The Precipice (22 page)

“But I don't want you to,” Amanda said, alarmed.

“You don't have to go through with it,” Humphries insisted. “I know it's dangerous. I had no idea that you're afraid of—”

“Afraid!” Mandy snapped. “I'm not afraid! Simply because I understand the risks involved does
not
mean that I'm afraid.”

Humphries puffed out an exasperated breath. “Then you're using the mission as an excuse to keep your distance from me, is
that it?”

“No!” Amanda said. “That's not it at all. I simply…” Her voice trailed off into silence.

“Then what's wrong?” Humphries asked. “What's the problem? Is it me?”

She stared down at the table for a long, miserable, silent moment. Pancho thought she saw tears glistening in Mandy's eyes.
The expression on Humphries's face was somewhere between bafflement and anger.

“Martin, please,” Amanda said at last. “We've only known each other for a few weeks. You're a very wonderful man in
many ways, but I'm not ready for a meaningful relationship. Not now. Not with this mission coming up. Perhaps afterward, when
I return, perhaps then.”

Humphries pulled in a deep breath. It seemed obvious to Pancho that he was trying to control his temper.

“I'm not a patient man,” he said, his voice low. “I'm not accustomed to waiting.”

No, Pancho thought. What you're accustomed to is taking your women up to your bedroom and videoing the whole thing for playback.
And then VR games.

“Please bear with me, Martin,” Amanda whispered, her voice husky with tears. “Please.”

If he tries to get rough with Mandy, Pancho told herself, I'll kick his balls into next week. She wished she'd brought Elly,
but the stealth suit was too confining for the snake; she'd left Elly back at her quarters.

Humphries snapped the jewelry case shut with a click that sounded like a gunshot.

“All right,” he said tightly. “I'll wait. I wish I'd never started this fusion business.”

Amanda made a sad smile. “But then we'd never have met, would we?”

He conceded the point with a hopeless shrug, then got up and led Amanda to the front door of the house.

“Will I see you again?” he asked as he opened the door for her.

“It might be best if we don't, Martin. Not until after I return.”

He nodded, grim-faced. Then he grasped both her wrists and said, “I love you, Amanda. I really do.”

“I know,” she said, and kissed him swiftly, lightly, on the cheek.

She hurried down the walk away from him so quickly that Pancho almost didn't make it through the door before Humphries slammed
it shut.

P
ancho had to sprint up the escalators to get back to the quarters she shared with Amanda before Mandy did. Twice she nearly
stumbled and fell; it wasn't easy to run up moving stairs when you can't see your own feet.

It was late enough that the corridors were not crowded. Pancho easily dodged around the few people still up and about, leaving
a couple of them bewildered as she brushed past them; they felt certain that someone had just rushed by, yet there was no
one in sight. She got to their quarters well ahead of Amanda, powered down the stealth suit as soon as she slid the door shut
behind ter, stripped to her skivvies, and stuffed the suit under her bed. Elly was snoozing comfortably in her plastic cage,
actually a box that still smelled faintly of the strawberries it had carried from China to Selene. Pancho had packed it with
several centimeters of gritty regolith dirt, stuck in an artificial cactus, and kept a saucer of water in it for Elly's comfort.

She was kneeling beside the plastic box, pouring fresh water into the saucer when Amanda came in.

Pancho looked up at her roommate. Mandy's eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.

“How'd your date go?” she asked, innocently.

Looking troubled, Amanda said, “Oh, Pancho, I think he wants to marry me.”

Pancho got to her feet. “He's not the marrying kind.”

“He's been married. Twice.”

“That's what I mean.”

Amanda sat on her bed. “He… he's different from any other man I've ever met.”

“Yeah. He's got more money.”

“No, it isn't that,” Amanda replied. “He's…” She searched for a word.

“Horny?” Pancho suggested.

Amanda frowned at her. “He's
powerful
There's something in his eyes… he almost frightens me.”

Thinking about Humphries's home videos, Pancho nodded.

“I can't see him again. I simply can't.”

She sounded to Pancho as if she were trying to convince herself.

“He's so accustomed to getting whatever he wants,” Amanda said, more to herself than Pancho. “He doesn't like being turned
away, rejected.”

“Nobody does, Mandy.”

“But he…” Again her words faltered. “Pancho, with other men I could smile and flirt and let it go at that. But Martin won't
be satisfied with that. He wants what he wants, and if he doesn't get it he can be… I just don't know what he'd do, but he
frightens me.”

“You think he wants to marry you?”

“He said he loves me.”

“Aw hell, Mandy, guys have said that to me, too. All they want is to get into your pants.”

“I think he really believes that he loves me.”

“That's a strange way to put it.”

“Pancho, I can't see him again. There's no telling what he might do. I've got to stay away from him.”

Pancho thought that Amanda looked scared. And she's got plenty to be scared of, she told herself.

First thing the following morning, Pancho phoned Dan Randolph and asked to meet with him. One of Randolph's assistants, the
big beefy-faced guy with the sweet tenor voice, said he'd call her back. In five minutes, he did. Randolph would see her in
his office at ten-fifteen.

Astro Corporation's offices were just down the corridor from the living quarters that the company rented. In most corporations,
executive country was conspicuously more luxurious than the regular troops' territory. Not so at Astro. There was no discernible
difference along the length of the corridor. As she walked along the row of doors, looking for Randolph's name, Pancho decided
that she wouldn't tell him about the stealth suit. She'd returned it first thing that morning to Walton's locker. Ike knew
nothing of her borrowing the suit; if there was any bad fallout, he couldn't be blamed for anything.

Randolph looked tense when Pancho was ushered into his office by the big Aussie she'd talked to on the phone.

“Hi, boss,” she said brightly.

It was a small office, considering it belonged to the head of a major corporation. There was a desk in one corner, but _ Randolph
was standing by the sofa and cushioned chairs arranged around a coffee table on the opposite side of the room. Pancho saw
that the walls were decorated with photos of Astro rockets launching from Earth on tongues of fire and billowing smoke. Nothing
personal. No pictures of Randolph himself or anyone else. Pancho grinned inwardly when she saw that Randolph's desk was cluttered
with papers,
despite the computer built into it. The paperless office was still a myth, she realized.

Gesturing to the sofa, he said, “Have a seat. Have you had breakfast?”

Instead of sitting down, Pancho asked, “Is that a trick question? Astro employees are up at the crack of dawn every day, boss,
and twice on Sundays.”

Randolph laughed. “Coffee? Tea? Anything?”

“Can I use your computer for a minute?” she asked.

He looked puzzled, but said, “Sure, go ahead.” Louder, he called, “Computer, guest voice.”

Pancho went to the desk and leaned over the upright display screen. She gave her name and the computer came to life. Within
a few seconds, she waved Randolph over to look at the screen.

He peered at the display. “What the hell's that?”

“Martin Humphries's personal menu of programs.”

“Humphries?” Randolph sank into his desk chair.

“Yep. I hacked into his machine last night. You can tap in anytime you want.”

Randolph looked up at Pancho, then back at his screen. “Without his knowing it?”

“Oh, he'll figger it out sooner or later, I guess. But right now he doesn't know it.”

“How the hell did you do this?”

Pancho smiled at him. “Magic.”

“H'mp,” Randolph grunted. “It's a shame you couldn't do this a few days earlier.”

“How come?”

“We're partners now.”

“You and Humphries? Partners?”

“Humphries, Selene and Astro. We've formed a limited partnership: Starpower, Limited.”

“Hot spit! Where can I buy stock?”

“It's not public. Duncan and his people will get a block of shares, but otherwise, it's Humphries, me, and the good citizens
of Selene. It should help keep Selene's taxes down, if it works.”

Feeling a bit disappointed, Pancho grumbled, “Oh, just the big boys, huh?”

Randolph gave her a sly grin. “I suppose,” he said, running a finger across his chin, “that we'll award a few shares here
and there, for exceptional performances.”

“Like piloting a bird to the Belt and back.”

Randolph nodded.

“Okay,” Pancho said, with enthusiasm. “Meanwhile, you can poke into Humphries's files anytime you want to.”

Randolph cleared the screen with a single, sharp, “Exit” To Pancho, he said, “You're wasting your time jockeying spacecraft.
You make a mighty fine spy, kid.”

“I'd rather fly than spy,” she said.

Randolph looked at her. He's got really neat eyes, she thought. Gray, but not cold. Deep. Flecked with gold. Nice eyes.

“I'm not sure that I want to poke into Humphries's files,” he said.

“No?”

“A man named Stimson was the U.S. Secretary of State back a century or more ago,” Randolph said. “When he found out that the
State Department was routinely intercepting the mail from the foreign embassies in Washington he stopped the practice. He
said, ‘Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.' Or something like that”

Pancho snorted. “Maybe you're a gentleman, but Humphries sure ain't”

“I think you're half right”

“Which half?”

Instead of answering, Randolph tapped a button on the phone console. The big Australian came through the door from the outer
office almost instantly.

“You two know each other?” Randolph asked. Without
waiting for a reply from either of them, he said, “George Ambrose, Pancho Lane.”

“Pleased,” said Big George. Pancho made a quick smile.

“George, who do we have who can download a complete hard drive without letting the hard drive's owner know it?”

Big George glanced at Pancho, then asked, “You want this done as quiet as possible, right?”

“Absolutely right.”

“Then I'll do it meself.”

“You?”

“Don't look so surprised,” George said. “I used to be an engineer, before I hooked up with you.”

“You were a fugitive from justice before you hooked up with me,” Randolph countered.

“Yeah, yeah, but before that. I came to the Moon to tele-operate tractors up on the surface. My bloody degree's in software
architecture, for chrissakes.”

“I didn't know that,” Randolph said.

“Well now you do. So what needs doing here?”

“I'd like you to work with Pancho here. She'll explain the problem.”

George looked at her. “Okay. When do we start?”

“Now,” said Randolph. Then, to Pancho, he added, “You can tell George anything you'd tell me.”

“Sure,” Pancho agreed. But in her mind she added, Maybe.

“
T
his is more like it,” said Dan.

He heard Kris Cardenas's nervous laughter in his helmet earphones.

There were five of them standing on the factory floor, encased in white spacesuits like a team of astronauts or tourists out
for a jaunt on the Moon's surface. Before them, on the broad, spacious floor of the otherwise empty factory, stood a set of
spherical fuel tanks, the smaller sphere of a fusion reaction chamber, and the unfinished channel of an MHD generator, all
connected by sturdy-looking piping and surrounded by crates of various powdered metals and bins of soot: pure carbon dust.
Dan, Cardenas and three of her nanotechnicians stood in a group, encased in their spacesuits, watching the results of the
nanomachines'ceaseless work.

It was daylight outside, Dan knew. Through the open sides of the factory he saw the brilliant sunlight glaring harshly against
the barren lunar landscape. But inside the
factory, with its curved roof cutting off the glow from the Sun and Earth, the components of the fusion system looked dark
and dull, like the unpolished diamond that they were.

“We start on the pumps next,” Cardenas said, “as soon as the MHD channel is finished. And then the rocket nozzles.”

Dan heard an edge in her voice. She did not like being out on the surface. Despite all her years of living on the Moon— or
maybe because of them—being outside bothered her.

Selene's factories were built out on the Moon's surface, exposed to the vacuum of space, almost completely automated or run
remotely by operators safe in control centers underground.

“You okay, Kris?” he asked.

“I'd feel better downstairs,” she answered frankly.

“Okay, then, let's go. I'm sorry I dragged you out here. I just wanted to see for myself how we're doing.”

“It's all right,” she said, but she turned and started toward the airlock hatch and the tractor that had carried them to the
factory.

“I know that the vacuum out here is great for industrial processing,” she said, apologizing. “It just scares the bejesus out
of me.”