Moonrise

Behind Greg was a giant Windowall that presently showed a restful silk scroll landscape of mountains and mist by the thirteenth-century Chinese ’master Kao K’o-Kung. It lent the office an air of serenity that neither Joa

“Will the United States sign the treaty?” Doug asked, from his seat on the couch against the far wall.

Joa

“Yes, of course they will,” Greg said, frowning darkly. “The whole idea of the treaty came from Washington.”

“But they can’t outlaw nanotechnology completely,” Joa

“Yes they can,” said Doug. Joa

“But if they do, they’ll want us to stop using nanomachines here at Moonbase, too. We can’t allow that.” .

Greg shook his head. “If and when the U.S. signs the treaty, its provisions will be like federal law. And we’ll be bound by them just like any flatlander down Earthside.”

“You’ll have to stop work on the mass driver,” Joa

With a tight nod, Greg said, “We’ll have to stop everything that we use nanomachines for.”

“That means closing Moonbase,” she said.

Greg started to nod but Doug interrupted with, “As long as we remain an American corporation.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Joa

“What about Kiribati?”

Greg looked sharply at his brother. “Kiribati?”

“Don’t you have enough clout with them to keep them from signing, Greg?” Doug asked.

“What good would that do?” Greg almost growled the words.

Joa

Greg shook his head dismissively. “And get half a dozen federal agencies jumping all over us. They’d take us to court and the courts would decide against us. We’d be in real trouble.

They’d send federal marshals up here to shut down all our nanomachines.”

Doug still looked strangely unperturbed. “Suppose we start up a new corporation,” he suggested. “In Kiribati. And Masterson sells the Moonbase operation to them.”

Greg’s somber face paled. “Sell Moonbase to them?”

Doug was gri

“All the corporation’s space operations?”

“That could work,” said Joa

“It’s an obvious attempt to circumvent the treaty,” said Greg.

“But it’s legal,” Doug replied. “I checked it out with both the federal and international law programs.”

“Did you?” Greg grumbled.

Joa

Doug replied, “He can stay in Sava

Greg objected, “The board of directors would never go for it.”

“Setting up a dummy corporation and selling the space division to it,” Joa

“It’ll never work,” said Greg.

“Why not?” Doug challenged. “You spent all those years out there in Kiribati. Don’t you think you can get them to play along with us?”

“Of course I could, but—”

Joa

“Why not the board chairman?” Doug asked.

Greg answered sourly, “Because Quintana is the real power on the board — present company excepted, of course.”

“Of course,” Joa

Frowning slightly, Greg touched the keyboard built into his desk with one long slim finger and said merely, “Carlos Quintana.” The comm system’s voice recognition circuitry searched automatically for Quintana’s number and made the co

“Johansen is just a figurehead,” Joa

The wall screen showing Monet lilypads changed abruptly to display a harried-looking young woman brushing at her dishevelled hair.

“I want to talk to Carlos,” Joa

“He’s dead!” the young woman bawled, bursting into tears. “He’s been shot!”

Joa

Ibriham al-Rashid felt perspiration beading his brow and upper lip despite the nearly-frigid air conditioning of the small control room.

Beyond that window, he knew, inside that gleaming metal sphere is a small man-made star, so hot and dense that its very atomic nuclei are being fused together.

The plasma physicist tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the power gauges lining the control room’s side wall. Rashid nodded, too awed to speak.

The control room was almost silent Nothing but the faint electrical hum from the monitoring consoles.

“How long has it been ru

“Tomorrow will make four months, exactly,” said the plasma physicist. Even he kept his voice hushed.

He was a fellow Moslem, even a fellow native of Baltimore; a man Rashid had known in his youth. Now he was a paunchy overweight academic with thi

“And it has been producing power like this for all that time?” Rashid whispered.

The plasma physicist nodded. “As long as we keep it supplied with helium-three.”

Rashid stroked his beard and turned back to stare through the safety glass at the small metal sphere. It was almost hidden inside a maze of magnet coils and cooling pipes and heavy tangles of multi-colored electrical wires. In his imagination, Rashid could see inside tьe sphere, see the blinding hot plasma that was fusing atomic nuclei together, forcing mass to transmute into energy, imitating the processes that made the stars shine.

By the Prophet, Rashid thought, Allah is offering us a gift beyond price.

But not beyond cost.

The plasma physicist gestured toward the door and, once out in the laboratory’s hallway again, Rashid drew a deep breath. “It really works,” he said, almost in a normal tone.

“It really works,” the plasma physicist echoed. “And much better — and cheaper — than that monstrosity up in Princeton.”

“But it requires helium-three for fuel, which the Princeton machine does not.”

“The Princeton machine is designed to produce new Ph.D.s,” the plasma physicist grumbled. “My generator is designed to produce megawatts.”

The plasma physicist led him up the hallway toward his own cluttered office. “Helium-three and deuterium,” he said. “The deuterium is easy to get from ordinary water. There’s enough deuterium in an eight-ounce drinking glass of water to equal the energy in half a million barrels of oil.”

Rashid smiled wanly. “Our brothers in OPEC will not be happy with you.”

The plasma physicist shrugged his soft shoulders. “They’re busy building receiving farms for the solar power satellites. The deserts will still be energy centers.”

“But once fusion comes on line…”

“It never will.”

“What? Your work—”

They reached his open office door. The room looked just as chaotic as when they had left it, an hour earlier.