“Good enough to eat,” the construction worker said, grinning.
Melissa smiled back at her. The woman began to pull off her grimy tee-shirt. “Watch out for him,” she warned. “He’s got ideas about you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Melissa. “I’ve handled men like him before.”
“Sure.” And the woman made an up-and-down movement with her fist.
Melissa laughed at the crudity. I should give her a lecture on morality, she thought, but I don’t have the time.
As she started out of the tent, the woman said, “I’m damned fuckin’ jealous, you know.”
Surprised, Melissa blurted, “You’d want to have dinner with the boss?”
“Uh-uh,” she replied. “I’d rather have you.”
“Oh,” was all that Melissa could think to reply. But as she left the tent she thought that she would certainly have to give her a morality lecture. Then she wondered if she’d be safer in Rashid’s tent overnight than with the three other women.
Joanna felt miserably alone as she walked along the tunnel toward her quarters.
Instead of bringing them together I’m driving them further apart, she said to herself. I want Greg and Doug to work in harmony, and here I’ve as much as told Greg I don’t trust his judgment and I’m siding with Doug.
But what else can I do? Doug’s right and Greg’s simply refusing to pay attention to what he’s trying to accomplish. This whole Kiribati business could blow away at any time; Greg thinks he’s being so clever in setting it up, yet it could be a house of straw.
Well, she thought as she slid open the door to her suite, it’s done. I’ve told Greg what I’m going to do. Now I’d better tell Doug. At least he’ll be happy about it. I hope.
The message light on her computer was blinking. Joanna closed her door, then said in a clear, firm voice, “Computer, read messages.”
The screen lit up with the words as the computer announced in a synthesized contralto voice, “Dr. Kristine Cardenas returned your call at 1435 hours today.”
Joanna slid into her desk chair as she asked, “Did she leave a message?”
“Yes.”
“Read it, please.”
Again, the words spelled on the screen as Kris Cardenas’ slightly shaking voice said, “Mrs. Stavenger, I’ve been thinking about your request that I come to Moonbase to examine your son. Professor Zimmerman is with me, and we would both like to come, if that can be arranged.”
“End of message,” said the computer.
Joanna sat at the blankly glowing screen, thinking hard. Zimmerman! He swore he’d never come back here again. But Switzerland’s going to sign the nanotech treaty. Canada, too. Could it be…?
“Phone,” said Joanna. “Call Kristine Cardenas.”
Their conversation was brief, cool, and to the point Kris Cardenas and Wilhelm Zimmerman would leave from Vancouver for Moonbase on the next available flight. Joanna checked the schedules and saw that they could get to an Earth-orbiting transfer station on the next day. Then they’d have to wait for four days before an LTV was scheduled to make the weekly run to Moonbase.
She shook her head. They’re too important to sit around for four days. The authorities might even try to detain them, especially if they wait in Vancouver instead of the space station.
Joanna ordered a special flight to meet them at the orbital station and take them immediately to Moonbase. They’ll be here in three days, she told herself.
The corporate comptroller called an hour later to ask if she knew how much a special lunar flight cost and how thin Moonbase’s profit margin was already.
I’ll have to clear this with the division head,” he said, glowering out from the screen at Joanna. “And he’ll probably want to check it out with the director of Moonbase before he okays it.”
Joanna sighed. “Put it on my personal account, Lester,” she said.
Once her words reached him, his eyes went wide. “You’re going to pay for it out of your own pocket?” He looked as if she had threatened some fundamental tenet of his inner faith.
“Yes,” Joanna snapped. “And while I’ve got you on the link, I want to buy a lunar transfer vehicle. A used one, if possible; one that’s about to be retired, if there are any such available. But used or new, I want an LTV. Put that on my personal account, too.”
She thought the man would faint.
SPACE STATION MASTERSON
Like most of the major complexes in permanent Earth orbit, Masterson was a combination of several purposes: part manufacturing facility, part scientific research laboratory, part observation platform, part maintenance and repair center, and part transfer station for people and cargo heading onward to Moonbase.
Orbiting some two hundred fifty miles above the Earth, at first glance Masterson looked like a disconnected conglomeration of odds and ends, a junkyard floating in space. The modules where personnel were housed spun lazily on opposite ends of a two-mile-long carbon filament tether, like two oversized aluminum cans glinting in the sunlight, connected by a string so thin and dark it was for all practical purposes invisible. Outside the circumference of the housing modules’ arc floated the factories, labs, repair shops and transfer center, their angular utilitarian shapes dwarfed by huge wings of solar panels and radiators, massive concave solar mirrors that collected and focused the Sun’s heat for smelting and other processing work, and forests of antennas and sensors — all in zero gravity, or the nearest thing to it.
Spacesuited figures bustled from module to module, some of them jetting along in solo maneuvering units, others riding the bare-bones shuttlecraft that the station personnel called broomsticks.
Jinny Anson shook her head as she peered out the observation port. It had been almost nine months since she’d last been in zero gee, and she was testing her reactions. She felt a little woozy, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
Not so bad for an old lady, she told herself. Just don’t make any sudden moves.
There was a lunar transfer vehicle floating out there next to the repair sheds, she saw. It wasn’t the regular LTV, which wasn’t due back from its run to Moonbase for another thirty-six hours. As far as Jinny knew, the LTV had no business being there. But a maintenance crew was working on it, and she could see propellant lines feeding into its tanks.
“Are you ready for the inspection tour, Ms. Anson?”
Jinny pushed off the smooth surface of the observation port with her fingertips. The plastiglass felt cold, a reminder that there was nothing on its other side but empty infinity.
Turning toward the earnest young man who was to be her guide through the chemical processing plant, Jinny smiled and resisted the reflex to correct him. I’m still Ms. Anson on the company’s files. I’m only Mrs. Westlake in Austin.
“Let’s get it done, son,” she said.
He pushed off the handgrip projecting from the bulkhead and floated through the hatch. Jinny followed him into the access tube leading out of the observation center, saying, “Take it slow, huh? It’s been a while since I’ve been up here.”
The kid grinned over his shoulder at her.
As far as Masterson Corporation was concerned, Jinny was visiting the space station as part of her duties as quality control manager of the Houston division. The station manufactured the alloys and most of the electronics components that Houston used to build Clipperships. The station itself was now the property of the new Kiribati corporation, but its new ownership seemed to make no observable difference on the station staff or the work they did.
There had been a rumor that some day they would start using nanomachines to build the Clippers out of pure diamond, but Jinny discounted that as the usual shop-floor outgassing. If nothing else, the nanotech treaty would scuttle that idea.