‘I’m sure Uncle Bruce is sore about that,“ Regan said.
Field grinned. “I don’t see much of him. Since that Board meeting, he’s been keeping away. Licking his wounds, I guess. Poor fellow.“
‘I bleed for him,“ Regan said. ”Listen, Tim, how soon can you get yourself free for a month?“
‘Why?“
‘I’d like you to go up to Mars. Have a look around. It’s worth the trip.“
‘Well, I don’t know, Factor. We’re only just starting to get organized here.“
‘I want you to get a look at New Dome. It’s quite a place. Wave of the future, all that kind of thing. There’s scope for investment there. I’d like to divert as much of our capital as possible toward investment in Mars.“
‘In New Dome, or in Marsport?“ Field asked.
‘Both. But it’s tricky, both places. At Marsport we’re up against the legal restriction on one company having more than a thin slice of the operation. Got to lobby for a relaxation of that. And over at New Dome, there’s the problem of their willingness to take our money and their unwillingness to let us get any kind of share in ownership. Work on it, Tim. Those colonists up there have big plans. I’d hate for Global Factors to be left out of the Mars boom. I want to be in it to the hilt.“
The cherry blossoms had come and gone, in Washington. The city thronged with high school students, visiting the national shrines. Damp, muggy heat blanketed the whole eastern half of the country.
Regan plunged back into the complexities of the 1992 Columbian Exposition.
Somehow, now, the Fair had palled on him. It had come to seem an irrelevancy, simply a responsibility that he had taken on and had to discharge. It no longer engaged his imagination and enthusiasm as it once had. Up there, the red world glowing in the night sky-that was something worth getting excited over, he thought! Thriving, restless new cities sprouting on the tired soil of an ancient world. But a Fair? A Punch-and-Judy show for the amusement of mankind’s swarming millions? It dismayed Regan to think of the expense of spirit that he had involved himself in, the outlay of energy.
A day or two back in harness, though, and his mood changed. Mars was forty million miles away; the Fair was here, and represented an immediate challenge. The news, he learned, was mixed. Eighteen nations and seven corporations were definitely committed to exhibit, now. Leases had been signed, binders had been paid over.
‘That takes care of about a hundred acres of exhibit space,“ Lyle Henderson told him. ”We’ve still got two hundred acres to fill. Then the concessions and the accommodations, and we’re done.“
‘How do we stand on tentative commitments for those two hundred acres?“ Regan asked.
‘Fine. We’re overbooked by a hundred fifty- acres at the moment. But nothing’s signed. Countries keep changing their minds all the time. The list is different from one day to the next.“
‘Get them nailed down,“ Regan ordered. ”We’ve only got fifteen months left. Those pavilions have to be constructed and finished by next October 12, or else. How are you doing with the concessions?“
‘Fifty-fifty,“ Henderson said. ”It’s moving along.“
‘And the satellite itself?“
‘The shell will be finished on August 15. Construction of the shuttle line is right on schedule. We can begin moving workmen in to start building the pavilions themselves by September 1. Martinelli is up there inspecting the place right now. There’ll be eleven months for pavilion construction, and that should be plenty.“
Regan nodded. “Have you checked into the cost of insuring the Fair?”
‘Uh-huh.“
‘And?“
‘It makes me feel sick to tell you,“ Henderson said. ”I’ve got a brochure. It’s going to cost a million bucks a week for the first six months, and then they’ll knock a hundred thousand off the premium each six months thereafter.“
Goggling, Regan said, “Is that the best you could do?”
‘The very best. They point out that there’ll be thousands of people in the Satellite at any one time, and that an accident could lead to damage suits totalling up in the billions. On an actuarial basis-“
‘Did you get an estimate from Stellar Casualty?“
‘No, sir. Stellar’s a Global subsidiary, and I thought you had decided we weren’t going to deal with Global except where unavoidable.“
‘It’s unavoidable here,“ Regan said. ”We can’t afford to fork out fifty million a year for insurance. Talk to Mike Dominick at Stellar. I’ll talk to him too. We can get that premium down to ten, twenty million, I’ll bet.“
‘If you say so, sir.“
‘I say so.“
Regan turned away. He felt slightly queasy. If some lunatic decided to blow up the World’s Fair, it would result in the biggest insurance claim in history. Did he really want a Global subsidiary on the hook for that kind of risk? Wasn’t Global in deep enough as it was?
He moistened his lips. The Fair couldn’t afford outside insurance. Stellar, meaning Global, would underwrite it. Let Stellar off-load the risk somewhere else, if it wanted to. The solvency of the Fair came first. And if the Fair blew up -well, Regan thought, Stellar would have to pay off, Global would be strained to the rivets, and Factor Claude Regan would-well, he preferred not to think about that. If the Fair blew up, he’d have to trust to luck that he went up with it. There wouldn’t be much room on Earth for him after that.
TWELVE
In November, with opening day now less than a year away, Regan paid his first visit to the space satellite that was to house the 1992 Columbian Exposition.
The shell was complete, and had already become a landmark in the night sky, gleaming, coin-sized, easily visible even with low-powered field glasses. It was sealed tight, pressurized, the atmosphere generators already at work recycling air through the globe. Centrifugal spin provided artificial gravity, one G to keep everybody comfortable. Regan had toyed with the idea of pegging the Satellite at half-gravity to make every visitor feel more bouncy and lively, but had decided against it finally. A plan periodically to halt the spin entirely to give everyone aboard a brief no-grav interlude had also been scrapped; it would have been too much trouble to tie down everything portable during those interludes. Visitors to the Fair would get a sufficient taste of free fall while in transit, anyway.
Regan went to the Fair even as an ordinary citizen would have to do when it opened: via one of the new ships. He boarded it at Denver. The idea was to have half a dozen of the little ships deployed at each of Earth’s main spaceports, for the convenience of travelers. If demand warranted it, more of the ships could be constructed during the Fair itself.
The vessel was strictly economy class. It had been built as rapidly as prudence allowed, with one eye cocked toward the Federal safety regulations at all times. It was a double shell of aluminum, with rocket engines generating a few million pounds of thrust. The passenger cradles were Spartan, rudimentary. The baggage limit was eight pounds a passenger, permitting a couple of changes of underwear and not much more. Most of the visitors to the Fair would be spending no more than twenty-four hours there. Overnight accommodations were limited, and deliberately expensive; two hundred and fifty dollars entitled you to a single night’s use of a bare cubicle hardly big enough to lie down in. It was not an arrangement calculated to win many friends for the Fair, but it was dictated by the economics of the situation. The only way the Fair could show a profit was through high turnover, thousands of people paying admission fees, wandering around, and leaving. Space was limited; they weren’t running a resort up there.
At least, not yet, Regan thought.
There were thirty passengers aboard the ship Regan took: aside from the Factor himself, they included three members of Regan’s staff, several representatives of exhibitor nations, and a flock of reporters getting a free ride. Regan got the red-carpet welcome at the spaceport, but once aboard the ship, his cradle was no fancier than anyone else’s.