The Precipice

SPACEPORT ARMSTRONG

Pancho stared across the desolate, blast-scarred expanse of the launch center and wrinkled her nose unhappily. “It sure looks like a kludge.” Standing beside her in the little observation bubble, Dan had to agree. The fusion drive looked like the work of a drunken plumber: bulbous spheres of diamond that sparkled in the harsh unfiltered sunlight drenching the lunar surface, the odd shapes of the MHD cha

Subdued voices crackled from the intercom speaker set into the smoothed wall of the chamber just below the rim of the transparent blister. “Pan Asia oh-one-niner on final descent,” said the pilot of an incoming shuttle. “We have you on final, oh-one-niner,” answered the calm female voice of a flight controller. “Pad four.”

“Pad four, copy.”

Dan looked up into the star-flecked sky and saw a fleeting glint of light.

“Retrorockets,” Pancho muttered.

“On the curve,” said the flight controller.

Another quick burst. Dan could make out the shuttle now, a dark angular shape falling slowly out of the sky, slim landing legs extended. “Down the pipe, oh-one-niner,” said the woman controller. She sounded almost bored.

It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Dan watched the shuttle come down and settle on the pad farthest away from the one on which the fusion rocket was sitting, waiting for clearance to take off. The shuttle pilot a

Pancho let out a puff of pent-up breath.

Surprised, Dan asked, “White knuckles? You?”

She gri

Glancing at his wristwatch, Dan said, “Well, we ought to get clearance to launch as soon as they offload the shuttle.”

With a nod, Pancho said, “I’d better get suited up.”

“Right,” said Dan.

The fusion system itself was the last part of their spacecraft to be launched into orbit around the Moon. The propellant tanks and the crew and logistics modules were already circling a hundred kilometers overhead. Pancho would supervise the assembly robots that would link all the pieces together. Dan went with her along the tu

Well, he sighed to himself, at least you’re not too old to appreciate a good-looking woman.

But he turned and headed for the tu

As he started down the corridor that led to the co

Dammitall, he thought, Stavenger’s older than I am and he looks like a kid. Maybe I ought to get some nanotherapy.

“Going to watch the launch?” Stavenger asked brightly.

“Think I’ll go to the launch center and watch it from there.”

“I like to watch from the observation bubble.”

“I was just there,” Dan said.

“Come on; let’s see the real thing instead of watching it on a screen.” Stavenger’s enthusiasm was contagious. Dan found himself striding along the narrow tu

They ducked through the open hatch and into the cramped chamber. Stavenger climbed the two steps and looked out, gri

“I used to sneak out here when I was a kid to watch the liftoffs and landings,” Stavenger said, gri

Dan made a polite mumble.

“I mean, we spend almost our whole lives indoors, underground,” Stavenger went on. “It’s good to see the outside now and then.”

“As long as the glass doesn’t crack.”

“That’s what the safety hatches are for.”

Dan said, “But you’ve got to get through them fast, before they shut themselves.”

Stavenger laughed. “True enough.”

They watched shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped blister, listening to the flight controllers’ crisp voices clicking off the countdown. Stavenger seemed as excited as a kid; Dan envied him. A little tractor rolled noiselessly across the crater floor to the launch pad. Pancho’s spacesuited figure jumped from it in dreamlike lunar slow-motion, stirring up a lazy puff of gray dust. Then she climbed up the ladder and sealed herself into the booster’s one-person crew module. “This is just an assembly mission, isn’t it?” Stavenger asked.

“Right,” said Dan. “She not a pilot on this flight, just baby-sitting the robots.” Strangely enough, Dan felt his palms going clammy as the countdown neared its final moments. Relax, he told himself silently. There’s nothing to this. Still, his heart began to thump faster.

“… three… two… one… ignition,” said the automated countdown voice. The spacecraft leaped off the launch pad in a cloud of smoke and gritty dust that evaporated almost as soon as it formed. One instant the craft was sitting on the concrete, the next it was gone.

“We have liftoff,” said one of the human controllers in the time-honored tradition.

“All systems in the green.”

Pancho’s voice came through the speaker. “Copy all systems green. Orbital insertion burn in ten seconds.”

It was all quite routine. Still, Dan didn’t relax until Pancho a

Dan huffed. “She sounds more like a robot than a human being.” Just then the controller added, “Okay, Pancho. I’ll see you at the Pelican tomorrow night.”

Stavenger gri

“We’ve programmed a month of uncrewed flight tests and demo flights for IAA certification. Once we get the nod from the bureaucrats we’ll be ready to go.”

“Could your craft reach Jupiter?”

Surprised at the question, Dan replied, “In theory. But we won’t be carrying enough propellant or supplies for that. Jupiter’s almost twice as far as the Belt.”

“I know,” Stavenger murmured.

“Why do you ask?”

Stavenger hesitated. The cart trundled along the blank-walled tu