The Precipice

“That’s why I’m here. Astro Manufacturing has the resources to do it”

“Astro Manufacturing is just about broke and you know it.”

“I wasn’t talking about financial resources,” Humphries said, waving a hand in the air almost carelessly.

“Oh no?”

“No.” Pointing a finger toward the window and the storm-battered launch facility outside, Humphries said, “You’ve got the technological know-how, the teams of trained perso

“And it’s bleeding me white because there’s less and less of a market for launch services. Nobody can afford to buy electronics manufactured on the Moon, not when they’re being driven from their homes by floods and earthquakes.” Humphries’s brows rose questioningly.

“I know, I know,” Dan said. “There’s the energy market. Sure. But how many solar-power satellites can we park in orbit? The double-damned GEC just put a cap on them. We’re building the next-to-last one now. After those two, no more powersats.”

Before Humphries could ask why, Dan continued, “The goddamned Greater Asia Power Consortium complained about the powersats undercutting their prices. And the double-damned Europeans sided with them. Serve ’em all right if they freeze their asses off when the Gulf Stream breaks up.”

“The Gulf Stream?” Humphries looked startled.

Dan nodded unhappily. “That’s one of the projections. The greenhouse warming is already changing ocean currents. When the Gulf Stream breaks up, Europe goes into the deep freeze; England’s weather will be the same as Labrador’s.”

“When? How soon?”

“Twenty years, maybe. Maybe a hundred. Ask five different scientists and you get twelve different answers.”

“That’s a real opportunity,” Humphries said excitedly. “Winterizing all of Europe.

Think of it! What an opportunity!”

“Fu

“You see the glass half empty. To me, it’s half full.”

Dan had a sudden urge to throw this young opportunist out of his office. Instead, he slumped back in his chair and muttered, “It’s like a sick Greek tragedy. Global warming is going to put Europe in the deep-freezer. Talk about ironic.”

“We were talking about the energy market,” Humphries said, regaining his composure. “What about the lunar helium-three?”

Dan wondered if his visitor was merely trying to pump him. Warily, he answered, “Barely holding its own. There’s not that many fusion power plants up and ru

“So you’d need an injection of capital to start mining the asteroids,” Humphries said.

“A transfusion,” Dan grumbled.

“That can be done.”

Dan felt his brows hike up. “Really?”

“I can provide the capital,” Humphries said, matter-of-factly.

“We’re talking forty, fifty billion, at least.”

Humphries waved a hand, as if brushing away an a

“Even a one-shot demo flight would cost a couple bill,” Dan said.

“Probably.”

“Where are you going to get that kind of money? Nobody’s willing to talk to me about investing in Astro.”

“There are people who’d be willing to invest that kind of money in developing the asteroid market.”

For an instant Dan felt a surge of hope. It could work! Open up the Asteroid Belt. Bring those resources to Earth’s needy people. Then the cost figures flashed into his mind again, as implacable as Newton’s laws of motion. “You know,” he said wearily, “if we could just cover our own costs I’d be willing to try it.”

Humphries looked disappointed. “Just cover your own costs?”

“Damned right. People need those resources. If we could get them without driving ourselves into bankruptcy, I’d go to double-damned Pluto if I had to!” Relaxing visibly, Humphries said, “I know how we can do it and make a healthy profit, besides.”

Despite himself, Dan felt intrigued. “How?”

“Fusion rockets.”

By the seven cities of Cibola, Dan thought, this guy’s a fanatic. Worse: he’s an enthusiast.

“Nobody’s made a fusion rocket,” he said to Humphries. “Fusion power generators are too big and heavy for flight applications. Everybody knows that.” With the grin of a cat that had just finished dining on several canaries, Humphries replied, “Everybody’s wrong.”

Dan thought it over for all of half a second, then leaned both his hands on his desktop, palms down, and said, “Prove it to me.”

Wordlessly, Humphries fished a data chip from his jacket pocket and handed it to Dan.

SPACE STATION GALILEO

Leaving her five fellow astronauts gaping dumbfounded at the airlock in the maintenance module, Pancho sailed weightlessly to the metal arm of the robotic cargo-handling crane jutting out from the space station. It was idle at the moment; with no mass of payload to steady it, the long, slim arm flexed noticeably as Pancho grasped it in both hands and swung like an acrobat up to the handgrips that studded the module’s outer skin.

Wondering if the others had caught on to her sting, Pancho hand-walked along the module’s hull, clambering from one runglike grip to the next. To someone watching from beyond the space station it would have looked as if she were scampering along upside down, but to Pancho it seemed as if the space station was over her head and she was swinging like a kid in a zero-gee jungle gym. She laughed inside her helmet as she reached the end of the maintenance module and pushed easily across the co

“Hey Pancho, what the hell are you doing out there?”

They had finally gotten to a radio, she realized. But as long as they were puzzled, she was okay.

“I’m taking a walk,” she said, a little breathless from all the exertion.

“What about our bet?” one of the men asked.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she lied. “Just hang tight.”

“What are you up to, Pancho?” asked Amanda, her voice tinged with suspicion.

Pancho fell back on her childhood answer. “Nothin’.”

The radio went silent. Pancho reached the airlock at the end of the lab module and tapped out the standard code. The outer hatch slid open. She ducked inside, sealed the hatch and didn’t bother to wait for the lock to fill with air. She simply pushed open the i

Blessed with perfect pitch and a steel-trap memory, Pancho punched out the numbers for each of the five astronauts’ banks in turn, followed by their personal identification codes. Mother always said I should have been a musician, Pancho mused as she transferred almost the total amount of each account into her own bank account. She left exactly one international dollar for each of them, so the bank’s computers would not start the complex process of closing down their accounts.

As she finished, the hatch at the other end of the habitation module swung open and her five fellow astronauts began to push through, one at a time. “What’s going on?” demanded the first guy through.

“Nothin’,” Pancho said again. Then she dived through the hatch at her end of the long narrow module.

Into the Japanese lab module she swam, flicking her fingers along the equipment racks lining both sides of its central aisle, startling the technicians working there. Laughing to herself, she wondered how long it would take them to figure out that she had looted their bank accounts.