Moonrise

Before Anson’s stubborn-faced image could reply, Joa

She didn’t have to call up the list of waiting messages to know that Greg was impatient to talk with her. He had flown in from Kiribati, fully expecting his mother to name him the new director of Moonbase. Greg has his own sources inside the board of directors, Joa

Over the years, the space operations division had become the tail that wagged the corporate dog. Sales of new Clippership models were the mainstay of the corporation’s profits. When Clippership sales were strong, the stockholders received dividends. When Clippership sales sagged, workers were laid off. But the orbital manufacturing end of the space division had never broken clearly into the black. Even with raw materials supplied by Moonbase, the metal alloys and Pharmaceuticals produced in the space stations were still too expensive to compete in the marketplace, except for the Windowalls, and even their profits were declining as the market for them saturated.

Joa

Well, Joa

And there was even more trouble with the nanotechnology division, which was also tottering on the brink of collapse. Nanomachines were used on the Moon to produce water and build solar cells, but their uses on Earth had been slowed to a crawl by government regulations and a massive public relations campaign of demonstrations and protests, based on ignorance and hysterical fear, in Joa

Joa

Kris Cardenas had gotten herself into legal hot water by using nanobugs on herself to restore her failing eyesight. No glasses, no contact lenses, no surgery. The bugs restored her natural lenses to their youthful flexibility and strengthened the muscles that controlled them. Twenty-twenty vision, from only a few injections over a three-week period. Followed by three years of hounding by government lawyers and endless hearings in courts and the Canadian parliament. And Cardenas had all the prestige and authority of a Nobel Prize backing her.

Joa

“Why not use the virtual reality system?” Ibriham Rashid asked playfully.

Joa

“Now?” he teased.

“At your earliest convenience,” Joa

“Harkening and obedience,” said Rashid.

Ibriham Muhammed al-Rashid had been born in Baltimore, third son of second-generation Palestinian-Americans. For all of his forty-two years he had balanced a firm belief in Islam with a firm belief that science and technology were gifts of Allah to help men in their struggle for existence. From his earliest childhood it was apparent that he was extremely intelligent and even more extremely motivated to rise high in the world. Johns Hopkins and MIT honed his intelligence. And his diplomatic skills. At school he was quickly dubbed ’Omar the Tentmaker.” Instead of becoming angry at the derogatory nickname, Rashid turned it into a badge of honor.

His career with Masterson Aerospace had been little short of meteoric. As head of the space operations division, he knew that the corporate knives were being sharpened behind his back. Space operations was the corporation’s largest division, thanks to the Clipperships, a profitable cash cow that various reorganization plans sought to carve up into smaller sections and remove from Rashid’s control. He resisted those attempts with a mixture of deft corporate maneuvering and unfailing loyalty from his division staff. He also used his urbane charm wherever it would do the most good — especially with the chairwoman of the board.

Joa

Rashid stepped into Joa

“Desert golds and tans,” he said, noticing the decor. “And a scent of jasmine. Are you trying to make me homesick?”

Joa

“Racial memory,” Rashid bantered. “Jung claimed that we all have primitive memories stored in our subconscious minds.”

“Maybe my ancestry goes back to the desert,” Joa

“Arabs prefer cities. My people are great architects.”

Joa

Rashid did not seem surprised. He eased one arm across the back of the loveseat and crossed his legs. “O’Rourke is slated for that position.”

“I know, but…’ She let the sentence dangle.

“O’Rourke is very competent. Unimaginative, true, but very competent.”

“I asked Ji

The slightest of tics twitched at the comer of Rashid’s mouth. “You should have spoken to me first. I would have told you she’d refuse. She’s going to be married.” His voice was soft, yet Joa

“My other son’s out there at the south pole with Bre

“Yes, I am aware of that.”

“I don’t like the idea of changing base directors while the expedition’s out there.”

Rashid shrugged elaborately. “It really makes almost no difference whatsoever. The base director is in no position to help or harm the expedition.”

“Really?”

“The expedition is rather self-sufficient. Bre

“Even with one of the cargo ships crashed?”

Again the shrug. “They’ll resupply earlier than scheduled. It’s not a major problem.”

“So you don’t think Anson’s leaving will be a problem?”

“Of course not. If I did, she wouldn’t be leaving, believe me.”

Joa