Privateers

by Ben Bova

  He turned back toward his desk, a bulky, ornate heirloom of Victorian grotesquerie that his great-grandfather had acquired when he had been a young minister in rural Virginia. The office’s couches, chairs and long polished conference table were all in the ultramodern Venezuelan style of leather, mahogany and chrome. The carpets were from India and China. One of them, richly woven with threads of gold, was a gift from his old friend Saito Yamagata. There were no paintings on the walls, but plenty of photographs. None of them were of people. Most showed spacecraft standing on launching platforms, silhouetted against dramatic skies. Others showed views of the Earth as seen from space. The largest one, taking up almost the entire wall opposite Dan’s desk, was of the spidery wheels-within-wheels structure of the Venezuelan space station, Nueva Venezuela. Dan had taken that photograph himself. Just as he had built the station itself.

  Behind his desk, on the wall over the low bookshelves built in there, was a framed page from a three-year-old issue of Forbes magazine. It showed a color photograph of Dan sitting at his desk in his old office in Houston. As a portrait, Dan found it amusingly deceptive. He was looking squarely into the camera, grinning boyishly, a grown-up Tom Sawyer playing business tycoon. His gray eyes sparkled, his sandy hair was tousled as if he had just been engaged in some strenuous action. He was in his shirt-sleeves, tie slightly askew, one hand reaching for the key pad of his phone terminal. Dan knew that he was no beauty, yet his rugged, unhandsome features seemed to intrigue women. It was the smile that got them, he thought. The smile and the eyes. His nose was too big for his own liking, and still slightly bent from the time it had been broken during a drunken lowgravity fistfight on the Moon. A Japanese mining engineer had made a wisecrack about American stupidity and Dan had tackled him and his three compatriots. He had never taken the trouble to have the nose straightened, even after he had become so wealthy. Dan told himself he was not that vain. His plentiful enemies said he was too vain to correct the imperfection.

  The text of the article that accompanied Dan’s picture had been written by a young woman who had thought herself a hard-probing reporter, too tough and sophisticated to fall for a grown-up Tom Sawyer. She started the article by describing him:

  “A throwback to an earlier era, Daniel Hamilton Randolph is probably the richest thirty-five-year-old industrialist in the world. Scion of a genteel Virginia family that traces its roots back to Thomas Jefferson, this former astronaut, former lunar mining engineer, has created the first multinational corporation to crack the billion-dollar-per-year mark entirely through space industries.

  “Randolph is not a big man physically, but he has the inner toughness that comes from making his own way in the world. Unmarried and handsome enough to head Playgirl magazine’s ‘Ten Most Wanted Men’ list, Dan Randolph has the brilliance, the drive, and the towering ego of a latter-day Ted Turner.”

  His desk phone chimed and Dan snapped his fingers in answer. The phone terminal spoke with the dulcet voice of a professional actress whom Dan had once admired enough to buy her an apartment in New York. Her voice, it turned out, had been the sexiest part of her.

  “Dr. Freiberg to see you, Mr. Randolph.”

  Glancing at the growing puddle on the carpet by the window, he growled, “Where the hell’s the maintenance man?”

  Picking up on the key word, the phone replied, “Maintenance department was called one hour and thirty-seven minutes ago. Do you wish to call again?”

  “You’re double-damned right I do!”

  The phone made no response. It did not understand Dan’s vehement language. He huffed, then said slowly, “Yes. Call the maintenance department again. Repeat the same message and add that I will deduct any damage to my carpeting from the rent.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the phone. “And Dr. Freiberg.”

  Dan nodded. “Right. Let’s have Dr. Freiberg, by all means.”

  Zachary Freiberg, Ph.D., appeared almost instantly in the chair at the left side of Dan’s desk. His holographic image, projected by laser equipment built into the ceiling, scintillated slightly. It was solid enough to look real, although Dan knew that if he extended his hand, it would go through empty air. He could see, faintly, the photos on the far wall through Freiberg’s three-dimensional image. The scientist was slouching slightly in the chair, cross-legged, his eyes focused slightly away from Dan.

  “Hello, Mr. Randolph,” said Zachary Freiberg. He was a youngish man, with curly strawberry-blond hair flopping down boyishly over his broad forehead. His face was round, applecheeked. An open-neck shirt, its pocket stuffed with pens, rumpled denims and feet bare except for sandals that were cheap imitations of Japanese getas. Dan got an impression of youth and lazy softness. He suppressed a frown, feeling suddenly overdressed in his own informal shirt and slacks.

  “Dr. Freiberg.” Dan forced a smile. “How’s the weather in California?”

  Freiberg grinned back at him. “Sunny and warm, what else?”

  Unconsciously, Dan sniffed at the dank air of his office. No matter how much he spent on air conditioning, the place always smelled slightly fetid to him, as if the jungle beyond the city’s limits were sneaking back in to reclaim the territory that humans had tried to steal from it. Not even Houston, for all its humidity, was as bad as this. Today, with the tropical torrent tumbling out of the skies, the air felt musty and almost chill. Dan knew it was more in his imagination than reality, but still he nearly shuddered.

  “We’re about ready for Noah’s ark here,” he said, making a joke of it.

  “Yes,” Freiberg said, “I can see the rain coming down past your window.”

  On both sides of it, Dan groused to himself. Aloud, he said, “Dr. Freiberg, I thought that you were all set to join us here at Astro Manufacturing. Now my personnel manager tells me there’s a hitch. What’s the problem?”

  Freiberg’s round face grew serious. His eyes strayed slightly away from Dan’s, avoiding direct contact.

  “Well, uh …” he stammered, “it’s, uh … well, it’s a little embarrassing.”

  Dan said nothing and waited for Freiberg to sort out his conflicting emotions. The scientist looked overweight to Dan, both physically and emotionally. Still wearing his baby fat. But Astro Manufacturing’s chief scientist and personnel director both insisted that Freiberg was the best planetary geochemist they could find. He was the man they needed, and therefore the man Dan wanted to hire. Freiberg had agreed to this appointment with Dan, so obviously the man was willing to talk. It would just take him a few moments to get over the hang-up of politeness. Dan had learned years earlier that most people would rather make asses of themselves than say something they considered impolite. They were trained from childhood to be pleasant and never utter a word that might upset someone. “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all,” was the wisdom that long generations of parents instilled in their trusting offspring. So the kids grew up to tie themselves in knots, holding back their true feelings, smiling when they wanted to spit, and they wound up paying exorbitant fees to psychologists or going to pop therapy courses where they finally liberated themselves enough to be able to say in public, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

  Freiberg squirmed in his chair and twitched for a few moments, then said at last, “The problem is that all my friends tell me I’d be almost committing treason if I went to work for you.”

  “Treason?” Dan snapped.

  “A lot of people here think that you’re a …” Freiberg’s face reddened. “Well, a traitor.”

  Chapter FIVE

  Dan leaned back in his leather chair and eyed the younger man carefully. He had expected something like this. At least it was out in the open now.

  Carefully, calmly, he replied, “According to the Constitution, treason consists of giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States.”

  “That’s merely the legal definition … .”

  “Do you think I’m a traitor to the United States because I’ve moved my corporati
on’s headquarters to Caracas?”

  “You left the country.”

  Dan forced his voice to remain calm, reasonable. “In a sense, Dr. Freiberg, you could say that the country left me. I’m in the business of running factories in orbit. The United States government decided to close down all its space activities and revoke the operating licenses of all the firms working in space. I had no choice. It was either leave the country or go out of business.”

  “Yes, I know that, but …”

  Dan made himself relax and grin. “Now look …” He almost added, “kid,” but held it back. “My motto has always been, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going—to where the going’s easier.’”

  Freiberg did not laugh. He merely looked more uncomfortable than ever.

  Dan abandoned his attempt at humor. “The American government gave up all its space operations at the insistence of the Russians. You know that, don’t you?”

  Freiberg nodded glumly.

  “So, in a sense, if I’m working against anyone or anything, I’m working against the Kremlin. I’m carrying on the work that America would be doing if Washington hadn’t caved in to the Soviets.”

  “But it’s not that simple,” Freiberg objected. “A lot of people think you just ran out because you could make more profits in Venezuela.”

  Christ! Dan swore silently. Spare me this neoliberal twaddle!

  “You left a lot of people without jobs here,” the scientist added.

  Dan said carefully, “I brought as many people with me here to Caracas as I could. If I had allowed the American government to shut down Astro Manufacturing completely—as they were going to do—then all of Astro’s employees would have lost their jobs. I really had no other choice.”

  “There’s still a lot of resentment here about you. A lot of hostility.”

  “I’m sure there is. But are you going to let that kind of petty jealousy decide the future of your career?”

  Freiberg started to reply, but hesitated.

  “Look,” Dan said, as sweetly reasonable as he could manage to be, “the United States has agreed to halt all its operations in space. Washington turned over the American space station to the United Nations, and you know who runs the UN since they left New York.”

  “There’s still the scientific exploration of the solar system,” Freiberg said, a little stiffly. “We still build the finest scientific probes in the world.”

  “But you have to launch them on Russian boosters. You have to get approval from the Soviet Academy of Sciences or your beautiful hardware sits on the ground and rusts away. Right?”

  “We work in cooperation with our Russian colleagues. Scientists don’t get involved with politics.”

  And rain makes applesauce, Dan thought. He reached across his desk and touched the screen of his phone terminal once, twice, then once more.

  “In the past four years,” he said, glancing from the screen to Freiberg’s solid image and back again, “your group has been allowed to place one vehicle aboard a Soviet shuttle. …”

  “The Saturn Orbiter,” Freiberg murmured.

  “Which is still at Kosmograd because the Soviets haven’t granted you the high-energy upper stage you need to get it to Saturn.”

  “There’ve been some delays. …”

  “I’ll bet there have. And your group’s proposals for Orbiters of Neptune and Uranus have been flatly rejected by the Soviet Academy. Your proposal for an automated prospecting mission through the asteroid belt was turned down. Your proposal for a Titan lander was turned down. …”

  “I know, I know!” Freiberg admitted. “They’re squeezing the life out of us.”

  That’s what Dan wanted to hear. “Dr. Freiberg-may I call you Zachary?”

  “Zach. My friends call me Zach.”

  “Thank you. And my friends call me Dan. I don’t have to tell you what my enemies call me.”

  Freiberg grinned.

  Feeling that he was thawing the youngster at last, Dan said, “Now listen, Zach. And think. Do you believe-I mean, really believe, down deep inside your guts-that the Russians are going to allow more of your scientific missions in the coming years, or fewer?”

  “Well …”

  “Don’t you really think that they’ve just been picking your brains, learning your technology, and by the time they let your Saturn Orbiter go on its way they’ll be ready to take over all future planetary missions for themselves?”

  The scientist’s round face grew somber. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I have sources of information,” Dan replied. “You’d be shocked at how easy some of these dedicated Communists are to bribe.”

  “There”ve been rumors … I thought they were just the usual scare stories.”

  “The future exploration of the cosmos will be done by Soviet spacecraft, lifted aboard Soviet boosters,” Dan warned. “When men go to Mars, and Jupiter, and Saturn and all their myriad moons, they will be Russians. That’s their intent.”

  Freiberg said nothing.

  “The Russians think they’ve got it all sewed up. They keep telling themselves that they represent the inexorable forces of history. Bullshit!”

  The scientist blinked at Dan’s sudden vehemence.

  “That’s just a load of Soviet tripe, that inexorable forces of history garbage. People make history, Zach. What I do, what you do, what each of us does is important. Calories don’t count, maybe, but people do. You’re an important man, Zach. A very important man.”

  “But I’m just one person… .”

  “Of course. But you’re not alone. There are others. I’m fighting as hard as I can,” Dan went on, earnestly, coaxingly, “to prevent the Russians from achieving a total monopoly on space operations. Even if the United States has been forced officially to abandon space, Americans can still carry on the fight, still explore the solar system.”

  The scientist looked sharply at him. “And make profits from it.”

  Dan had been waiting for that one. He grinned. “Zach … how do you think we pay for the research we do? How do you think we’re going to finance our missions to the asteroid belt?”

  “You’re going to the belt?”

  Now you’ve got him hooked, Dan knew. He’s easier than you thought he’d be. Just reel him in, nice and gently.

  “We plan to. We want to. With the Russians monopolizing the Moon and setting their own prices for lunar ores, we’ve got to look elsewhere for raw materials. The asteroids are the obvious answer.”

  “Yes. obviously.”

  “We need you to head the program, Zach. You’re the only man who can do it for us.” Flattery. Dan knew, but not too far from the truth. “If you don’t come with us to head the team. I don’t think we’ll be able to pull it off.” Then he grinned again and added, “Unless we can get one of the Russians to defect.”

  Freiberg visibly straightened in his chair, squared his pudgy shoulders, lifted his round chin.

  “Will you help us, Zach? Will you help us to expand beyond the limits of the Earth-Moon system? If we wait for the Russians to do it, we’ll both be dead and in our graves before the first asteroid mission goes out.”

  “I’ll … have to talk it over with my wife, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s a native Californian.”

  A mental picture of a lank-haired vegetarian who believed in astrology and the mystical benefits of cocaine flashed through Dan’s mind. But he said, “Tell you what, Zach. You bring your wife down here for six weeks. Just to see how the two of you like living here and working with Astro Manufacturing. What does she do?”

  “She’s a social worker.”

  What else? Dan quipped to himself, thinking of the vast sea of unemployed and unemployable Californians. Half the state stood in welfare lines while the other half stood behind the desks ministering to them. Maybe they take turns at it, he thought, one week in line and one week running the system.

  “She speaks fluent Spanish.”
Freiberg added, brightening.

  I’ll bet she does. Cautiously, Dan replied. “I wouldn’t be

  surprised if we could find something useful for her to do here in Caracas.”

  “That sounds good. I’ll tell her.”

  “Fine. I’ll have my travel people get in touch with you. You won’t have to lift a finger. They’ll take care of everything.”

  Freiberg nodded, smiling broadly now.

  “I’ll get an employment contract off to you this afternoon,” Dan said.

  “We haven’t talked salary.”

  Waving an impatient hand in the air. Dan replied, “You fill in the salary number. If it’s too much, we can haggle over it.” Experience had shown Dan that most people, especially scientists, settled for far less than he was prepared to offer them.

  “That’s … very generous of you.”

  Time to bring him into the boat, Dan told himself. Hunching forward in his creaking leather chair, he said earnestly, “We need you, Zach. The exploration of the solar system needs you. Politics always snarls up the important things. But the exploration of the solar system is too important to let politics get in its way.”

  “You’re entirely right,” Freiberg said firmly.

  “Okay. I’m glad we had this chance to talk. You’ll get the contract form this afternoon. I’ll be looking forward to meeting you in the flesh. And your wife.”

  “Thanks, Dan.”

  “Thank you, Zach.”

  The holographic image froze, then faded. Dan swiveled his chair and touched the phone terminal’s OFF key. Then he grinned. “A pound of ego for every ounce of brains. And his wife’s a social worker! She thinks she’s worked with poor people. Wait‘11 she sees those shacks up on the hills. She’ll puke!”

  He glanced at the wide curve of windows to the right of his desk. The rain was still cascading down. If there are any shacks left after this deluge, he thought. But he knew that no matter how many were washed away, there would be new ones dotting the hillsides as soon as the sun came out again.