The Precipice gt-8

by Ben Bova

  “We ought to at least try.”

  “That’s the difference between us,” Humphries said, jabbing a finger in Dan’s direction. “You want to be a savior. All I want is to make a little money.” Dan looked at him for a long, silent moment. He’s right, Dan thought. Once upon a time all I was interested in was making money. And now I don’t give a damn. Not anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. Since Jane died — god, I’ve turned into a do-gooder!

  Leaning forward again, toward Dan, his expression suddenly intense, earnest, Humphries said, “Listen to me, Dan. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. You can’t save the world. Nobody can. The best thing we can do is to feather our own nests and—”

  “I’ve got to try,” Dan interrupted. “I can’t sit here and just let them drown or starve or sink into another dark age.”

  “Okay, okay.” Humphries raised both hands placatingly. “You go right ahead and beat your head against that wall, if you want to. Maybe the asteroids are the answer. Maybe you’ll save the world, one way or the other. In the meantime, we can clean up a tidy little profit doing it.”

  “Yep.”

  “If we don’t make a profit, Dan, we can’t do anybody any good. We’ve got to make money out of this or go out of business. You know that. We can’t do this mission at cost. We’ve got to show a profit.”

  “Or at least,” Dan countered, “a profit potential.”

  Humphries considered the idea for a moment, then agreed, “A profit potential. Okay, I’ll settle for that. We need to show the financial community—”

  “What’s left of it.”

  Humphries actually laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about the financial community. Men like my father will always be all right, no matter what happens. Even if the whole world drowns, they’ll sit on a mountaintop somewhere, fat and happy, and wait for the waters to go down.”

  Dan could barely hide his disgust. “Come on, let’s get back to work. We’ve had enough philosophy for one morning.”

  Humphries agreed with a smile and a nod.

  Hours later, after Dan had left the conference room, Humphries went back to his own office and sank into his high-backed swivel chair. As he leaned back and gazed up at the paneled ceiling, the chair adjusted its contours to accommodate his body. Humphries relaxed, smiling broadly. He missed it, he said to himself. The numbers are right there in the budget and Randolph went past them as if they were written in invisible ink.

  It was so easy to distract Randolph’s attention. Just get him started on his idiotic crusade. He blanks out to everything else. He wants to go to the Belt to save the world. Sounds like Columbus wanting to reach China by sailing in the wrong direction.

  Humphries laughed out loud. It’s right there in the budget and he paid no attention to it at all. Or maybe he thinks it’s just a backup, a redundancy measure. After all, it’s not a terribly large sum. Once the nanos have built one fusion system, it only costs peanuts to have them build another one. The real expense is in the design and programming, and that’s all amortized on the first model. All the backup costs is the raw materials and the time of a few people to monitor the process. The nanos work for nothing.

  He laughed again. Randolph thinks he’s so fricking smart, sneaking Pancho’s sister out of the catacombs. Afraid I’ll terminate her? Or does he want to keep Pancho under his thumb? I won’t be able to use her anymore, but so what, who needs her now? I’ll be building a second fusion drive and he doesn’t even know it!

  SPACEPORT ARMSTRONG

  Pancho stared across the desolate, blast-scarred expanse of the launch center and wrinkled her nose unhappily. “It sure looks like a kludge.” Standing beside her in the little observation bubble, Dan had to agree. The fusion drive looked like the work of a drunken plumber: bulbous spheres of diamond that sparkled in the harsh unfiltered sunlight drenching the lunar surface, the odd shapes of the MHD channel, the pumps that fed the fuel to the reactor chamber, radiator panels and the multiple rocket nozzles, all connected by a surrealistic maze of pipes and conduits. The entire contraption was mounted on the platformlike deck of an ungainly, spraddle-legged booster that stood squat and silent on the circular launch pad of smoothed lunar concrete. The observation chamber was nothing more than a bubble of glassteel poking up above the barren floor of Alphonsus’s giant ringwall. Barely big enough for two people to stand in, the chamber was connected by a tunnel to the control center of the launch complex. “We didn’t build her for beauty,” Dan said. “Besides, she’ll look better once we’ve mated her with the other modules.”

  Subdued voices crackled from the intercom speaker set into the smoothed wall of the chamber just below the rim of the transparent blister. “Pan Asia oh-one-niner on final descent,” said the pilot of an incoming shuttle. “We have you on final, oh-one-niner,” answered the calm female voice of a flight controller. “Pad four.”

  “Pad four, copy.”

  Dan looked up into the star-flecked sky and saw a fleeting glint of light.

  “Retrorockets,” Pancho muttered.

  “On the curve,” said the flight controller.

  Another quick burst. Dan could make out the shuttle now, a dark angular shape falling slowly out of the sky, slim landing legs extended. “Down the pipe, oh-one-niner,” said the woman controller. She sounded almost bored.

  It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Dan watched the shuttle come down and settle on the pad farthest away from the one on which the fusion rocket was sitting, waiting for clearance to take off. The shuttle pilot announced, “Oh-oneniner is down. All thrusters off.”

  Pancho let out a puff of pent-up breath.

  Surprised, Dan asked, “White knuckles? You?”

  She grinned, embarrassed. “I always get torqued up, unless I’m driving the buggy.”

  Glancing at his wristwatch, Dan said, “Well, we ought to get clearance to launch as soon as they offload the shuttle.”

  With a nod, Pancho said, “I’d better get suited up.”

  “Right,” said Dan.

  The fusion system itself was the last part of their spacecraft to be launched into orbit around the Moon. The propellant tanks and the crew and logistics modules were already circling a hundred kilometers overhead. Pancho would supervise the assembly robots that would link all the pieces together. Dan went with her along the tunnel and into the locker room where the astronauts donned their spacesuits. Amanda was already there, ready to help check her out. Dan realized it had been a long time since he’d checked out anyone or donned a spacesuit himself. Spaceflight is so routine nowadays that you can come and go from the Earth to the Moon just like you ride a plane or a bus, he thought. But another voice in his head said, you’re too old to be working in space. Over the years you’ve taken as big a radiation dose as you’re allowed… and then some. He felt old and pretty useless as he watched Pancho worm into the spacesuit while Amanda hovered beside her, checking the seals and connections. Like Pancho, Amanda was wearing light tan flight coveralls. Dan noticed how nicely she filled them out.

  Well, he sighed to himself, at least you’re not too old to appreciate a good-looking woman.

  But he turned and headed for the tunnel that connected the space-port to Selene proper, feeling useless, wondering if Humphries was right and he was butting his head against a stone wall.

  As he started down the corridor that led to the connector tunnel, he saw Doug Stavenger coming up in the other direction, looking youthful and energetic and purposeful.

  Dammitall, he thought, Stavenger’s older than I am and he looks like a kid. Maybe I ought to get some nanotherapy.

  “Going to watch the launch?” Stavenger asked brightly.

  “Think I’ll go to the launch center and watch it from there.”

  “I like to watch from the observation bubble.”

  “I was just there,” Dan said.

  “Come on; let’s see the real thing instead of watching it on a screen.” Stavenger’s enthusiasm was contagious.
Dan found himself striding along the narrow tunnel again, out to the bubble.

  They ducked through the open hatch and into the cramped chamber. Stavenger climbed the two steps and looked out, grinning. Dan squeezed in beside him, nearly bumping his head on the curving glassteel.

  “I used to sneak out here when I was a kid to watch the liftoffs and landings,” Stavenger said, grinning. “I still get a kick out of it.”

  Dan made a polite mumble.

  “I mean, we spend almost our whole lives indoors, underground,” Stavenger went on. “It’s good to see the outside now and then.”

  “As long as the glass doesn’t crack.”

  “That’s what the safety hatches are for.”

  Dan said, “But you’ve got to get through them fast, before they shut themselves.”

  Stavenger laughed. “True enough.”

  They watched shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped blister, listening to the flight controllers’ crisp voices clicking off the countdown. Stavenger seemed as excited as a kid; Dan envied him. A little tractor rolled noiselessly across the crater floor to the launch pad. Pancho’s spacesuited figure jumped from it in dreamlike lunar slow-motion, stirring up a lazy puff of gray dust. Then she climbed up the ladder and sealed herself into the booster’s one-person crew module. “This is just an assembly mission, isn’t it?” Stavenger asked.

  “Right,” said Dan. “She not a pilot on this flight, just baby-sitting the robots.” Strangely enough, Dan felt his palms going clammy as the countdown neared its final moments. Relax, he told himself silently. There’s nothing to this. Still, his heart began to thump faster.

  “… three… two… one… ignition,” said the automated countdown voice. The spacecraft leaped off the launch pad in a cloud of smoke and gritty dust that evaporated almost as soon as it formed. One instant the craft was sitting on the concrete, the next it was gone.

  “We have liftoff,” said one of the human controllers in the time-honored tradition.

  “All systems in the green.”

  Pancho’s voice came through the speaker. “Copy all systems green. Orbital insertion burn in ten seconds.”

  It was all quite routine. Still, Dan didn’t relax until Pancho announced, “On the money, guys! I’m cruisin’ along with the other modules. Time to go to work.” A controller’s voice replied, “Rendezvous complete. Initiate assembly procedure.”

  Dan huffed. “She sounds more like a robot than a human being.” Just then the controller added, “Okay, Pancho. I’ll see you at the Pelican tomorrow night.”

  Stavenger grinned at Dan. “Maybe she drinks lubricating oil.” They walked through the corridor to the tunnel that led back to Selene. As they climbed onto one of the automated carts that plied the kilometer-long tunnel, Stavenger asked, “How soon will you be ready for your flight to the Belt?”

  “We’ve programmed a month of uncrewed flight tests and demo flights for IAA certification. Once we get the nod from the bureaucrats we’ll be ready to go.”

  “Could your craft reach Jupiter?”

  Surprised at the question, Dan replied, “In theory. But we won’t be carrying enough propellant or supplies for that. Jupiter’s almost twice as far as the Belt.”

  “I know,” Stavenger murmured.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Stavenger hesitated. The cart trundled along the blank-walled tunnel smoothly, almost silently, its electrical motor purring softly. At last Stavenger answered, “Sooner or later we’re going to have to go to Jupiter… or maybe one of the other gas giants.”

  Dan saw where he was heading. “Fusion fuels.”

  “Jupiter’s atmosphere is rich in hydrogen and helium isotopes.”

  “Kris Cardenas mentioned that to me,” Dan remembered. “She and I have been talking about it. Fusion fuels could be a major trade commodity for Selene. And very profitable for Starpower, Ltd.”

  “Mining asteroids is a lot easier than scooping gases from Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

  “Yes,” Stavenger admitted, “but your idea of moving large segments of Earth’s industry off the planet is only part of the solution to the greenhouse warming, Dan.”

  “I know, but it’s a big part.”

  “The other half is to wean them off fossil fuel burning. They’ve got to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if they’re going to have any chance of stopping the global warming.”

  “And fusion is a way to do that,” Dan muttered.

  “It’s the only way,” Stavenger said firmly. “Your solar power satellites can provide only a small fraction of the energy that Earth needs. Fusion can take over the entire load.”

  “If we can bring in enough helium-three.”

  “There are other fusion processes that could be even more efficient than burning deuterium with helium-three. But they all depend on isotopes that are vanishingly rare on Earth.”

  “But plentiful on Jupiter,” Dan said.

  “That’s right.”

  Dan nodded, thinking, He’s right. Fusion could be the answer. If we could replace all the fossil-fueled electricity-generating plants on Earth with fusion plants we could cut down the greenhouse emissions to almost nothing. Fusion power plants could generate the electricity for electric cars. That’d eliminate another big greenhouse source.

  He looked at Stavenger with new respect. Here’s a man who’s exiled from Earth, yet he wants to help them. And he sees farther than I do. “Okay,” he said. “After the flight to the Belt, we make a run out to Jupiter. I’ll start the planning process right away.”

  “Good,” said Stavenger. Then he added, “Will this be a Starpower project or will you keep it for Astro Corporation?”

  For a moment Dan was dumbstruck. When he found his voice, it was a shocked whisper. “You want to cut out Humphries?”

  “He’s maneuvering to get a stranglehold on asteroidal resources,” Stavenger said, as cold as steel. “I don’t think it would be wise to let him control fusion fuels as well.”

  By all the gods that ever were, Dan thought, this guy is ready to go to war with Humphries.

  BOARD MEETING

  The filters in his nostrils were giving Dan a headache; they felt as big as shotgun shells. He had come back to Earth reluctantly for this quarterly meeting of his board of directors. Dan always felt he could run Astro Manufacturing just fine if the double-damned board would simply stay out of his way. But they always had to poke their noses into the corporation’s operations, complaining about this, asking about that, insisting that he follow every crack-brained suggestion they came up with.

  It was all so unnecessary. Dan held a controlling interest of the corporation’s outstanding stock; not an absolute majority of the shares, but enough to outvote the other board members if he had to. The board could not throw him out of his seat as corporate president and chief executive officer. All they could do was nibble away, waste his time, drive up his blood pressure. To top it off, now Martin Humphries had joined the board, smiling, making friends, chatting up the other members as they milled around the sideboard scarfing up drinks and tea sandwiches before sitting in their places at the long conference table. Humphries was out to get an absolute majority, that was as clear to Dan as a gun aimed at his head.

  Through the sweeping window that ran the length of the board room Dan could see the surging waters of the Caribbean sparkling in the morning sun. The sea looked calm, yet Dan knew it was inching ever higher, encroaching on the land, patiently, inexorably. Humphries kept his back to the window, deep in intense discussion with a trio of elderly directors. Dan had flown back to La Guaira specifically for this meeting. He could have stayed in Selene and chaired the meeting electronically, but that three-second lag would have driven him crazy. He appreciated how Kris Cardenas felt, dealing from the Moon every day with Duncan and his team in Scotland.

  Dan stood at one end of the sideboard, beneath the big framed photograph of Astro’s first solar-power satellite, glinting in the harsh sunlight of space aga
inst the deep black background of infinity. He sipped on his usual aperitif glass of Amontillado, speaking as pleasantly as he could manage with the people closest to him. Fourteen men and women, most of the men either gray or bald, most of the women looking youthful, thanks to rejuvenation treatments. Funny, he thought: the women are taking rejuve therapy but the men are holding back from it. I am myself, he realized. The ultimate machismo stupidity. What’s wrong with delaying your physical deterioration? It’s not like a face-lift; you actually reverse the aging of your body’s cells.

  “Dan, could I speak to you for a moment?” asked Harriett O’Banian. She’d been on the board for more than ten years, ever since Dan had bought out her small solarcell production company.

  “Sure, Hartie,” he said, walking her slowly to the far corner of the big conference room. “What’s on your mind?”

  Hattie O’Banian was a trim-looking redhead who had consummated her buyout by Astro Manufacturing with a month-long affair with Dan. It had been fun for them both, and she’d been adult enough to walk away from it once she realized that no matter who shared his bed, Dan Randolph was in love with former President Jane Scanwell.

  Glancing over her shoulder to make certain no one was within eavesdropping range, O’Banian half-whispered, “I’ve been offered a damned good price for my Astro shares. So have half a dozen other board members.” Dan’s eyes flicked to Humphries, at the other end of the room, still chatting with the directors gathered around him.

  “Who made the offer?” he asked.

  “A straw man. Humphries is the real buyer.”

  “I figured.”

  “The trouble is, Dan, that’s it’s a damned good offer. Five points above the market price.”

  “He’s gone up to five, has he?” Dan muttered.

  “With the stock in free-fall the way it is, the offer is awfully tempting.”

  “Yep, I can see that.”

  She looked up at him and Dan realized that her emerald green eyes, which could be so full of delight and mischief, were dead serious now. “He can buy up enough stock to outvote you,” O’Banian said.