by Ben Bova
“What could go wrong?” Cardenas demanded.
Paul intervened. “I think Greg is right. This is the first time we’re trying this. No harm in being a little on the conservative side.”
“But we’ve already programmed a temperature limit into the bugs. They won’t operate at an ambient higher than thirty degrees.”
“Celsius,” Paul said.
“That’s what — ninety degrees Fahrenheit?” Greg asked.
“Eighty-six,” said Cardenas. “So the bugs can’t work or multiply on the surface during the lunar daytime. Even if they somehow started to spread, you’d have two weeks of lunar night to dig ’em up and get rid of them.”
“Still,” Greg insisted, “we ought to put the demonstration some distance away” from existing facilities. Don’t you think so, Paul?”
“I guess so. No harm being careful.”
Cardenas looked more angry than hurt. “You guys act as if we’re in a Frankenstein mode. We’re using assemblers here, y’know, not gobblers.”
“Still,” Paul said, “the test site ought to be remote enough so that if anything does go wrong—”
“It won’t,” she snapped.
“If something unforeseen happens,” Paul went on, “it’ll happen far enough out in the boondocks so none of the existing tempos’ll be threatened.”
“Tempos?” Cardenas asked.
“That’s what the shelters are called,” Greg explained. “They’re supposed to be temporary shelters.”
She blinked those deeply blue eyes. “They’ve been in use for nearly ten years, some of them, haven’t they?”
“That’s right,” Paul said.
“Some ‘temporary’.”
With a tight smile, Paul said, “When the history of Moonbase’s first hundred years gets written, you’ll see that they’re temporary.”
“I should live so long,” Cardenas muttered.
“I thought your nanobugs were going to allow you to live a thousand years or so,” Paul teased.
“Once the friggin’ FDA lets us start using them in human patients, they will.”
Greg leaned back in his chair and steepled his long, sensitive fingers in front of his face. “Do you mean that you wouldn’t inject nanomachines into yourself if you thought they could improve your medical condition, just because the FDA hasn’t approved them?”
“If we had bugs that I knew would protect me from tumors or keep my arteries from clogging I’d swallow ’em in a hot second,” she said. “But we haven’t progressed that far yet, and we can’t make much more progress on the medical end until we get an FDA okay to do human trials on the simple stuff we have developed, y’know.”
Greg looked thoughtful. “So the medical work is on hold.”
“Right.”
“But you’re making progress on the toxic waste bugs.”
“The gobblers? For sure.”
Greg nodded as if satisfied.
That evening Paul invited Cardenas and Greg to dinner at the Stanford Court, in San Francisco. She showed up with her husband, whom she introduced as the finest neurosurgeon in the Bay area.
Paul shook hands with Pete Cardenas. He was as slim as a dancer, his skin a shade darker than Paul’s own. His given name must really be Pedro, Paul thought.
“So this is where you get your medical inputs,” Paul said.
“Is that supposed to be a pun?” Kris asked, pretending suspicion.
Paul felt his mouth drop open. “I didn’t mean—”
Greg guffawed. It was the first time Paul had seen his step-son actually relaxed enough to laugh out loud. And it has to be at my expense, he groused inwardly. But it was good to see that the kid at least knew how to laugh.
Greg had come into the dining room alone, even though Paul had urged him to bring a date. They had talked about it during the helicopter ride from San Jose.
But Greg had said, “You’re not bringing a date, are you?”
“Hey, I’m a married man,” Paul had replied.
“Yes,” Greg had said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
With the two men in her life working shoulder-to-shoulder, Joanna put her energies into her new position as chairwoman of the board of Masterson Aerospace Corporation.
To her surprise she found that she enjoyed the work. And the newfound respect that Masterson’s employees gave her. Before, when she happened to visit the corporate offices, she was the boss’s wife. Now, she was chairwoman of the board.
She couldn’t .exactly fire people; but she could see to it that they were fired by others.
All her life she had been the reflection of the men around her. As her father’s daughter she had been one of the brightest young lights in Savannah’s social scene: a fine catch for some worthy young man. Her father had married her off to Gregory Masterson II, who had a bright future ahead of him as the heir to Masterson Aerospace. Joanna’s marriage saved her father’s failing fortune; Masterson money propped up the old man’s final years.
Then she had been the wife of Gregory Masterson, outwardly a happily-married woman with not a trouble in the world. Except that her husband drank and whored and had the business sense of a butterfly combined with the stubbornness of a jackass. And a mean streak that could cut deep without ever raising a hand. Joanna was a leader of Savannah society — but she knew the whispers that trailed behind her back. Gregory slept with any and every woman he could get his hands on. She bore it with as much dignity as she could pretend to, not knowing what else she could do.
She was the mother of Gregory Masterson III, and the thought of how devastating to her son would be a bitterly-contested divorce stayed her hand for years, for decades. She lived for her son and tried to raise him to be the kind of man she had hoped her husband would be.
And then she met Paul Stavenger and her life turned upside-down. For the first time she let herself be loved, wonderfully, excitingly, foolishly loved by another man.
It had almost turned to ashes. Gregory’s suicide and Greg’s almost insanely jealous accusations had nearly torn her apart. But now Greg and Paul were working harmoniously together. Greg had finally accepted his father’s suicide and his mother’s new marriage.
Joanna hesitated to tell Greg that she was expecting a baby. Paul’s son. Several times she had been on the verge of telling him, and each time she refrained. Wait, she told herself. Give his relationship with Paul a little more time to ripen. The two men are getting along so well together, don’t throw this at Greg. Not yet.
In the meantime, she found that she enjoyed being chairwoman of Masterson’s board of directors. She was a person in her own right now. Not a wife or a mother but chairwoman of the board. She was determined to be the best board chairperson Masterson had ever known.
Joanna threw herself into a complete review of the corporation’s product lines. The Clipperships were the only profitable products Masterson had, although the prospects for the Windowall TV screens looked extremely bright. Still, she could see from the marketing department’s forecasts that there was a disaster curve looming about three years ahead. New orders for the rocket vehicles were going to taper off dramatically in three years.
Sales of the Clipperships will have saturated the market by then, the reports told her. The corporation will have sold as many as the world’s airlines wanted or felt they needed. Sales would dwindle terribly.
What then? Joanna asked herself. The other divisions — commercial aircraft, electronics, and satellite manufacturing — were barely holding their own in very competitive markets. The Windowall development might be the salvation of the orbital manufacturing group, but the nanotechnology division and Moonbase were deeply in the red and showed no prospects of profitability for years to come.
Unless Greg and Paul can pull a rabbit out of the hat with their lunar nanotech demonstration. She knew Paul’s reasoning by heart. If Moonbase can be developed into a viable resource center, the costs of orbital manufacturing will drop by a factor of twenty. The two w
ill be synergistic: as the manufacturing facilities in Earth orbit grow more profitable, their demand for raw materials will make Moonbase more profitable, too.
She looked up from the charts on her computer screen. And if we can use nanotechnology to build Moonbase faster and more cheaply, the nanotech division will begin to find markets on Earth, as well.
But it’s such a gamble, Joanna knew. It’s piling one shaky bet on top of another and even a third. With that disaster curve waiting for us, just three years ddwn the road.
She spent weeks thinking about the problem, discussing it with division managers and other members of the board of directors. She consulted experts from outside the company in finance, marketing, even forecasters of technological trends.
She did not tell either Paul or Greg what she was doing. They were happily working together and she had no intention of interfering or upsetting them.
Slowly, over many weeks, she gathered together a picture of what a prudent corporate leader would do. Sell off the divisions that were still marginally profitable, divisions that still had some market value. Drop the divisions that were not profitable. Lay off as many employees as you had to and downsize the corporation.
The only viable market that we can depend on, three years from now, is selling parts and maintenance services for the CUpperships. Maybe the Windowalls, but it’s too early to bank on that. We should be preparing the corporation for a smaller market, trim off all the excess fat and get ready for some leaner years. Ten years from now there will be a market for Clipperships again: new, bigger, more efficient Clipperships. But we’ve got to be able to last through the lean times in between then and now.
She knew Paul would never go for it. Would Greg? A few months ago he would, but now he seems completely on Paul’s side, ready to risk everything for the sake of this nanotech demonstration on the Moon.
Joanna mentally counted up the votes on the board of directors. If I suggest a downsizing plan it would pass, she realized. It would also break Paul’s heart and ruin our marriage.
But it would save Masterson Aerospace Corporation.
MARE NUBIUM
The damned ankle really hurts.
Paul limped along, trying to make up for the time he had lost by drifting off course. Like being on a pissin’ treadmill, he grumbled to himself. You keep humpin’ along but you aren’t getting anywhere. That’s why he had never liked gyms or exercise equipment, even when he had first pulled duty on the old space stations that hung in zero gee and exercise was required every day.
Get my exercise in bed, Paul had bragged. Keep my heart in good shape nature’s way. Keep my whole system pumpin’ good. Yeah.
He was panting now and that was a bad sign. Exhaustion. How long have I been out here? He lifted his left arm as he staggered along, but between the dust clinging to his visor and the blurriness of his vision he could not see the figures on the digital clock clearly.
Long enough, he said to himself. Too long.
One foot in front of the other. But the ankle really hurts. Can’t be a fracture, I wouldn’t be able to put any weight on it. Chipped bone, maybe. More likely a sprain. But a sprain shouldn’t hurt so much when you walk on it, should it? At least it makes me stop fussin’ the chafed heel on the other foot.
He remembered his grandfather’s grumbling remedy for a headache: “Drop an anvil on your toes.”
It’s really hot. Pissin’ suit’s cooling system must be breaking down. Feels like I’m draggin’ my ass across the Sahara Desert. Worse. At least there you have air to breathe.
A pang of fear raced through him like an electrical current. How much oxygen is left? How much time do I have?
He coughed. His throat was dry and scratchy as sandpaper. No more water left. Oxygen running out Suit’s filling with carbon dioxide. I’m gonna choke to death on my own pissin’ fumes.
Keep moving! he screamed at himself. Long as you can move you’ve got a chance. You must be getting close to the! tempo. It’s gotta be near here. Keep pushing.
The only good news was the chirping of the GPS signal in his earphones. Guide me in, you noisy little bird, Paul prayed silently. Keep talkin’ to me, you pile of germanium. Sing me a song.
He coughed again. Gettin’ hotter in here. No water left.
He stumbled on a loose rock and went down face first. Long years of training and experience took over and Paul put out his gloved hands, let his arms flex when they touched the dusty ground, and pushed himself to a standing position again. And saw, through his fogged and dust-smeared visor, a’ single red light glowing just above the abrupt horizon.
It’s a mirage, he told himself. You want to see it so pissin’ bad your brain is painting stupid pictures for you.
But then he thought, there’s no mirages on the Moon. Least, I never heard of one.
Blinking, limping, he stared at the red beacon. That’s the kind of light they put on top of an antenna mast at the tempos.
“That’s the tempo!” he shouted, his voice cracking into a choking, hacking cough.
He heard somebody cackling weirdly. Funniest thing in the world if you ran out of oxygen within sight of the tempo. Funniest thing in two worlds. Man, you could die laughing.
SAVANNAH
Looking back on it, Joanna realized it was inevitable that Paul would insist on going to the Moon for the nanotech demonstration.
“You don’t have to be physically there,” she told her husband, time and again.
“But I want to be,” Paul always countered.
Joanna tried every tactic she knew.
“You are much to valuable to the corporation to go running off to the Moon just to watch a demonstration project.”
Paul grinned at her. “Don’t worry. Madam Chairperson; I’m well insured. The corporation won’t get hurt financially if something happens to me.”
“But what about me? What about our baby?”
He hesitated at that. But then, “This is for the baby. Don’t you see? I want this demonstration to succeed. It’s got to succeed! The whole future of the corporation depends on it.”
“It will succeed or fail whether you’re there or not,” Joanna insisted.
“Maybe.”
“You’ve got a God complex!” she accused.
He shook his head, very seriously. “If I stay here and the demo screws up, I’ll blame myself for not being there to make sure it goes right.”
“That’s a God complex,” Joanna pointed out.
“That’s an experienced executive,” Paul retorted. “The crew always works better when the captain is on the bridge. Don’t you know that?”
“Sheer machismo.”
Since Greg was working so well with Paul, she turned to her son for support.
To her surprise, Greg agreed with Paul. “I think he ough to be there. This is a crucial experiment and we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure it comes out right.”
His newfound professional demeanor surprised and pleased her — except that his position on the matter was opposed to her own.
At dinner one evening at the house, Paul suggested that he go to Moonbase with him. “You’ve never been up there. You ought to see it.”
“You want me to go with you?” Greg asked. He looked a: surprised as Joanna felt.
“Sure,” said Paul. “Why not?”
“Oh no!” Joanna said. Firmly.
Paul was bubbling with preparations for the coming trip to Moonbase. He wants to go sobadly, Joanna understood at last His heart is there, in that godforsaken barren desolation. No here. Not with me.
Greg, she saw, was nowhere near as enthusiastic about travelling to the Moon as Paul was.
“I’m not going to have both of you out there at the same time,” Joanna said. “That’s too much.”
Paul gave her a strange expression. Only later, much later, did she realize that he felt she was willing to let him risk his life on the Moon, even though reluctantly, but she absolutely would not tolerate her son taking
the same risk.
“I’m going to Moonbase,” Paul said flatly.
“Greg stays here,” she answered.
Dinner was served in cold silence.
Days later, Greg took Paul aside at the corporate offices and said, “I’d really like to go with you, but I can’t worry my mother so much. She’d be frantic.”
Paul looked at his wife’s son. He had a difficult time picturing Joanna being frantic over anything.
But he said, “Yeah, I suppose you’re right I’ll go, you stay and hold her hand.”
“I can keep in touch with you through the VR system,” Greg suggested.
With a wan smile, Paul said, “Good as it is, virtual reality isn’t the same as being there.”
Greg shrugged his shoulders. “I agree. But it’ll have to do.” ;’Yeah,” said Paul.
Greg and, Joanna went to the company airstrip to watch Paul depart for Florida and the Clippership launch to the space station that was the first step on his trip to Moonbase. A contingent of San Jose technicians were waiting for him at Cape Canaveral, and a man-sized container of nanomachines rested in the rocket’s cargo hold.
“You’re crying,” Greg said as he and Joanna watched Paul’s plane take off.
“It’s just the dust,” Joanna insisted, turning from the ramp toutside the hangar toward the limousine that was waiting to take them home: Joanna to her house, Greg to his condo in town.
She actually saw more of her husband over the next few days than she had for weeks: Paul called her regularly from the space station and even from the transfer rocket that took him from the space station to the clutch of buried shelters that he called Moonbase.
“Well, I’m here,” Paul’s image said to her from the display screen in her bedroom. “Landed half an hour ago.”
“I was wondering when you’d call.” Joanna was sitting up in bed, a small mountain of pillows behind her. She had been waiting for his call for more than an hour, staring at the schedule for Paul’s flight when his call finally came through, telling herself that it takes some time to get out of the landing vehicle and into the living quarters of the underground shelter, so it was silly to worry about him.
