Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Fine!” agreed Montgomery. “Want to swap jobs, Chief? When he gets up to ten dollars we give him a genuine, solid gold-plated shooting star pin and he’s a Senior Pioneer, with the right to vote or something or other. And his name goes outside of the monument—microengraved on a platinum strip.”

  Strong looked as if he had bitten a lemon. “What happens when he reaches a hundred dollars?” he asked.

  “Why, then,” Montgomery answered happily, “we give him another card and he can start over. Don’t worry about it, Mr. Strong—if any kid goes that high, he’ll have his reward. Probably we will take him on an inspection tour of the ship before it takes off and give him, absolutely free, a picture of himself standing in front of it, with the pilot’s own signature signed across the bottom by some female clerk.”

  “Chiseling from kids. Bah!”

  “Not at all,” answered Montgomery in hurt tones. “Intangibles are the most honest merchandise anyone can sell. They are always worth whatever you are willing to pay for them and they never wear out. You can take them to your grave untarnished.”

  “Hmmmph!”

  Harriman listened to this, smiling and saying nothing. Kamens cleared his throat. “If you two ghouls are through cannibalizing the youth of the land, I’ve another idea.”

  “Spill it.”

  “George, you collect stamps, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much would a cover be worth which had been to the Moon and been cancelled there?”

  “Huh? But you couldn’t, you know.”

  “I think we could get our Moon ship declared a legal post office sub-station without too much trouble. What would it be worth?”

  “Uh, that depends on how rare they are.”

  “There must be some optimum number which will fetch a maximum return. Can you estimate it?”

  Strong got a faraway look in his eye, then took out an old-fashioned pencil and commenced to figure. Harriman went on, “Saul, my minor success in buying a share in the Moon from Jones went to my head. How about selling building lots on the Moon?”

  “Let’s keep this serious, Delos. You can’t do that until you’ve landed there.”

  “I am serious. I know you are thinking of that ruling back in the ’forties that such land would have to be staked out and accurately described. I want to sell land on the Moon. You figure out a way to make it legal. I’ll sell the whole Moon, if I can—surface rights, mineral rights, anything.”

  “Suppose they want to occupy it?”

  “Fine. The more the merrier. I’d like to point out, too, that we’ll be in a position to assess taxes on what we have sold. If they don’t use it and won’t pay taxes, it reverts to us. Now you figure out how to offer it, without going to jail. You may have to advertise it abroad, then plan to peddle it personally in this country, like Irish Sweepstakes tickets.”

  Kamens looked thoughtful. “We could incorporate the land company in Panama and advertise by video and radio from Mexico. Do you really think you can sell the stuff?”

  “You can sell snowballs in Greenland,” put in Montgomery. “It’s a matter of promotion.”

  Harriman added, “Did you ever read about the Florida land boom, Saul? People bought lots they had never seen and sold them at tripled prices without ever having laid eyes on them. Sometimes a parcel would change hands a dozen times before anyone got around to finding out that the stuff was ten-foot deep in water. We can offer bargains better than that—an acre, a guaranteed dry acre with plenty of sunshine, for maybe ten dollars—or a thousand acres at a dollar an acre. Who’s going to turn down a bargain like that? Particularly after the rumor gets around that the Moon is believed to be loaded with uranium?”

  “Is it?”

  “How should I know? When the boom sags a little we will announce the selected location of Luna City—and it will just happen to work out that the land around the site is still available for sale. Don’t worry, Saul, if it’s real estate, George and I can sell it. Why, down in the Ozarks, where the land stands on edge, we used to sell both sides of the same acre.” Harriman looked thoughtful. “I think we’ll reserve mineral rights—there just might actually be uranium there!”

  Kamens chuckled. “Delos, you are a kid at heart. Just a great big, overgrown, lovable—juvenile delinquent.”

  Strong straightened up. “I make it half a million,” he said.

  “Half a million what?” asked Harriman.

  “For the cancelled philatelic covers, of course. That’s what we were talking about. Five thousand is my best estimate of the number that could be placed with serious collectors and with dealers. Even then we will have to discount them to a syndicate and hold back until the ship is built and the trip looks like a probability.”

  “Okay,” agreed Harriman. “You handle it. I’ll just note that we can tap you for an extra half-million toward the end.”

  “Don’t I get a commission?” asked Kamens. “I thought of it.”

  “You get a rising vote of thanks—and ten acres on the Moon. Now what other sources of revenue can we hit?”

  “Don’t you plan to sell stock?” asked Kamens.

  “I was coming to that. Of course—but no preferred stock; we don’t want to be forced through a reorganization. Participating common, non-voting—”

  “Sounds like another banana-state corporation to me.”

  “Naturally—but I want some of it on the New York Exchange, and you’ll have to work that out with the Securities Exchange Commission somehow. Not too much of it—that’s our show case and we’ll have to keep it active and moving up.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather I swam the Hellespont?”

  “Don’t be like that, Saul. It beats chasing ambulances, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, that’s what I want you—wups!” The screen on Harriman’s desk had come to life. A girl said, “Mr. Harriman, Mr. Dixon is here. He has no appointment but he says that you want to see him.”

  “I thought I had that thing shut off,” muttered Harriman, then pressed his key and said, “O.K., show him in.”

  “Very well, sir—oh, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Entenza came in just this second.”

  “Send them both in,” Harriman disconnected and turned back to his associates. “Zip your lips, gang, and hold on to your wallets.”

  “Look who’s talking,” said Kamens.

  Dixon came in with Entenza behind him. He sat down, looked around, started to speak, then checked himself. He looked around again, especially at Entenza.

  “Go ahead, Dan,” Harriman encouraged him. “Tain’t nobody here at all but just us chickens.”

  Dixon made up his mind. “I’ve decided to come in with you, D.D.,” he announced. “As an act of faith I went to the trouble of getting this.” He took a formal-looking instrument from his pocket and displayed it. It was a sale of lunar rights, from Phineas Morgan to Dixon, phrased in exactly the same fashion as that which Jones had granted to Harriman.

  Entenza looked startled, then dipped into his own inner coat pocket. Out came three more sales contracts of the same sort, each from a director of the power syndicate. Harriman cocked an eyebrow at them. “Jack sees you and raises you two, Dan. You want to call?”

  Dixon smiled ruefully. “I can just see him.” He added two more to the pile, grinned and offered his hand to Entenza.

  “Looks like a stand-off.” Harriman decided to say nothing just yet about seven telestated contracts now locked in his desk—after going to bed the night before he had been quite busy on the phone almost till midnight. “Jack, how much did you pay for those things?”

  “Standish held out for a thousand; the others were cheap.”

  “Damn it, I warned you not to run the price up. Standish will gossip. How about you, Dan?”

  “I got them at satisfactory prices.”

  “So you won’t talk, eh? Never mind—gentlemen, how serious are you about this? How much money did you bring with you?”

/>   Entenza looked to Dixon, who answered, “How much does it take?”

  “How much can you raise?” demanded Harriman.

  Dixon shrugged. “We’re getting no place. Let’s use figures. A hundred thousand.”

  Harriman sniffed. “I take it what you really want is to reserve a seat on the first regularly scheduled Moon ship. I’ll sell it to you at that price.”

  “Let’s quit sparring, Delos. How much?”

  Harriman’s face remained calm but he thought furiously. He was caught short, with too little information—he had not even talked figures with his chief engineer as yet. Confound it! Why had he left that phone hooked in? “Dan, as I warned you, it will cost you at least a million just to sit down in this game.”

  “So I thought. How much will it take to stay in the game?”

  “All you’ve got.”

  “Don’t be silly, Delos. I’ve got more than you have.”

  Harriman lit a cigar, his only sign of agitation. “Suppose you match us, dollar for dollar.”

  “For which I get two shares?”

  “Okay, okay, you chuck in a buck whenever each of us does—share and share alike. But I run things.”

  “You run the operations,” agreed Dixon. “Very well, I’ll put up a million now and match you as necessary. You have no objection to me having my own auditor, of course.”

  “When have I ever cheated you, Dan?”

  “Never and there is no need to start.”

  “Have it your own way—but be damned sure you send a man who can keep his mouth shut.”

  “He’ll keep quiet. I keep his heart in a jar in my safe.”

  Harriman was thinking about the extent of Dixon’s assets. “We just might let you buy in with a second share later, Dan. This operation will be expensive.”

  Dixon fitted his fingertips carefully together. “We’ll meet that question when we come to it. I don’t believe in letting an enterprise fold up for lack of capital.”

  “Good.” Harriman turned to Entenza. “You heard what Dan had to say, Jack. Do you like the terms?”

  Entenza’s forehead was covered with sweat. “I can’t raise a million that fast.”

  “That’s all right, Jack. We don’t need it this morning. Your note is good; you can take your time liquidating.”

  “But you said a million is just the beginning. I can’t match you indefinitely; you’ve got to place a limit on it. I’ve got my family to consider.”

  “No annuities, Jack? No monies transferred in an irrevocable trust?”

  “That’s not the point. You’ll be able to squeeze me—freeze me out.”

  Harriman waited for Dixon to say something. Dixon finally said, “We wouldn’t squeeze you, Jack—as long as you could prove you had converted every asset you hold. We would let you stay in on a pro rata basis.”

  Harriman nodded. “That’s right, Jack.” He was thinking that any shrinkage in Entenza’s share would give himself and Strong a clear voting majority.

  Strong had been thinking of something of the same nature, for he spoke up suddenly, “I don’t like this. Four equal partners—we can be deadlocked too easily.”

  Dixon shrugged. “I refuse to worry about it. I am in this because I am betting that Delos can manage to make it profitable.”

  “We’ll get to the Moon, Dan!”

  “I didn’t say that. I am betting that you will show a profit whether we get to the Moon or not. Yesterday evening I spent looking over the public records of several of your companies; they were very interesting. I suggest we resolve any possible deadlock by giving the Director—that’s you, Delos—the power to settle ties. Satisfactory, Entenza?”

  “Oh, sure!”

  Harriman was worried but tried not to show it. He did not trust Dixon, even bearing gifts. He stood up suddenly. “I’ve got to run, gentlemen. I leave you to Mr. Strong and Mr. Kamens. Come along, Monty.” Kamens, he was sure, would not spill anything prematurely, even to nominal full partners. As for Strong—George, he knew, had not even let his left hand know how many fingers there were on his right.

  He dismissed Montgomery outside the door of the partners’ personal office and went across the hall. Andrew Ferguson, chief engineer of Harriman Enterprises, looked up as he came in. “Howdy, Boss. Say, Mr. Strong gave me an interesting idea for a light switch this morning. It did not seem practical at first but—”

  “Skip it. Let one of the boys have it and forget it. You know the line we are on now.”

  “There have been rumors,” Ferguson answered cautiously.

  “Fire the man that brought you the rumor. No—send him on a special mission to Tibet and keep him there until we are through. Well, let’s get on with it. I want you to build a Moon ship as quickly as possible.”

  Ferguson threw one leg over the arm of his chair, took out a pen knife and began grooming his nails. “You say that like it was an order to build a privy.”

  “Why not? There have been theoretically adequate fuels since way back in ’49. You get together the team to design it and the gang to build it; you build it—I pay the bills. What could be simpler?”

  Ferguson stared at the ceiling. “‘Adequate fuels—’” he repeated dreamily.

  “So I said. The figures show that hydrogen and oxygen are enough to get a step rocket to the Moon and back—it’s just a matter of proper design.”

  “‘Proper design,’ he says,” Ferguson went on in the same gentle voice, then suddenly swung around, jabbed the knife into the scarred desk top and bellowed, “What do you know about proper design? Where do I get the steels? What do I use for a throat liner? How in the hell do I burn enough tons of your crazy mix per second to keep from wasting all my power breaking loose? How can I get a decent mass-ratio with a step rocket? Why in the hell didn’t you let me build a proper ship when we had the fuel?”

  Harriman waited for him to quiet down, then said, “What do we do about it, Andy?”

  “Hmmm . . . I was thinking about it as I lay abed last night—and my old lady is sore as hell at you; I had to finish the night on the couch. In the first place, Mr. Harriman, the proper way to tackle this is to get a research appropriation from the Department of National Defense. Then you—”

  “Damn it, Andy, you stick to engineering and let me handle the political and financial ends of it. I don’t want your advice.”

  “Damn it, Delos, don’t go off half-cocked. This is engineering I’m talking about. The government owns a whole mass of former art about rocketry—all classified. Without a government contract you can’t even get a peek at it.”

  “It can’t amount to very much. What can a government rocket do that a Skyways rocket can’t do? You told me yourself that Federal rocketry no longer amounted to anything.”

  Ferguson looked supercilious. “I am afraid I can’t explain it in lay terms. You will have to take it for granted that we need those government research reports. There’s no sense in spending thousands of dollars in doing work that has already been done.”

  “Spend the thousands.”

  “Maybe millions.”

  “Spend the millions. Don’t be afraid to spend money. Andy, I don’t want this to be a military job.” He considered elaborating to the engineer the involved politics back of his decision, thought better of it. “How bad do you actually need that government stuff? Can’t you get the same results by hiring engineers who used to work for the government? Or even hire them away from the government right now?”

  Ferguson pursed his lips. “If you insist on hampering me, how can you expect me to get results?”

  “I am not hampering you. I am telling you that this is not a government project. If you won’t attempt to cope with it on those terms, let me know now, so that I can find somebody who will.”

  Ferguson started playing mumblety-peg on his desktop. When he got to “noses”—and missed—he said quietly, “I mind a boy who used to work for the government at White Sands. He was a very smart lad indeed—design chief of section
.”

  “You mean he might head up your team?”

  “That was the notion.”

  “What’s his name? Where is he? Who’s he working for?”

  “Well, as it happened, when the government closed down White Sands, it seemed a shame to me that a good boy should be out of a job, so I placed him with Skyways. He’s maintenance chief engineer out on the Coast.”

  “Maintenance? What a hell of a job for a creative man! But you mean he’s working for us now? Get him on the screen. No—call the coast and have them send him here in a special rocket; we’ll all have lunch together.”

  “As it happens,” Ferguson said quietly, “I got up last night and called him—that’s what annoyed the Missus. He’s waiting outside. Coster—Bob Coster.”

  A slow grin spread over Harriman’s face. “Andy! You black-hearted old scoundrel, why did you pretend to balk?”

  “I wasn’t pretending. I like it here, Mr. Harriman. Just as long as you don’t interfere, I’ll do my job. Now my notion is this: we’ll make young Coster chief engineer of the project and give him his head. I won’t joggle his elbow; I’ll just read the reports. Then you leave him alone, d’you hear me? Nothing makes a good technical man angrier than to have some incompetent nitwit with a checkbook telling him how to do his job.”

  “Suits. And I don’t want a penny-pinching old fool slowing him down, either. Mind you don’t interfere with him, either, or I’ll jerk the rug out from under you. Do we understand each other?”

  “I think we do.”

  “Then get him in here.”

  Apparently Ferguson’s concept of a “lad” was about age thirty-five, for such Harriman judged Coster to be. He was tall, lean, and quietly eager. Harriman braced him immediately after shaking hands with “Bob, can you build a rocket that will go to the Moon?”

  Coster took it without blinking. “Do you have a source of X-fuel?” he countered, giving the rocket man’s usual shorthand for the isotope fuel formerly produced by the power satellite.

  “No.”

  Coster remained perfectly quiet for several seconds, then answered, “I can put an unmanned messenger rocket on the face of the Moon.”