“My god!”
“That’s the law now in America,” she said.
“It would ruin him,” said Rashid.
“It would force him to return to Earth to face trial,” Melissa said.
“His mother would never allow that.”
“Do you think she would shut down Moonbase instead?”
“Yes,” said Rashid. “I think she would. The old tigress would blow up Moonbase and all the people in it before she’d let her son be humiliated and destroyed like that.”
Melissa nodded in the darkness. What would Mrs. Stavenger do once she knew that her precious son would have to stand trial for the murder of his stepfather?
“Then you’ll send me to Moonbase?” Melissa asked.
He hesitated. “There’s a board of directors meeting coming up next week. I’ve asked to be put on the agenda, to make a presentation about the fusion program to them. Let’s see how that goes. It might not be necessary to… go to all that trouble.”
Melissa knew that she should not press him too far. “You’re thinking of me, aren’t you? Trying to save me the pain, the suffering of confronting them.”
“If the board allows me to push the fusion development, then why go to all that trouble?”
“But if the board decides against you…?”
“Then,” Rashid said, his voice cold and hard, “yes, I will send you to Moonbase like a guided missile.”
“Good,” said Melissa.
“You want to go?”
“I want to help you,” she said quickly. “I want to see you gain the power and recognition that you deserve.”
“But you must return to me,” he said, excited by the future parading before his eyes. “I will become the most powerful man in the corporation, once Moonbase is closed.”
“And I will be one of your loving slaves,” Melissa lied.
It aroused Rashid just as if it were the truth.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Good things always happened to Alan Johansen. Never a deep intellect, he had at least been clever enough to pick extremely wealthy parents. He also inherited their good looks: Johansen had the chiseled blond features of a Nordic warrior of old, although his slim, almost delicate build was more like that of a dancer than a Viking: With his slicked-back hair and thin-lipped smile he looked like a chorus boy from the Roaring Twenties.
He was, in fact, chairman of the board of Masterson Aerospace Corporation. And very confused and troubled.
It was bad enough that Joanna Stavenger insisted on attending Board meetings electronically, instead of in person. Her image appeared on the wallscreen at the end of the conference table, floating above their heads like the magic mirror in Snow White. At least Carlos Quintana was able to keep things running smoothly, even with that infernal delay whenever she wanted to say something.
Now Quintana was gone, and half the board members were scheming and trying to make alliances against the other half, and to top it off they had set up this dummy corporation on some tropical islands out in the South Seas to take over all their space operations. It sounded awfully tricky to Alan, maybe even illegal.
And on top of everything else, the man they had sent out to those islands was pestering him with some crack-brained idea about nuclear energy, of all things. Why, nuclear energy was as dead as the horse-and-buggy. People hated nuclear! It was full of dangerous radiation.
“Alan sat at the head of the-polished board room table, watching Rashid’s video. In the Windowall that stretched almost the length of the entire room, a smallish metal sphere stood, humming slightly, doing nothing.
“As you can see from the power gauges,” Rashid’s voice was saying, “this one small generator can produce enough electrical energy to power an entire city the size of Savannah.”
“And this is nuclear fusion?” asked one of the white-haired men sitting halfway down the table.
“Yes,” Rashid’s voice replied. “Fusion, not fission. No uranium or plutonium is involved. The fuel basically comes from water and the waste product is helium: inert and safe. You can use it to blow up balloons for your grandchildren.”
A few snickers of laughter went down the conference table.
“I thought you said we needed fuel from the Moon to make this work,” said one of the women directors.
“One shipload per year will fuel as many fusion generators as we can profitably build,” Rashid answered.
“So we wouldn’t need to keep Moonbase open?”
“No. We could even process the helium-three without nanomachines, if we must.”
“Now wait a minute,” Johansen interrupted. “I thought you said the helium was a waste product. Now you’re saying it’s the fuel? I don’t understand.”
Patiently, Rashid tried to explain, but Johansen felt more confused than ever.
“But the point is,” said the comptroller, “that we could get the fuel we need from the Moon without keeping Moonbase open.”
“That is correct,” said Rashid.
“Then why have we started up this dummy corporation in Kiribati?” asked Johansen.
Rashid’s voice answered from the screen, “The Kiribati Corporation exists specifically to allow Moonbase to continue using nanotechnology in spite of the U.N. treaty.”
“In other words, we’re sinking all this money into those islanders just to keep Moonbase poking along?”
Rashid’s voice replied, “Without nanotechnology, Moonbase could not exist.”
Joanna’s face, in the screen at the far end of the room, hardened as soon as she heard the question. “We’re keeping Moonbase poking along’ she said, with steel in her voice, “because we will soon be able to manufacture spacecraft out of pure diamond, using nanotechnology.”
“Who needs a diamond Clippership?” asked one of the women. IThe Clipperships we have now work just fine, don’t they?”
Johansen twiddled his fingers impatiently until Joanna’s response came from the Moon:
“Diamond ships will be lighter, yet far stronger, than anything made of metals. Therefore they will be safer yet more economical to operate. They will be cheaper to manufacture, yet the market will pay more for them than they do for today’s Clipperships. Our profits will be double, or even greater.”
“You mean Moonbase will actually start showing real profit, after all these years?”
Again that agonizing wait.
Then Joanna replied, “I mean that diamond Clipperships, built by Moonbase, will make this corporation more profitable than it’s ever been.”
“Then why do we need this fusion thing?” Johansen asked, almost surprising himself that he spoke his thoughts out loud.
The Windowall view of the fusion reactor vanished and Rashid’s trimly bearded face loomed over them. “Because, with fusion generators Masterson Corporation can become bigger than the old petroleum companies were!”
“We can’t sink risk money into both these new ideas,” said the comptroller, sitting at Johansen’s right hand. “It’s just too chancy.”
“Suppose the World Court decides that our Kiribati Corporation is nothing but a subterfuge to get around the U.N. treaty?” Rashid threatened.
But before anyone on the board could respond to that, Joanna countered, “How long will it take to make this fusion process practical? And profitable?”
Rashid hesitated. “Well, the power conversion system needs to be developed.”
“Power conversion?”
“Magneto-’ Rashid cut his words short. “MHD is what its called.”
“How long will that take?” asked the comptroller. “And how many bucks?”
Before Rashid could reply, Joanna said firmly, “We’re not asking for a penny of corporate risk funding on our new Clippership development.”
All heads turned to her image.
“Moonbase will build a prototype diamond Clippership on our own. It won’t cost the corporation a cent.”
The board broke into a dozen conversations at once.