“That’s crazy,” Brennart snapped.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“How could he get the credit for what I do? I’m the mission commander. I’m in charge.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He can’t take the credit away from me. That’s impossible.”
“Sure,” said Killifer.
Brennart lapsed into silence. After a few moments he muttered, “So that’s why he was so hot to get up here with me.”
“Maybe it’s not him,” Killifer said. “Maybe it’s all his mother’s idea’.
“Either way,” Brennart growled. “Either way.”
Killifer smiled behind his helmet visor. He thought he could see smoke rising from his commander’s spacesuit.
Joanna cast a knowing eye over the guests who filled her spacious living room. The party was going well; she could tell that with her eyes closed: the chatter of conversations and laughter filled the room and spilled over into the hallway and the library, as well. The clink of ice cubes added a background counterpoint.
Joanna had been nursing the same tall fluted glass of champagne for almost an hour now. Gowned in a magnificent silver and taupe brocade jacket over a filmy chiffon skirt, she searched the crowded room. Men in immaculate white dinner jackets, women in glittering jewels and the latest fashions. But the one man she wanted to find was nowhere to be seen.
Slowly she made her way through the crowd, chatting briefly with a couple here, smiling as she passed a group there. Across the hallway and into the library she went. Still no sight of Quintana. He wouldn’t have left so early, she thought, especially without saying good night to his hostess.
Through the French windows of the library she saw a solitary figure out on the patio, the gleam of a cigar smoldering in the dark Georgia night. Quintana. Still smoking, despite all the laws against it.
Joanna slipped through the open doorway and approached Quintana, her high heels clicking on the patio tiles.
“What you’re doing is illegal, Carlos,” she said softly, smiling as he turned toward her.
He smiled back. “In Mexico we have much more freedom.”
“You also have much more pollution. And cancer.”
Quintana waved his long, slim cigar. “The price of freedom. Will you call the police?”
Laughing, Joanna said, “No. But I’d prefer that you throw that thing away.”
“It’s barely started.” Quintana examined his cigar like a man admiring a fine work of art. “But for you, beautiful one, I make the sacrifice.” He let the cigar drop to the patio floor and ground it out with the heel of his highly-polished shoe.
Even in the shadows of the night Joanna could see his gleaming smile. Carlos Quintana was the kind of man for whom the word dashing had been coined. A mining engineer who parleyed intelligence and daring into a considerable fortune, he was a champion polo player, a yachtsman of note, and a key member of Masterson Aerospace’s board of directors. Handsome, suave, he had the kind of classic Latin male good looks that would remain virtually untouched all his life. No one knew his true age; the guesses ran from forty-five to seventy.
“My party bored you?” Joanna asked as they strolled side by side toward the garden. Overhead a sliver of a Moon was rising and stars glittered in the dark sky.
“No, I just felt the need for some nicotine,” Quintana said. “And I knew that as soon as I lit up you would come running at me with a fire extinguisher.”
“You’re hopeless,” she said, laughing again.
“On the contrary, I am a man filled with hope.” His voice was soft, gentle, easy to listen to.
Joanna arched a brow at him. “Hope springs eternal?”
“Why not? The world is young, the night is beautiful, and I adore you.”
“I’m not young, Carlos. Neither are you.”
“I feel young,” he said. “You make me feel rejuvenated.”
Joanna wished she could say the same to him. Instead, she changed the subject ’I’d like your advice about something, Carlos.”
“Anything.”
“You know my son Greg?”
“I’ve met him once or twice.”
“It’s time to appoint a new director for Moonbase.”
He hesitated only a heartbeat ’I thought that decision has already been made.”
“I’m reconsidering it. Greg has asked for the job.”
“Ahh.”
“What do you think about it?”
This time Quintana’s hesitation was considerably longer. “There are several people on the board who would like to close Moonbase.”
“I know.”
“You’ve always fought to keep it going, even though it’s a drain, financially.”
“Moonbase is in the black,” she said firmly.
“Barely,” Quintana answered easily. “And when you consider all the little extras that somehow get put into the pot…’ He sighed. “Joanna, you know I support you unstintingly, but if we did an honest bookkeeping job, Moonbase would be in the red.”
“Perhaps,” she murmured.
“So you want to send your son there to make certain we keep it going.”
“Quite the contrary, Carlos. Greg wants to spend his year there deciding whether or not to shut the base down.”
“Really?” In the darkness she couldn’t see his brows rise, but she heard it in his voice.
“He wants to make a thorough, unbiased assessment of the base’s prospects and then make a recommendation to the board, one way or the other.”
It was several moments before Quintana replied, “Well, he’s certainly got the qualifications, based on the work he’s done with the Pacific division.”
“Yes, I think so too.”
“Would he really recommend closing the base? And if he did, would you agree to it?”
Now Joanna hesitated. But she finally said softly, “Yes, to both.”
“Isn’t he a little old for Moonbase? Most of the personnel we send there are quite a bit younger.”
“He’s forty-six.”
Quintana glanced up at the crescent Moon, just clearing the sycamore trees. “There’s always seemed to be — some sort of shadow on his history. Some scandal or something that everyone knows is there, but no one knows what it is. A family disagreement?”
Tensing, Joanna answered, “You might say that”
“It must have happened before I joined your board of directors.”
“Yes. A long time before.”
“That’s why he’s been kept off the board and away from headquarters all these years?”
“I think,” Joanna said, “that it’s time to put all that in the past. As you say, it’s family history and it doesn’t necessarily involve the corporation at all.”
“Doesn’t necessarily involve the corporation?” Quintana’s voice was filled with questions.
“Carlos, I’m his mother. I think I know Greg’s limitations and his capabilities. I think he can handle the Moonbase job. But I might be too emotionally close to be seeing clearly.”
“I understand,” Quintana replied. “I think I am too emotionally close to you to render an unbiased judgment.”
“But if you can’t help me, who can I turn to?”
He sighed again. “Joanna, I have always considered your intelligence to be of the highest order. Do what you think is best. I will certainly back you on the board, whatever you decide.”
“Thank you, Carlos,” Joanna said. But she was thinking that unqualified support was no real help at all.
MT. WASSER
“There it is! Look!” Doug cried out.
Turning awkwardly in her spacesuit to follow his pointing hand, Bianca Rhee saw a tall, wide pinnacle of rock jutting up into sunlight from the rugged shadowed mountain range below their ballistic lobber.
“That’s Mt. Wasser?” she asked,
“Got to be,” Doug said, nodding inside his helmet. He studied the sunlit jut of rock carefully. Slightly taller than Everest, Mt. Wasser just happened to be situated so close to the south pole that its uppermost reaches were always in sunlight.