"Thank you, Your Honor." Domitz returned to the rear of the chamber, to the audible hissing of most of the other lawyers.
Now it was Judge Cavanaugh's turn. "Well, this has been a fun morning, hasn't it? There's hope of a speedy resolution after all. Not the one everybody wanted, but one that lets me get home in time to open a nice bottle of Clavius '95 Burgundy and let it breathe a bit before dinner.
"Let's return to the immediate issue for the moment. I see no cause to restrain any member of the Dingillian family, at least not based on any claims put forward here today. I will restrict their freedom to Armstrong Station for the duration of this hearing, or until such time as they are no longer needed for these proceedings. The court will cover their expenses out of the fees collected today, proving once again that Luna will always provide you with the best justice money can buy.
"Let it also be noted for the record that no evidence has been presented to implicate any of the Dingillians in the theft of the devices in contention. And, in point of fact … it has not even been proven to the court's satisfaction that the devices are stolen. From where I sit, it looks like a cascade of reallystupid lawyer tricks.
"The whole issue may be moot anyway. It looks like the devices have failed in place." He looked out over the room. "It would save a lot of time, and court fees,"he added meaningfully, "if we could all just call it a day and go home. Is there anyone who objects to that?"
Half the room came to their feet around us. Every lawyer on Luna must have been shouting his objection. Douglas looked at them, then he looked at me. "All right,"he whispered. "You win. Maybe it is a HARLIE. That's the only thing I can think of that would set off a feeding frenzy like this."
Judge Cavanaugh finally hammered the courtroom back to order. "All right, I can see that's not going to be an option here." He glanced at the time. "Court is recessed until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, when we will continue this circus. I can hardly wait to hear from the rest of the clowns." He banged his gavel once and exited like a departing zeppelin.
HARLIE
Still holding the monkey, Bobby jumped onto my lap, and Douglas wheeled us out the side door. Several people shouted at us. I thought I heard a voice like Dad's, but Douglas and Bobby were both talking to me, and I couldn't hear everybody at once.
We went back to our hotel room, which for once wasn't a slice in a cargo pod. We had a view overlooking the forest and the lake, and it was kind of like being in Terminus Dome back at the bottom of the Line, only a lot more peaceful‑looking.
The Lunar catapult was on the western shore of Oceanus Procel‑larum, right on the equator. This allows a direct launch from the Lunar surface into an orbit that skims the upper atmosphere of the Earth; a few passes through the upper atmosphere brings the apogee down, and very little rocket fuel is needed to put stuff from the moon into low‑Earth orbit. A one meter per second change in launch speed changes the perigee by about a hundred kilometers. So for very little cost in fuel for mid‑course corrections, it's possible for the Lunar catapult to send cargo pods back to the Line.
This is why a Lunar beanstalk isn't cost‑effective; it can't compete with the low cost of catapult launches. And the Earth‑Line can launch pods farther and faster anywhere else. The only advantage to a Lunar beanstalk is that it would be a lot easier to build, and trips up and down it would be a lot faster. But it wouldn't generate electricity, it would mostly consume it. And even though it would facilitate bringing cargo and passengers down to the surface of the moon, cheaper even than Palmer tubes, it wasn't enough of an advantage to justify the investment.
Well … almost. There was one thing that would make a Lunar beanstalk cost‑effective. CHON. Carbon‑Hydrogen‑Oxygen‑Nitrogen. In any combination. If you could go out to Saturn and find a big enough chunk of CHON in her rings, put a net around it, and drag it back, you could anchor it in Luna‑stationary orbit, build a beanstalk, and pipe the gas down, as fast as you could melt it. You wouldn't even need to pump it. Lunar gravity would suck it down.
Then you would be able to build the fabled domed cities of Luna. Actually, you could build them now. You just couldn't get enough gas to fill them.
Armstrong Station was one of only six domes on Luna. Like most Lunar domes, the station had been built by the inflate‑and‑spray method. The crater site was deep enough that the inflatable had bulged roundly upward, giving the interior of the bubble a nice curve and more than enough space to generate its own weather.
The dome was two kilometers in diameter, and even though it looked like a wasteful use of gas and water, in truth, it served as a reservoir of both. Well–you had to keep it somewhere. The lake was big only because it was shallow, barely three meters. But it helped humidify the air, and it was great scenery, and it was a public resource. Lazy waves rolled languidly across it. The, were high enough that they made the weather look a lot windier than it really was, and they moved in slow motion, adding to the sense of distance and size.
Most of the rest of the dome was filled with crops of all kinds. Here and there were belts of thick forest. Standing on the balcony, overlooking it all, it smelled like a hot tropical day–like somewhere in Mexico.
Most of the living quarters were built up along the crater walls or even up at the rim, for folks who wanted a view outside.According to one of the informational programs on the television, Armstrong Crater was the same size as Diamond Head on Oahu, small enough to walk around in a single day and still have time for a swim. Big enough to be a neighborhood.
Our room was mostly a platform with plumbing, beds, and plastic curtains for walls. We didn't need much more than that. The view was terrific, and when the rains came–about every four hours for fifteen minutes–all we had to do was pull the curtains to keep the spray from drifting in.
There was probably a lot more to say about it, but Alexei wasn't here to say it. And my eyes still hurt. And my chest as well. Sometimes I could see things clearly, sometimes not. The doctors were going to wait a bit to see if I was going to need corneal resurfacing. I hoped I wouldn't. They were still checking on me twice a day. As long as I didn't get overstressed, they'd let me keep attending my own trial.
Douglas lifted me out of the chair and plopped me onto a bed. We hadn't had much time to talk, and there were so many things I wanted to ask him. But it was more important that I tell him stuff first–while I still had the strength.
" Douglas, can you sing?"I asked him. My voice was already fading.
"Huh?"
"I can't. My voice is gone. It's hard for me just to talk."
"What are you talking about."
" I need you to sing–"
Finally, he got it. "What do I have to sing?" he asked.
I told him.
"Cute," he said. He turned to the monkey sitting on Bobby's lap. "He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land. Isn't he a bit like you and me?"He actually got close enough to the notes to make the melody recognizable.
The monkey woke up. It leapt out of Bobby's arms. It blinked, looked around, then leapt back into his arms and gave him a great big hug. It puckered up its lips in a grotesque sphincter and planted a big wet‑sounding smooch on Bobby's cheeks. Bobby giggled and shrieked with delight.