Asteroid Wars - The Precipice Part 7

She grinned. "What, no limo?"

The young man half-turned in his seat and said quite seriously, "Mr. Randolph doesn't believe in unnecessary frills. This is comfortable enough, isn't it?"

"Quite," said Amanda.

By the time they got to the test site Amanda had set up a dinner date for herself with their handsome young escort.

The test site was on the shoulder of a green hillside that sloped down into the warm Caribbean. Late afternoon sunshine slanted down from between ma.s.sive c.u.mulus clouds that were visibly growing, boiling up into towering thunderheads, getting darker and more menacing by the minute. Pancho smelled the salt tang in the air, heard the surf rolling in gently below, felt the warm steady breeze on her face. A tropical paradise, she thought.

Or it would be, if it weren't for all that danged hardware squatting in the middle of the field.

Following their Latino escort, they walked from the car to the small knot of people standing around what looked like a set of man-tall dewar flasks crusted with frost, a small crane, lots of plumbing and tubing, a medium-sized truck carrying what looked like a pair of major-league fuel cells on its bed, a smaller truck loaded with a bank of capacitors, and a corrugated-metal shed off to one side. Several automobiles and semivans were parked on the other side of the shed.

As they got closer, Pancho saw that the people were gathered around a small swept-winged aircraft that was resting on a pair of skids. It was an ancient cruise missile; she saw, an unmanned jet airplane. She knew they'd been outlawed by the disarmament treaties. Only the Peacekeepers had such weapons, and this one looked too old to be a Peacekeeper missile. The markings on it were faded, the serial number stenciled on its tail barely legible.

Before she could ask a question, a trim-looking man with silver hair and a rugged fighter's face stepped out of the crowd around the missile. He wore a light tan wind breaker zippered to the throat despite the warm sunshine, a baseball cap perched jauntily on his head, well-faded jeans, and cowboy boots. Their escort stiffened almost like a soldier coming to attention.

"Senor Randolph," he said, "may I introduce-"

"You must be Amanda Cunningham," said Dan Randolph, with a crooked smile. He put his hand out and Amanda took it briefly. "I'm Dan Randolph."

Then he turned to Pancho. "And you've got to be Priscilla Lane."

"Pancho," she corrected, taking his extended hand. His grip was firm, friendly. "Priscilla's too fussy, and anybody calls me Pru or Prissy, I'll belt him."

"Pancho," Randolph said, his smile widening. "I'll remember that."

"What's this all about?" Pancho asked. "Why've you brought us here?"

Randolph's eyes showed momentary surprise at her bluntness, but then he shrugged and said, "You're going to see some history being made... if this double-d.a.m.ned jury-rigged kludge works right."

He introduced Amanda and Pancho to Lyall Duncan and the others gathered around the missile. Almost all of them were male, engineers or technicians. One of the women was a tall blonde; compet.i.tion for Amanda, Pancho thought. Duncan looked like a fierce little gnome, or maybe a troll, even when he smiled.

Puzzled, intrigued, Pancho allowed Randolph to usher her and Amanda to the shed. It was packed with instruments and consoles and one rickety-looking desk with a lopsided chair in front of it.

"You just stay here and watch," he said, with a curious grin. "If it works, you'll be witnesses. If it blows up, this ought to be far enough away to keep you from getting hurt."

The dark-haired troll called Duncan chuckled. "Experimental physics, you know. Always the chance of an explosion."

The crane was on its own caterpillar tractor. A pair of technicians used it to hoist the missile off the ground and trundle it out almost half a kilometer. They put the missile gently onto the gra.s.sy ground, pointing into the wind blowing steadily in from the sea.

Consoles were coming to life in the shed. Engineers were speaking to each other in their clipped jargon. Pancho watched Randolph. The man seemed outwardly relaxed as he stood with both hands jammed into his windbreaker pockets, watching the missile while the crane waddled back toward them.

Duncan buzzed around the shed like a bee in a flower bed. The tension built up; Pancho could feel it radiating from the backs of the crew standing by the consoles.

"Do you think it's going to rain?" Amanda whispered.

Pancho looked up at the looming thunderheads. "Sooner or later."

At last Duncan said to Randolph, "We're ready to launch."

"Okay," said Randolph. "Do it before it starts pouring."

Duncan said crisply, "Launch!"

Pancho turned her attention to the missile sitting out on the gra.s.s. For a moment nothing happened, but then its tail-end spurted flame and it lurched forward. Just as she heard the whining scream of the jet engine, another sound cut in: a deeper, more powerful roar. The missile leaped off the ground, angling sharply toward the cloud-filled sky, trailing a billow of smoke.

Something fell away from the climbing missile. A rocket pack, Pancho realized. They used it to get the bird off the ground.

The plane levelled off a scant hundred meters in the air and circled the field once.

"Nominal flight," one of the engineers called out.

"Fusion drive ready?" Duncan asked.

"Primed and ready."

"Light it."

The missile seemed to falter for a moment, as if it had stalled in midair. Pancho saw the slightly smoky exhaust wink out, heard the jet engine's screech die away. The missile glided for several moments, losing alt.i.tude.

Then it seemed to bite into the air, raising its nose and climbing steeply upward as it howled a thin, screeching ethereal wail.

"Programmed flight trajectory," Pancho heard someone call out. "On the money."

The bird flew out to sea until it was a barely visible speck, then turned back and rushed toward them, climbing almost to the base of the thunderheads, its ghostly wail barely audible, streaking past, heading inland. Then it turned again and headed seaward once more. Racetrack course, Pancho realized.

Lightning was flickering in the clouds now.

"Coming up on the two-minute mark," said one of the engineers. "Mark! Two minutes." Two minutes."

"Bring her in," Duncan commanded.

"Automatic trajectory," came the answer.

Pancho watched as the missile turned back toward them once again, dropped its flaps, slowed, and gracefully descended for a landing out in the area where it had taken off. The gra.s.s was scorched out there from the takeoff rocket's hot exhaust.

Turning slightly, she saw that Randolph was standing just outside the door, eyes riveted to the approaching missile, mouth slightly open, fists clenched.

The missile was still moving fast when it touched the ground, bounced into the air again, wobbled back to the ground, and then plowed nose-first into the dirt, throwing a spray of gra.s.s clods and pebbles as it flipped over onto its back and banged down so hard one of the wings tore off. It sounded like a junkyard falling out of the sky.

But the engineers and technicians were all cheering, jumping up and down, pounding each other on the back, yelling and waving like a team that had just scored a gold medal in the Olympics. Randolph yanked off his cap and pegged it out toward the sea.

"Och, what a divot!" Duncan shouted. He raced through the open door to Randolph and launched himself into the older man's arms, wrapping his legs around Randolph's middle. Randolph staggered backward and they fell to the ground together, laughing like maniacs.

Pancho looked at Amanda. She seemed just as puzzled as Pancho felt.

With a shrug, Pancho said, "I guess any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."

Amanda shook her head. "I shouldn't think you'd walk away from that one if you'd been aboard it."

Randolph was disentangling himself from Duncan and getting to his feet. Brushing dirt from his windbreaker, grinning hugely, he walked over to Amanda and Pancho while Duncan scampered toward the shed.

"It works!" Randolph said. "You've just witnessed history, ladies. The first actual flight of a fusion-powered vehicle."

"Fusion?" Pancho gaped at him. "You mean that little bird had a fusion engine on her?"

Amanda said, "But I thought fusion generators were great immense things, like power stations."

Duncan raced back to them, waving a dark bottle in one hand. The rest of the crew gathered around. Pancho wondered why no one went to the poor little aircraft, smashed and crumpled on the gra.s.s.

Someone produced paper cups and Duncan began to splash liquor into them. At first Pancho thought it was champagne, but the bottle wasn't the right shape. Scotch, she realized. Scotland's gift to the world.

"Hey," said Randolph, "I need some ice with this."

Duncan actually shuddered. "Ice? With good whisky? You Americans!"

Pancho took a sip of hers, neat. "Wow!" she managed to gasp.

"To the Duncan Drive," Randolph toasted, lifting his paper cup.

"To the stars!" Duncan countered. "We'll ride this engine to Alpha Centauri one day!"

Randolph laughed. "The Asteroid Belt will be far enough, for now."

A couple of the men quaffed their drinks down in one gulp, then trotted out toward the wrecked cruise missile. Others headed for the shed.

"Check the cameras, too," Duncan called after them.

Pancho asked Randolph again, "That little ship has a fusion engine in it?"

Nodding, Randolph replied, "In place of its warhead."

"The engine's that small?"

"It's only a wee test engine," said Duncan. "Just to prove that it can provide controllable thrust."

"Now we can build one big enough to carry a real payload to the Belt," Randolph said.

"Once you raise the money," added Duncan.

With a glance at Amanda, Pancho asked Randolph, "But why did you bring Mandy and me out here? Just to have a couple more witnesses?"

His grin growing even wider, Randolph answered, "h.e.l.l no. I wanted you to see this because you two are gong to pilot the first fusion rocket to the Asteroid Belt."

NEW KYOTO.

The Yamagata family estate was set on a rugged hillside high above the office towers and apartment blocks of New Kyoto. Built like a medieval j.a.panese fortress, the solid yet graceful buildings always made Dan think of poetry frozen into shapes of wood and stone. It had suffered extensive damage in the earthquakes, Dan knew, but he could see no sign of it. The repairs had flawlessly matched the original structures.

Much of the inner courtyard was given to an exquisitely maintained sand garden. There were green vistas at every turn, as well: gardens and woods and, off in the distance, a glimpse through tall old trees of Lake Biwa, glittering in the late afternoon sun.

The tiltrotor plane settled down, turbines screeching, in the outer courtyard. Dan pulled off his sanitary mask and unbuckled his safety belt. He was through the hatch before the pilot was able to stop the rotors. Squinting through the dust kicked up by the downwash, Dan saw n.o.buhiko Yamagata waiting at the gate to the inner courtyard, wearing a comfortable kimono of deep blue decorated with white herons, the Yamagata family's emblem.

For an instant Dan thought he was seeing Saito Yamagata, n.o.buhiko's father, the man who had been Dan's boss in the old days when Randolph had been a construction engineer on the first j.a.panese solar power satellite. n.o.bo had been ascetically slim when he was younger, but now his face and body had filled out considerably. He was tall, though, some thirty centimeters taller than his father had been, even several centimeters taller than Dan himself.

The two men bowed simultaneously, then grasped each other's shoulders.

"By d.a.m.n, n.o.bo, it's good to see you."

"And you," n.o.buhiko replied, smiling broadly. "It's been much too long since you've visited here." His voice was deep, strong, a.s.sured.

"You're looking well," Dan said as Yamagata led him past the flowering shrubbery of the inner courtyard, toward the wing of the old stone and wood house where the family lived.

"I'm too fat and I know it," n.o.bo said, patting his belly. "Too many hours behind a desk, not enough exercise."

Dan made a sympathetic noise.

"I'm thinking of taking a trip to Selene for a nanotherapy session."

"Aw, come on, n.o.bo," Dan said, "it's not that bad."

"My doctors nag me constantly."

"That's what the double-d.a.m.ned doctors always do. They learn it in medical school. No matter how healthy you are, they always find something to worry you about."

They walked along a winding path of stones set across the middle of the carefully-raked sand garden. Dan noticed the miniature olive tree off in one corner of the garden that he had given n.o.bo's father many years earlier. It looked green and healthy. Before the greenhouse cliff had struck, even in June the tree would have been covered by a heated transparent plastic dome to protect it from the occasional frost. Now the winters were mild enough to leave the tree in the open all year long.

"What's your father's status?" Dan asked as they removed their shoes at the open door to the main house. Two servants stood silently just inside the door, both women, both in carnelian-red robes.

n.o.buhiko grimaced as they walked down the hallway lined with shoji screens.

"The medical researchers have removed the tumor and cleaned father's body of all traces of cancerous cells. They are ready to begin the revival sequence."

"That can be tricky," Dan said.

Ten years earlier, Saito Yamagata had had himself declared clinically dead and then frozen in liquid nitrogen, preserved cryonically to await the day when his cancer could be cured and he would be revived.

"Others have been thawed successfully," n.o.bo said as they entered a s.p.a.cious bedroom. It was paneled in teak, with bare floors of bleached pine, and furnished sparely: a western-style bed, a desk in the opposite corner, two comfortable-looking recliner chairs. One wall consisted of sliding shoji screens; Dan figured they covered a closet, built-in drawers, and the lavatory. Dan saw that his one travel bag had already been placed on a folding stand at the foot of the bed.

"Still," he said, "thawing must be pretty dicey."

Yamagata turned to face him, and Dan saw Saito's calm brown eyes, the certainty, the power that a long lineage of wealth and privilege can bring to a man.

"We have followed the research work very thoroughly," n.o.bo said. He smiled slightly. "We have sponsored much of the work ourselves, of course. It seems that Father could be revived."