The Precipice

by Ben Bova

  He paused for a heartbeat, then resumed. “In fact, if we have any hope of stabilizing the global climate and avoiding even worse warming than we’ve experienced so far, then a significant portion of the Earth’s heavy industries must be moved off-planet.”

  “That’s not possible,” snapped the representative from North America, a dough-faced white-haired professor in an academic’s tweed jacket.

  Randolph stared at him bleakly. Once Jane Scanwell had been the North American on the Board.

  “It’s not economically feasible today,” he replied softly. “But if you’ll provide the funding, it will be possible within a year.”

  “One year?”

  “Impossible!”

  “How can you—”

  Malik tapped lightly on the tabletop with his notebook stylus and their voices fell silent.

  Randolph smiled tightly at him. ‘Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

  “Please explain your statement,” Malik said.

  “The key to the economic development of space lies in the costs of acquiring the raw materials in the Asteroid Belt. With the metals and organic minerals from the asteroids, the people of Earth will have access to a pool of natural resources that’s far greater than the entire planet Earth can provide.”

  “The people of the Earth?” questioned the representative from Pan Asia. “Or the corporations that reach the asteroids and begin mining them?”

  “The people,” Randolph said flatly. “If you provide the funding necessary for this, my corporation will do the work at cost.”

  “At cost?”

  “No fees whatsoever?”

  “At cost,” Randolph repeated.

  “We would certainly want our own accountants examining your cost figures,” said the woman representing Black Africa, very seriously.

  “Of course,” Randolph replied with a wan smile.

  “Wait a moment,” Malik intervened. “Just what would our money be funding? You haven’t told us what you actually propose to do.”

  Randolph took a deep breath, then said, “We have to develop a fusion rocket system.”

  Again the Board broke into querulous chatter. Malik had to tap his stylus sharply before they fell silent.

  “A fusion rocket system?” he asked Randolph.

  “We have developed and tested a small flight model of a fusion rocket,” Randolph said. Turning slightly in his chair, he went on, “Dr. Duncan can explain it, if you like. We sent detailed notes to each of you when we applied for this hearing; I’m sure your own technical experts have gone over them.”

  Reluctant nods from the Board.

  “I can show you a video of the flight tests we’ve done, if you wish.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Malik said.

  “The key to any and all operations in space is the cost of transportation,” Randolph said. “The Clipperships that Mas-terson Aerospace developed have brought down the costs of going into Earth orbit. They opened up the Earth-Moon system for development.”

  “And encouraged Selene to thumb its nose at us,” grumbled the representative from Latin America.

  “Why do we need fusion rockets?” Malik asked, raising his voice enough to cut off any possible digression into the politics of the lunar nation’s insistence on remaining independent of the GEC.

  “Transportation costs,” Randolph answered quickly. “Fusion rockets will cut the trip times and fuel costs for missions to the asteroids down to the point where they can be practical and profitable.”

  “Profitable for whom?”

  “For the entire human race,” Randolph snapped, looking slightly irked. “As I’ve already said, I’m willing to develop the fusion system and operate expeditions to the Asteroid Belt at cost.”.

  “Under GEC management?”

  Randolph visibly gritted his teeth. “No. That would be a bureaucratic disaster. But I’ll agree to run the show under GEC oversight You’ll have complete access to our books. That’s fair enough, I think.”

  Malik leaned back in his padded chair and allowed the other Board members to grill Randolph. Most of their questions were trivial, or repeated questions already asked and answered. Most of the Board members talked mainly to hear the beloved sound of their own voices, Malik knew.

  He had seen the video of Randolph’s flight tests. He had reviewed the technical data on the fusion rocket with the best scientists and engineers in the world. The Duncan Drive worked. There was no technical reason to believe that it would not work in a full-scale interplanetary spacecraft. It would cut the travel time to the Asteroid Belt from years to weeks, or less.

  We should fund it, Malik thought. We should back Randolph to the hilt. But we won’t, of course.

  “But what’s the fuel for this rocket?” one of the Board members was asking.

  Patiently, Randolph replied, “The same as the fuel for the fusion powerplants that generate electricity here on the ground: isotopes of hydrogen and helium.”

  “Like the helium-three that’s mined on the Moon?”

  “Right.” Randolph nodded.

  “That is very expensive fuel,” muttered the representative from Greater India. “Very expensive.”

  “A little goes a long way,” Dan said, with a forced smile.

  The representative from the League of Islam said irritably, “Selene has raised the price of helium-three twice in the past year. Twice! I have no doubt they are preparing to raise it again.”

  “We can get the fuel from space itself,” Dan said, raising his voice slightly.

  “From space itself?”

  “How?”

  “The solar wind blows through interplanetary space. It’s the solar wind that deposits helium-three and hydrogen isotopes on the lunar soil.”

  “You mean regolith,” pointed out the representative from United Europe.

  “Regolith, right,” Randolph admitted.

  “How can you get the fuel from the solar wind?”

  “The same way a jet airplane gets air for its engines,” Randolph replied. “We’ll scoop it in as we go.”

  Malik saw that the Scottish engineer, sitting off to Randolph’s side, squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Scoop it in? Really?”

  “Sure,” Randolph answered. “We’ll use an electromagnetic scoop… a big funnel-shaped magnetic field. That way we’ll be able to scoop in the fuel we need as we travel.”

  “How large a scoop will be necessary?”

  Randolph made an exaggerated shrug. “That’s for the tech people to work out. For the first missions to the Belt we’ll carry the fusion fuel in tankage, just like other rockets. But eventually we’ll be able to scoop fuel from the solar wind. That’ll allow us to carry an even bigger payload, per unit of thrust.” Turning slightly in his chair, Randolph asked, “Isn’t that right, Lon?”

  Duncan, the engineer, looked dubious, but he knew enough to answer, “Right.”

  With a glance at his wristwatch, Malik tapped his stylus again on the tabletop and said, “Thank you, Mr. Randolph, for a most interesting presentation.”

  Randolph fixed his gray eyes on Malik. The Russian went on, “The Board will discuss the question and inform you of its decision.”

  “Time is of the essence,” Randolph said.

  “We understand that,” said Malik. “But we must have a full and thorough discussion of this concept before we can decide whether or not to commit any funding to it.”

  Reluctantly, Randolph got to his feet. “I see. Well, thanks for hearing me out. You have a tremendous opportunity here… and a tremendous responsibility.”

  “We are well aware of that,” Malik said. ‘Thank you again.”

  Randolph nodded and headed out of the conference room, followed by the engineer and the blond Californian.

  Malik now had to go through the formality of a discussion with the other Board members, but he already knew what the answer would be. He was framing the Board’s reply to Randolph even while Dan was leaving the con
ference room:

  Dear Mr. Randolph: While your proposal to develop afusion rocket system appears to be technically feasible, the Global Economic Council cannot devote such a significant portion of its resources to what is essentially a space-born venture. GEC funding is fully committed for the next five years to programs aimed at alleviating the effects of global climate shift and assisting national efforts at rebuilding and resettling displaced population groups.

  SELENE

  Dan went by tube train from the GEC Board meeting to the spaceport at old Heathrow. He rode a commercial Clippership to space station Galileo, then hitched a ride on a high-thrust Astro transfer buggy to Selene. He was in the offices that Astro Manufacturing rented in Selene by midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, of the day after the GEC meeting.

  Duncan and his electronics engineer had gone back to Glasgow, hoping that the GEC Board would find the money to build at least a prototype spacecraft. Dan thought otherwise. He could see it in Malik’s eyes: the GEC isn’t going to spend diddley-squat on us.

  Dan pushed through the empty office suite, ceiling lights flicking on as he entered each area and off as he breezed past, paying scant attention to the unoccupied desks and blank holowindows. He reached the private suite where he bunked down while he was in Selene, peeled off his jacket, tossed his travel bag onto the king-sized bed and stepped into the shower, still dressed in his pullover shirt and micro-mesh slacks. He kicked off his softboots and banged on the water. It came out at the preset temperature. He popped the plugs out of his nostrils and stripped off the rest of his clothes as the hot, steaming water began to ease the knots of tension in his back and shoulders.

  It was an old and very personal indulgence of his: long, hot showers. Back when he’d been a kid working on the early construction projects in orbit and then on the Moon, a hot shower was an incredibly rare luxury. He’d had his nose broken for the second time over the right to a long shower. For years, before Moonbase became the independent nation of Selene, lunar shower stalls were rarer than ten-meter high jumps on Earth. Even when you did find an incredibly luxurious living unit with a real shower, back in those days the water shut of automatically after two minutes, and there was no way to get it to turn back on again until a full hour had elapsed.

  Even now, Dan thought as he let the hot water sluice over him, being on Selene’s water board carries more real political clout than being a member of the governing council.

  He turned off the water at last and let the built-in jets of hot air dry him. Dan preferred old-fashioned towels, but the air blowers were cheaper.

  Naked, he crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep. But his mind kept churning with his hopes, his plans, his frustrations.

  Yamagata isn’t going to put up any money, he realized. Nobo would have called me by now if he were going to come in with me. He hasn’t called because he’s reluctant to give me the bad news. Malik and the GEC are a lost cause. I shouldn’t even have wasted the time to appear before them, but at least if and when we get this fusion chive going we can say we offered it to the double-damned bureaucrats and they turned us down. So they’ve got no claim on us whatsoever.

  Astro’s hanging on by the skin of its teeth, one jump ahead of the bankruptcy courts, and I need to raise a couple of billion to make this fusion system work. Humphries is dangling the money at me, but he’ll want a big slice of Astro in return. I need somebody else. Who can I turn to? Who the hell else is there?

  Selene, he realized. They don’t have the capital, but they’ve got trained people, equipment, resources. If I can talk them into coming in with me…

  Then it hit him. Bypass Selene’s governing council. Or, at least, end-run them. Douglas Stavenger still outvotes everybody else up here. And Masterson Aerospace is his family’s company. If he’ll go for this, Masterson will get behind it and Selene’s council will fall in step with him.

  Doug Stavenger.

  He fell asleep thinking about the possibilities. And dreamed of flying past Mars, out to the Asteroid Belt.

  “Who’s your boyfriend?” Amanda asked.

  She and Pancho were exercising in Selene’s big gymnasium complex, working up a fine sheen of perspiration on the weight machines. Through the long window on one side of the room Pancho could see two men strapped into the centrifuge, both of them grimacing as the big machine’s arms swung round and round, faster and faster. She knew one of the men, a maintenance tech out at the tractor garage, a thoroughly nice guy.

  The gym was packed with sweating, grunting, grimacing men and women working the treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight machines. The only faces that didn’t look miserable were the kids; they scampered from one machine to another, laughing, sometimes shrieking so loud the adults growled at them.

  Every person in Selene, adult or child, citizen or visitor, had to follow a mandatory exercise regimen or be denied transport back to Earth. The low lunar gravity quickly deconditioned muscles to the point where facing Earth’s gravity became physically hazardous. Daily exercise was the only remedy, but it was boring,

  Pancho wore a shapeless T-shirt and faded old shorts to the gym. Amanda dressed as if she were modeling for a fashion photographer: brand-new gym shoes, bright pink fuzzy socks, and a form-fitting leotard that had men tripping over their own feet to gawk at her. Even the women stared openly.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Pancho replied, grunting as she pulled on the weighted hand grips. A favorite gambit of tourists was to have a picture taken while lifting a barbell loaded with enormous weights. What looked superhuman to Earth-trained eyes was merely ordinary in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon.

  “You’ve gone out to dinner twice since we arrived here, and you’re going out again tonight, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Amanda added, “I have the impression it’s been with the same fellow each night.”

  Mandy was sitting at the machine next to Pancho, doing pectoral crunches, her arms outstretched with her hands gripping the ends of two metal bars. Then she brought her hands together in front of her, pulling the weighted “wings” and thereby strengthening her chest muscles.

  The rich get richer, Pancho thought.

  “So?” Amanda insisted. “Who’s your fellow?”

  “It’s strictly business,” Pancho said.

  “Really? And what business would that be, dear?”

  Pancho suppressed a sudden urge to sock Mandy in her smirking face.

  “Listen,” she said, with some heat, “you go out just about every damned night, don’t you? What’s the matter with me havin’ a date now and then?”

  Mandy’s expression softened. “Nothing, Pancho, really. I’m only curious, that’s all. I think it’s fine for you to have an enjoyable social life.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re just wonderin’ who my date could be, ‘cause you’ve got all the other men in Selene sewed up for yourself.”

  “Pancho, that’s not true!”

  “Like hell.”

  “I can’t help it if men are attracted to me! I don’t do anything to encourage them.”

  Pancho laughed out loud.

  “Really, I don’t.”

  “Mandy, all you have to do is breathe and the men swarm around you like flies on horseshit.”

  Amanda’s cheeks flushed at Pancho’s deliberate crudity. But then she smiled knowingly. “Well, it is rather fun to flirt. If men want to take me out to dinner, why not? I just bat my eyes at them and let them tell me how terrific they are.”

  “And then you bed down with ‘em and everybody’s happy.”

  Amanda flared with sudden anger. She started to reply, but stopped before saying a word. For several moments she stared down at her shoetops, then at last said in a lower voice, “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s the truth, ain’t it?”

  “Really, Pancho, I’m not a slut. I don’t sleep with them, you know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Well… once in a while. A great while.”

>   Pancho looked at Amanda, really looked at her, and saw a very beautiful, very young woman trying to make her way in a world where a woman’s physical appearance still categorized her in men’s eyes. Jeez, she thought, Mandy prob’ly has to spend half her life keeping guys’ hands off her. So she just smiles at them and jollies ‘em along and splits before it gets serious. It’s either that or carry a gun, I guess. Or a snake.

  “Maybe we could ugly you up,” Pancho muttered.

  Amanda smiled ruefully. “That’s what Mr. Randolph said.”

  “Huh? Randolph?”

  “He told me that if I want to go on the mission with you I’ll have to stop making myself so attractive to the men that go with us.”

  Pancho nodded. “We’ve gotta find you some big, bulky sweatshirts. Or maybe keep you in a spacesuit the whole damn trip.”

  The two women laughed together. But after a few moments, Amanda asked again, “So tell me, Pancho, who’s your boyfriend?”

  Exasperated, Pancho snapped, “You want to meet him? Come on along tonight.”

  “Really? Do you mean it?”

  “Sure, why not?” Pancho said. “I bet he’d like to meet you.”

  Pancho knew that Humphries would go ballistic over Mandy. Good. The man had been pressuring her to find out more about what Dan Randolph was up to. Humphries had been getting downright nasty about it.

  Humphries had snarled at her when they’d had dinner, Pancho’s first night back at Selene. The man had seemed cordial enough when he’d ushered her into that big, formal dining room in the house down at Selene’s lowest level. But once he had started asking Pancho what information she had for him, and she had been forced to reply that she had little to report, his mood swiftly changed.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to tell me?” Humphries had snarled.

  With a helpless shrug, Pancho had answered, “He’s had us cooped up in La Guaira, studyin’ the fusion system.”