He looked up in wonder. "Where are you sending them?" he asked.
"Not sending. Going. An interplanetary explorer ship. And a Moon colony. A Moon colony can be self-supporting. It can support exploration of the other planets. It will be free of Earth and everything here!"
"Even you don't have that much money,"
"I will have. Heimdall will make it for me."
"But you're very near losing it. Your deliveries are behind schedule. Haven't you risked everything on some shaky technology?"
The terror crept around her eyes again, but her voice was firm. She had no regrets. "I had to. And it wasn't technology that failed me. Aeneas, how do you keep discipline in space?"
"I never thought about it-how does any company control workers? Hire people who like to work, and pay them well to do it."
"And if someone pays agents to sabotage your factories? There are no laws in space, Aeneas. Captain Shorey has managed to keep things under control, but only barely. Most of our people are loyal-but some others slip through, and the worst we can do to them is send them down without pay. Suppose they've been offered higher pay to make mistakes aboard Heimdall? What can I do to them? Mexican courts won't prosecute non-Mexicans for crimes in space. American courts won't prosecute at all without trials and witnesses. If I have to send half a crew down to sit around a courtroom for years, I'm ruined anyway."
She came to the window next to him and looked out into the night. "But we're winning. We will win. Heimdall. Valkyrie. The Moon and planets, Aeneas. And now you know it all."
They were in the hacienda atop Finisterre, the rocky hills that overlook the town of Cabo San Lucas. On one side were the lights of the town; on the other, grey water with flashing fluorescent whitecaps. Ships moved in the harbor even this late at night, and factory lights were ablaze below.
Out beyond, in the dark of the inland hills, a green light stabbed upward; more capsules fired into orbit, raw materials for the factories in the satellite, structural materials for expansion, fuel, oxygen, the expendables that ate so much profit despite recycling. The sun was long over the horizon and Heimdall wouldn't be visible; but soon it would be coming overhead. The supply pods were always as close to the satellite as her engineers dared.
"It's time for our talk, then," Aeneas said. "Is there anything to talk about? You're what I've opposed all my life."
"Yes. But you love me. And if you fight me-who are you fighting for?"
He didn't answer.
"I love you, Aeneas. I always have, and you've always known it. Tell me what to do."
"Will you-would you throw all this away if I asked you to?"
"I don't know. Will you ask it? Remember, Aeneas. You can't destroy power. You can fragment mine, but someone else will move into the vacuum. Power doesn't vanish."
"No." And she had a dream. A dream that had been his.
"You don't trust me with all this. Would you trust yourself?"
"No."
"Then someone else. Who?"
"No one, of course."
There was no change in her pose or voice, but he sensed triumph.
"Then tell me what I should do," she said.
This time she meant it. He felt that whatever he said, she'd do. She knew him well. She was taking no chances, because she knew what he must say. Forty billion dollars was ten dollars for every human on Earth-or the key to the planets. "I can't."
"Then join me. I need you."
"Yes."
There were no longer barriers, and sixteen years vanished as if they'd never been.
For a week there were only the two of them-and Miguel, silent, invisibly near. They slipped away from Cabo San Lucas and its power plants and factories, to find still lonely beaches where they swam to brilliant coral reefs. Afterwards they made love on the sand and desperately tried to forget the years they'd wasted.
One week and a little more; and then the phones in the camper buzzed insistently and they had to return.
She told him what she could as they drove back. "Captain Shorey has been all the authority I have up there," she said. "The station depends on the ground launching system to survive, but there's nothing I can do to control it."
"You think there's mutiny on Heimdall?" Aeneas asked incredulously.
"I don't know. I only know Shorey is dead, and Herman Eliot says he can't meet the manufacturing schedule. Without the finished goods from the station I can't pay the syndicate. I'll lose Heimdall."
There would be any number of people who might benefit from that. With over a hundred men and women in space, the odds were good that several organizations had agents aboard the satellite factory complex. "How do you select crew for Heimdall?" Aeneas asked.
The Jeep camper bounced across rutted roads toward the main highway. Ten kilometers ahead they'd meet a helicopter.
"I try to pick them myself," she said. "The pay is good, of course. Almost two hundred thousand dollars at the end of a two-year tour in space. We have plenty of volunteers, but not just for the money. I choose generalists, adaptable people, and I try to keep a balance between the intellectuals and factory people. There's a lot of construction work, and production runs mean repetitive labor that bores the big brains. I also look for people who might want to go on to the Moon colony, or be crew aboard Valkyrie. So far it's worked, but Captain Shorey was the key to it. Now he's gone."
"Tell me about Herman Eliot."
"He's been second in command. A mechnical genius. He's in charge of production and research."
"Do you think he's loyal to you?"
"I'm almost sure of it. He wants to go with Valkyrie. But he didn't tell the ground station much. Maybe he'll tell me directly. Aeneas, if I don't keep the manufacturing schedule, I'll lose the station and everything else!" She was near panic; and he'd never seen her frightened before. It upset him more than he'd thought possible.
The Jeep bounced through a dust bowl laced with a myriad of ruts. Wind blew a torrent of fine powder across the windshield, and Miguel had to start the wipers to remove it. The dust ran like rivulets of water.
Dr. Herman Eliot was nervous. It came through in his voice as he reported to Laurie Jo. "We have a nasty situation up here, Miss Hansen. Captain Shorey was murdered and the crew knows it. There's been sabotage all along, now this. Some of the engineers are saying that the Equity Trust is going to gain control of this satellite, and they'll remember who their friends were. There's even talk that people who won't help the Equity cause will be stranded, or have accidents on reentry."
"Tell them Equity will never control Heimdall!" Laurie Jo shouted into the microphone.
"I can tell them, but will they believe it? I repeat, Miss Hansen, Captain Shorey was murdered, and we all know there's no chance the killer will be punished. Who's next?"
"Do you know who did it?"
"I'm fairly sure it was an engineer named Martin Holloway."
"If you know he killed the captain, why don't you do something?" Laurie Jo demanded.
"Do what? I'm no policeman. Suppose we put Holloway under arrest. Then what? We have no jails here, and there's no court that will take jurisdiction over him. I doubt he was the only man involved in this; what if he won't go when I order him down? It could start a mutiny. The crew thinks Equity will gain control here; nobody wants that, but there aren't many who'll risk their necks for a lost cause."