Moonrise

There was no space in the bedroom for the two massive wardrobes full of clothes that Joa

The bed on its’throne’ — and who might be sharing it with the ’queen’ — quickly became the most talked-about item in Moonbase.

“You must tell Greg about this,” Joa

Doug had noticed that some of the women among the long-term Lunatics had taken to wearing more stylish clothes since his mother had come to Moonbase. Some women had started modifying their coveralls, snipping out pieces along the sleeves or shoulders or legs, adding trinkets or decorative patches. Eye candy, one of the guys called it.

Doug enjoyed the fashion trend. The women were adding color to the drab underground surroundings. Like the flowers that Brudnoy grew and the pictures that the Windowalls offered. Women wore perfume more often now, too. Even Bianca had added a trio of tiny gold pins to her collar as soon as she had arrived from Earthside: two cats on one side and some kind of fish on the other.

Doug remembered how Bre

“I wanted to run it past you first,” he said, “to make certain there aren’t any obvious holes in the plan.”

The corners of Joa

Doug gri

“What you’re trying to do is to make Moonbase as self-sufficient as possible.”

“And as soon as possible.”

“Without letting the corporate management know what you’re doing.”

“Or the board of directors,” Doug added.

.Joa

“Will it affect you?”

She smiled grimly. “Of course it will. The trick is to make certain it enhances my position on the board rather than detracting from it.”

“Will you have to go back Earthside?”

“I don’t think so,” Joa

Doug saw the shadow of uncertainty on her face. “I don’t want to start new problems for you, but—”

“No, I think your scheme could be a good insurance policy for us, in case they really do try to stop us from using nanomachines.”

Doug nodded.

“In fact,” Joa

“We can’t do that,” Doug snapped. “It’d be immoral.”

With a small shrug, Joa

“Will Greg go along with us?”

Joa

“He wants to shut down Moonbase, doesn’t he?” Without waiting for his mother’s response, Doug went on, “And I want to enlarge it, turn it into a manufacturing center, make it profitable so it can grow and prosper. That’s what Operation Bootstrap is all about…”

Joa

We’ve been talking about making Moonbase self-sufficient for years. Paul wanted to do it, even back then. And now Doug’s found the way to do it, if we can only get it started. Greg will be dead-set against this, though.

Aloud, she told her son, “Let me talk to Greg about it first. Alone.”

Doug nodded as if that was what he had expected. Maybe what he had hoped she would say.

“I think he’ll take it better if he hears it from you, Mom.”

Joa

Doug got to his feet and Joa

And he’s still growing, she realized. Mentally. He’s challenging Greg already, although he doesn’t really understand that. Greg does, though. Greg will see exactly what this means.

I mustn’t let them clash over this Operation Bootstrap. I’ve got to get them to work together, not against one another.

Wilhelm Zimmerman almost toppled off his bar stool as he flinched away from his friend’s blazing anger. His huge bulk teetered on the swivelling stool. He had to grab the edge of the bar with both hands to steady himself.

Verban took no notice of his obese friend’s struggle to stay on the stool.

“Are you mad?” Verban hissed, his teeth showing. “Do you want to ruin us all?”

The bar was of the American type, in the old Osborne Hotel where the tourists stayed. Verban had insisted on their meeting there, rather than the ratskeller next to the campus where they usually had their seidels of beer.

It was late in the afternoon, yet the place was almost empty. Muted bland music issued thinly from the speakers in the ceiling. A few elderly couples, obviously tourists from Japan or one of the Asian rim tigers, sat together at one circular table, their heads together over a vidcam as they viewed their day’s videodiscs.

Verban had suggested this hotel bar as a place where they would not be seen. Zimmerman thought they looked as obvious as a syphilitic chancre on a nun’s face. How much better he would have felt in the noisy fellowship of the beer hall!

Zimmerman steadied himself, then said, “No one is going to be ruined just because I occasionally help a wealthy foreigner.” He whispered in the quiet, almost deserted bar.

“Madness!” Verban repeated. “Sheer madness.”

Zimmerman had known the man for nearly thirty years. Verban had always been the jittery type, scarecrow thin, nervous, given to smoking illicit cigarettes when he thought no one was watching. He was a professor in the university’s law school, on the verge of graduating into the bliss of a professor emeritus’ well-earned retirement.

“I’ve been doing it for so many years,” Zimmerman said. “Why does it upset you now?”

“Because the pressures are stronger now than ever! Don’t you watch the news? Don’t you see what’s going on around you — all over the world!”

“You mean that assassination in New York?”

“That’s only part of it.”

“And the treaty that the United Nations is sponsoring.” Zimmerman smiled at his old friend. “You see, I do keep an eye on events outside my laboratory.”

“Switzerland will sign the treaty.”

Zimmerman shrugged and reached for his glass of beer, a delicate thing that held only a fraction of a seidel’s worth. It was almost empty. At their favorite haunt the barmaids always made certain that the mugs were topped off regularly.

“So Switzerland will sign the stupid treaty. So what? The authorities have never bothered me.”

“They will now,” Verban whispered harshly. “They will close your laboratory entirely.”

“No, they won’t stop research—”

“Yes they will! And they’ll come looking for you first of all, you with your proud a

“But it’s true,” Zimmerman insisted. “I did.”