to be funny.”

  Cardenas did not appreciate his humor. Tapping a bright blue-polished fingernail against the microscope’s display screen, she said, “We’ve programmed this set of nanos to understand the pattern of your fusion system: the tankage, the reactor chamber, the MHD channel, and the rocket nozzle.”

  “Plus all the plumbing.”

  “And the plumbing, yes. Now that they’ve learned the pattern, it’s just a matter of programming them to build the same thing at full scale.” Dan scratched his chin, then said, “And the full-scale job will be able to handle the necessary pressures and temperatures?”

  “Most of it’s built of diamond.”

  That wasn’t an answer to his question, Dan realized. Okay, so the virus-sized nanomachines could take individual atoms of carbon from a pile of soot and put them together one by one to build structures with the strength and thermal properties of pure diamond.

  “But will that do the job?” he asked Cardenas.

  Her lips became a tight line. She was obviously unhappy about something.

  “Problem?” Dan asked.

  “Not really,” Cardenas said, “But…”

  “But what? I’ve got to know, Kris. I’m hanging my cojones out in the breeze on this.”

  Raising both hands in a don’t-blame-me gesture, she said, “It’s Dun-can. He refuses to come up here. None of his team will leave Earth.” Dan had known that Duncan, Vertientes, and the rest of the team had opted to remain Earthside and communicate with Cardenas and her nanotech people electronically.

  “You talk to him every day, don’t you?”

  “Sure we do. We even have interactive VR sessions, if you can call them interactive.”

  Feeling alarmed, Dan asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s that damned three-second lag,” Cardenas said. “You can’t really be interactive, you can’t even have a normal conversation when there’s three seconds between your question and their answer every blasted time.”

  “Is it actually hindering your work?”

  She made a face somewhere between a grimace and a pout. “Not hindering, exactly. It’s just so damned inconvenient! And time-consuming. Sometimes we have to go over a thing two or three times just to be sure we’ve heard them right. It soaks up time and makes everybody edgy.”

  Dan thought it over. “Maybe I can talk them into coming up here.”

  “I’ve tried to, god knows. Duncan won’t budge. Neither will any of his people.

  They’re terrified of nanomachines.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Even Professor Vertientes. You’d think he’d know better, at his age.”

  “They’re scared of nanomachines?”

  “They won’t admit it, of course,” said Cardenas. “They say that they might not be allowed to return to Earth if the authorities know that they’ve been working with nanomachines. I think that’s a crock; they’re just plain scared.”

  “Maybe not,” Dan said. “Those Earthside bureaucrats get wonky ideas, especially about nanotechnology. I sure haven’t told anybody that I’m dealing with nanomachines.”

  Her brows shot up. “But everybody knows—”

  “Everybody knows that you and your staff are building a fusion rocket with nanos. As far as the general public is concerned, I don’t come near ’em. I’m a bigshot tycoon, I don’t get involved in the dirty work. I’ve never even been in your lab.” Cardenas nodded with newfound understanding. “That’s why you sneak in here late at night.”

  “I don’t sneak anywhere,” Dan said, with great dignity. “I’ve never been here.

  Period.”

  She laughed. “Of course.”

  “Kris,” he said, more seriously, “I think Duncan and the rest of them have legitimate reasons to be scared of coming up here and working with you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with that three-second lag. It’s their safety net.” Cardenas took a deep breath. “If I have to.”

  “You’ve accomplished a helluva lot in just four weeks,” Dan pointed out. “I suppose that’s true. It’s just… it’d be so much easier if we could all work together under the same roof.”

  Smiling gently, Dan said, “I never promised you a rose garden.” She was about to reply when the door to the corridor banged open, all the way across the mostly-darkened laboratory. Instinctively, Dan started to duck behind the big microscope tube, like a boy hiding from his mother. Then he recognized the hulking
, shaggy, red-bearded figure of Big George Ambrose.

  “That you, Dan?” George called as he strode between workstations toward them.

  “Been lookin’ everywhere for you, y’know.”

  Despite his size, George moved gracefully, light on his feet and perfectly at home in the low lunar gravity.

  “I’m not here,” Dan growled.

  “Right. But if you were, I’d hafta tell you that Pancho Lane’s missin’.”

  “Missing?”

  “Not in her quarters,” George said as he approached. “Not in any of the Astro offices. Not in the spaceport or the Grand Plaza. Not anyplace I’ve looked. Blyleven’s worried about her.”

  Frank Blyleven was chief of Astro’s security department. Dan glanced at Cardenas, then said to George, “She could be in someone else’s quarters, you know.”

  George looked surprised at the idea. “Pancho? She doesn’t have a guy and she doesn’t sleep around.”

  “I wouldn’t worry—”

  “She didn’t show up at the office t’day. She’s never missed an hour of work, let alone a whole day.”

  That worried Dan. “Didn’t show up at all?”

  “I asked everybody. No Pancho, all day. I been lookin’ for her all night. Nowhere in sight.”

  “Did you ask her roommate?”

  “Mandy Cunningham? She was out havin’ dinner with Humphries.”

  “She should be back by now.”

  George made a leering smirk. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Turning to Cardenas, Dan said, “I’d better look into this. George is right, Pancho’s had her nose to the grindstone ever since she came up here.”

  “So maybe she’s taking a little r and r,” Cardenas said, unruffled.

  “Maybe,” Dan admitted. But he didn’t think so.

  PELICAN BAR

  Pancho had spent the entire day being invisible. The night before, she had gone to the Pelican Bar for a little relaxation after another long, grueling day of study and simulation runs in the Astro office complex.

  The incongruously-named Pelican Bar had been started by a homesick Floridian who had come to Selene back in the days when the underground community was still known as Moonbase. Hired to be the base’s quartermaster, he had developed a case of hypertension that kept him from returning to Earth until a regime of exercise and medication brought his blood pressure under control. He took the pills, largely ignored the exercise, and started the bar in his own quarters as a clandestine drinking club for his cronies. Over the years he had grown into a paunchy little barrel of a man, his bald head gleaming under the ceiling fluorescents, a perpetual gap-toothed smile on his fleshy, tattooed face. He often told his patrons that he had found his true calling as a bartender: “A dispenser of cheer and honest advice,” as he put it.