Moonrise (66 page)

“As you can see from the power gauges,” Rashid’s voice was saying, “this one small generator can produce enough electrical energy to power an entire city the size of Savannah.”

“And this is nuclear fusion?” asked one of the white-haired men sitting halfway down the table.

“Yes,” Rashid’s voice replied. “Fusion, not fission. No uranium or plutonium is involved. The fuel basically comes from water and the waste product is helium: inert and safe. You can use it to blow up balloons for your grandchildren.”

A few snickers of laughter went down the conference table.

“I thought you said we needed fuel from the Moon to make this work,” said one of the women directors.

“One shipload per year will fuel as many fusion generators as we can profitably build,” Rashid answered.

“So we wouldn’t need to keep Moonbase open?”

“No. We could even process the helium-three without nano-machines, if we must.”

“Now wait a minute,” Johansen interrupted. “I thought you said the helium was a waste product. Now you’re saying it’s the fuel? I don’t understand.”

Patiently, Rashid tried to explain, but Johansen felt more confused than ever.

“But the point is,” said the comptroller, “that we could get the fuel we need from the Moon without keeping Moon-base open.”

“That is correct,” said Rashid.

“Then why have we started up this dummy corporation in Kiribati?” asked Johansen.

Rashid’s voice answered from the screen, “The Kiribati Corporation exists specifically to allow Moonbase to continue using nanotechnology in spite of the U.N. treaty.”

“In other words, we’re sinking all this money into those islanders just to keep Moonbase poking along?”

Rashid’s voice replied, “Without nanotechnology, Moon-base could not exist.”

Joanna’s face, in the screen at the far end of the room, hardened as soon as she heard the question. “We’re keeping Moonbase
poking along
,” she said, with steel in her voice, “because we will soon be able to manufacture spacecraft out of pure diamond, using nanotechnology.”

“Who needs a diamond Clippership?” asked one of the women. “The Clipperships we have now work just fine, don’t they?”

Johansen twiddled his fingers impatiently until Joanna’s response came from the Moon:

“Diamond ships will be lighter, yet far stronger, than anything made of metals. Therefore they will be safer yet more economical to operate. They will be cheaper to manufacture, yet the market will pay more for them than they do for today’s Clipperships. Our profits will be double, or even greater.”

“You mean Moonbase will actually start showing real profit, after all these years?”

Again that agonizing wait.

Then Joanna replied, “I mean that diamond Clipperships, built by Moonbase, will make this corporation more profitable than it’s ever been.”

“Then why do we need this fusion thing?” Johansen asked, almost surprising himself that he spoke his thoughts out loud.

The Windowall view of the fusion reactor vanished and Rashid’s trimly bearded face loomed over them. “Because with fusion generators Masterson Corporation can become bigger than the old petroleum companies were!”

“We can’t sink risk money into both these new ideas,” said the comptroller, sitting at Johansen’s right hand. “It’s just too chancy.”

“Suppose the World Court decides that our Kiribati Corporation is nothing but a subterfuge to get around the U.N. treaty?” Rashid threatened.

But before anyone on the board could respond to that, Joanna countered, “How long will it take to make this fusion process practical? And profitable?”

Rashid hesitated. “Well, the power conversion system needs to be developed.”

“Power conversion?”

“Magneto—” Rashid cut his words short. “MHD is what it’s called.”

“How long will
that
take?” asked the comptroller. “And how many bucks?”

Before Rashid could reply, Joanna said firmly, “We’re not asking for a penny of corporate risk funding on our new Clippership development.”

All heads turned to her image.

“Moonbase will build a prototype diamond Clippership on our own. It won’t cost the corporation a cent.”

The board broke into a dozen conversations at once.

Joanna’s voice stilled them all. “But once that prototype ship is demonstrated and the aerospace lines start placing their orders, I’ll expect every Moonbase employee who worked on the program to get a share of the profits.”

Johansen wished for the hundredth time that Quintana were still there. He’d know what to say. As it was, the board sat in stunned silence for what seemed like half a lifetime.

Finally the comptroller spoke up. “Mrs. Stavenger, if your people up there can build a diamond Clippership without additional funding from the corporation and sell the concept to the aerospace lines, I’m sure we can work out an equitable profit-sharing plan.”

Rashid, in an agonized voice, asked, “But what about the fusion program?”

Johansen spoke up. “Let’s wait before we make a decision about that. Let’s see what Moonbase can actually do for us, first.”

Sitting in his bare little office in the concrete building on Tarawa, Rashid sank back in his chair. The board of directors nodded their heads—white haired, bald, silvery gray—and agreed with Johansen’s idiotic decision.

Angrily, Rashid punched his desktop keyboard and blanked the display screen on the office’s wall.

Melissa Hart got up from her chair at the side of the desk and stepped behind Rashid. Gently she massaged his shoulders as she whispered, “Let me go to Moonbase. Let me use the sword of vengeance against them.”

Rashid closed his eyes as her deft fingers kneaded the tension out of him.

“Yes,” he said. “You go to Moonbase on the next available ship.”

This one was different. Doug could hardly contain his excitement as he stood in the rocket port’s observation bubble and watched the LTV come down.
The
LTV. The one they were going to modify for the asteroid mission.

He spotted the puffs of rocket exhaust against the dark sky as the controllers made their final adjustments, then the LTV took shape, big and lumpy with tanks and pods, and then the main engine fired its final braking burst and the ungainly vehicle settled down on its rickety-looking legs in a dirty white cloud of gaseous aluminum oxide and blowing lunar dust.

Doug just stood there, practically on tip-toes, his hair brushing the curved plastiglass of the bubble, and admired the spacecraft. This wasn’t a worn-out cripple, ready for the scrap heap. This LTV was practically new; his mother had insisted on getting quality for her money.

To his surprise, the personnel access tube was worming its way toward the hatch in the passenger pod. Were there passengers aboard the ship?

Doug slid languidly down the ladder into the flight control center and asked the two controllers on duty.

“One passenger. VIP from Tarawa,” said the chief controller.

Surprised, Doug said, “Well, I might as well go down and greet him.”

“Her,” the controller corrected. “Personal representative from the chief executive officer of the Kiribati Corporation.”

“Oh,” said Doug. “The new owners.”

He ducked out of the flight control center and slid down the ladder into the Pit. He walked briskly to the airlock hatch and waited for the indicator light to turn green. As soon as the hatch cracked open, Doug grabbed it and helped to swing it all the way.

“Welcome to Moonbase,” he said. The words almost stuck in his throat. The LTV’s pilot and co-pilot both were holding the arms of a very beautiful dark-skinned woman who looked as if she were dying.

It had been a miserable flight for Melissa. Worse than hell, forty-eight hours of weightlessness. She had never been in space before, and the nausea of free-fall simply overwhelmed her, despite all the medication. She puked her guts out during the first few hours of the flight and had the dry heaves the rest of the way.

The only thing that kept her going was the mantra she repeated to herself all the long, exhausting way to the Moon. It was a mantra of hate. She filled her mind with a vision of Greg Masterson. The man who had betrayed her so brutally. All men were betrayers, of course, but Greg had been the worst. She had loved him, once. She had conceived his baby. Now for nearly twenty years she had survived by hating him. His betrayal had driven her into self-loathing and a life so foul it had nearly killed her, just as she had killed the unborn child within her, but Melissa fought for her life with one burning goal set before her pain-filled eyes: to make Greg pay. To make him feel the agony she had felt. To make him suffer as she had suffered.

It was not a worthy goal, she knew. General O’Conner and the others would be horrified if they could see into her soul. But it was the goal that had kept Melissa sane all these years, and now she was close to achieving it.

Hate can move mountains, she said to herself. Faith, hope and hate. And the greatest of these is hate.

Now her long journey was over. With at least some sense of weight to anchor her stomach, she looked with watery eyes at a bright-faced young man beaming a ridiculous greeting to her.

“I’ll take care of her,” Doug said. The two crewmen looked enormously relieved.

“Come on,” he said, taking Melissa by the arm. “You’re
okay now. You just need to clean up a bit and get some food into you.”

Melissa groaned at the thought of food. “I must look a mess,” she said.

Grinning, Doug admitted, “A shower and a change of clothes would help.” She smelled so bad his own stomach wanted to heave.

He led Melissa to the waiting tractor and the copilot dumped her one travelbag on the back seat. As they trundled along the dimly lit tunnel, Doug accessed the central computer and found the room assigned to Melissa. She must be a real VIP, he thought, to get the personnel department to push another short-timer into doubling up.

Fortunately Melissa’s assigned quarters weren’t far from the main airlock. Doug walked her there and told her to take a shower.

“I’ll wait out in the tunnel and take you to lunch when you’re ready,” he told her.

Melissa was too miserable and weak to debate with the stranger. She stumbled into what looked like a cell carved out of rock, found the shower stall, and stepped in fully clothed. The water was tepid, at best, but it felt good. Slowly she stripped off her soggy clothing as the water sluiced over her.

She was looking for soap when the water stopped. Blinking drops from her eyes, she turned the controls. Nothing. Suddenly blasts of air pummeled her from vents in the ceiling and sides of the stall. She shivered, but as the air evaporated the droplets on her skin it began to feel warm, even hot.

And then it, too, suddenly stopped. Melissa shook her head, feeling like a hamburger in an automated oven. As she stepped out of the shower she realized that her nausea was gone. She shook her head again. No wooziness at all.

Leaving her soiled clothes in the shower, she opened her bag and got dressed: crisp clean ivory slacks and a pullover blouse of metallic gold. It was a struggle, though; every move she made seemed too big. She nearly toppled over onto the bunk when she tried to step into the slacks. Of course, she told herself, you’re on the Moon. The gravity’s much less here. Carefully, she finished dressing and slipped on a pair of soft-soled espadrilles.

No jewelry, only her wristwatch. She looked at herself in the shadowy reflection of the desktop computer screen; there was no mirror in the room. Warmed-over shit, she appraised. Well, girl, that’s as good as it’s going to get.

Wondering if the nice young kid was still waiting out in the hall, she stepped cautiously to the accordion-pleated door and slid it partway open.

Doug saw her peeking out. “Hi!” he said. “Feeling better?”

The shock of recognition almost knocked her legs out from under her. Standing there grinning at her was a young Paul Stavenger. Bigger than Paul, lighter skinned. But it was Paul’s eyes she saw looking at her; Paul’s irresistible smile.

Then it flashed into her mind: Paul’s son, Douglas, lived here at Moonbase with Greg and their mother. Paul’s son. Joanna’s son.

She pushed the door all the way open and stepped out into the tunnel very carefully.

“We’ll have to get you a pair of weighted boots,” Doug said, offering her his arm. “First stop, though, is the Cave.”

Melissa clung to his arm and let him do the talking. She learned that the Cave was some sort of cafeteria or mess hall where Moonbase people took their meals. The thought of eating felt better to her now that her stomach was in place. She actually felt hungry. Ought to be, she told herself. You lost everything you had in there and then some.

“You haven’t told me your name,” she said as they walked slowly down the tunnel.

“Doug Stavenger,” he answered. “And yours?”

She covered her emotions quickly. “Melissa Hart,” she said, not trusting herself to say more. Joanna’s baby. Greg’s half-brother.

Then she remembered that this was the young man whose body swarmed with nanomachines. This was the symbol of wickedness that General O’Conner was sworn to destroy. Almost, she disengaged from his arm. The thought of those evil machines inside his body frightened her. But he looked normal enough, and she was afraid that if she let go of his arm she’d stumble and fall.

“You didn’t have any trouble working the shower, did you?” he asked as they walked down the tunnel.

“The water shut off on me.”

“Oh, sure. There’s a timer. Water’s pretty precious, still, so there’s an automatic cutoff in all the showers.”

“And air driers?”

Doug nodded easily. “We generate a lot of heat. Most of it’s too low-grade to be put to anything useful, but we can save a lot of towel laundering by using some of it to dry off in the shower.”

“I see,” Melissa said.

“Not that we use water for the laundry,” he added.

“No?”

“Don’t have to. Just take the dirty laundry outside; the dirt dries out almost immediately in the vacuum, so you can shake it off.”

Melissa wondered if he were telling her the truth or pulling her leg.