Asteroid Wars - The Precipice Part 23

"Some of those pebbles are kilometers across," Humphries said.

"Yep," Dan replied. "The biggest one is -"

"Ceres. Discovered by a priest on New Year's Day, 1801."

"You've been doing your homework," Dan said.

Humphries smiled, pleased. "It's a little over a thousand kilometers across."

"If that one ever hit the Earth..."

"Goodbye to everything. Like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs."

"That's just what they need down there," Dan muttered, "an extinction-level impact."

"Let's get back to work," Humphries said crisply. "There's no big rock heading Earth's way."

"None has been found," Dan corrected. "Yet."

"You know," Humphries said, musing, "If we were really smart we'd run a demo flight to Mars and do a little prospecting on those two little moons. They're captured asteroids, after all."

"The IAA has ruled the whole Mars system off-limits for commercial development. That includes Deimos and Phobos."

Hunching closer to the conference table, Humphries said, "But we could just do it as a scientific mission. You know, send a couple geologists to chip off some rock samples, a.n.a.lyze what they're really made of."

"They already have pretty good data on that," Dan pointed out.

"But it could show potential investors that the fusion drive works and there's plenty of natural resources in the asteroids."

Frowning, Dan said, "Even if we could get the IAA to allow us to do it-"

"I can," Humphries said confidently.

"Even so, people have been going to Mars for years now. Decades. Investors won't be impressed by a Mars flight."

"Even if our fusion buggy gets there over a weekend?"

Firmly, Dan said, "We've got to get to the Belt. That's what will impress investors. Show them that the fusion drive changes the economic picture."

"I suppose," Humphries said reluctantly.

"And we've got to lay our hands on a metallic asteroid, one of the nickel-iron type. That's where the heavy metals are, the stuff you can't get from the Moon or even the NEAs."

"Gold," Humphries said, brightening. "Silver and platinum. Do you have any idea of what this is going to do to the precious metals market?"

Dan blinked at him. I'm trying to move the Earth's industrial base into s.p.a.ce and he's playing games with the prices for gold. We just don't think the same way; we don't have the same goals or the same values, even.

Grinning slyly, Humphries said, "We could get a lot of capital from people who'd be willing to pay us not not to bring those metals to Earth." to bring those metals to Earth."

"Maybe," Dan admitted.

"I know at least three heads of governments who would personally buy into Starpower just to keep us from dumping precious metals onto the market."

"And I'll bet," Dan growled, "that those governments rule nations where the people are poor, starving, and sinking lower every year."

Humphries shrugged. "We're not going to solve all the world's problems, Dan."

"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 d.a.m.n. Not anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. Since Jane died-G.o.d, 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. n.o.body 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!

s.p.a.cEPORT 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 platform-like 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 gla.s.steel 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-one-niner is down. All thrusters off."

Pancho let out a puff of pent-up breath.

Surprised, Dan asked, "White knuckles? You?"

She grinned, embarra.s.sed. "I always get torqued up, unless I'm driving the buggy."

Glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch, 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 s.p.a.cecraft 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 a.s.sembly 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 s.p.a.cesuits. 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 s.p.a.cesuit himself. s.p.a.ceflight 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.cesuit 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 s.p.a.ce-port to Selene proper, feeling useless, wondering if Humphries was right and he was b.u.t.ting 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 b.u.mping his head on the curving gla.s.steel.

"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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.cesuited 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 a.s.sembly 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 s.p.a.cecraft 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."