Tapping on the communications keyboard on his left wrist, Fuchs heard her talking with Ripley, the engineer in charge of the construction project.
“… what you really need is a new set of welding lasers,” she was saying, “instead of those clunkers you’re workin’ with.”
Rather than trying to walk in the low-gravity shuffle that was necessary on Ceres, Fuchs took the jetpack control box into his gloved hand and barely squeezed it, feather-light. As usual, he overdid the thrust and sailed over the heads of Pancho and the engineer, nearly ramming into the shuttlecraft. His boots kicked up a cloud of dark dust as he touched down on the surface.
“Lord, Lars, when’re you gonna learn how to fly one of those rigs?” Pancho teased.
Inside his helmet Fuchs grinned with embarrassment. “I’m out of practice,” he admitted, sliding his feet across the surface toward them, raising still more dust. The ground felt gritty, pebbly, even through his thick-soled boots.
“You were never in practice, buddy.”
He changed the subject by asking the engineer, “So, Mr. Rip-Icy, will your crew be able to assemble the latest additions on schedule?”
“Believe it or not,” Ripley replied archly, “they will.”
Niles Ripley was an American of Nigerian heritage, an engineer with degrees from Lehigh and Penn, an amateur jazz trumpet player who had acquired the nickname “Ripper” from his headlong improvisations. The sobriquet sometimes caused problems for the mild-mannered engineer, especially in bars with belligerent drunks. The Ripper generally smiled and talked his way out of confrontations. He had no intention of letting some musclebound oaf damage his horn-playing lip.
“Your schedule will be met,” Ripley went on. Then he added, “Despite its lack of flexibility.”
Fuchs jabbed back, “Then your crew will earn its bonus, despite their complaints about the schedule.”
Pancho interrupted their banter. “I’ve been tellin’ ol’ Ripper here that you’d get this job done a lot faster with a better set of welding lasers.”
“We can’t afford them,” Fuchs said. “We are on very tight budget restraints.”
“Astro could lease you the lasers. Real easy terms.”
Fuchs made an audible sigh. “I wish you had thought of that two years ago, when we started this operation.”
“Two years ago the best lasers we had were big and inefficient. Our lab boys just came up with these new babies: small enough to haul around on a minitractor. Very fuel efficient. They’ve even got a handheld version. Lower power, of course, but good enough for some jobs.”
“We’re doing well enough with what we have, Pancho.”
“Well, okay. Don’t say I didn’t make you the offer.” He heard the resigned, slightly disappointed tone in her voice.
Pointing a gloved hand toward the habitat, which was nearly at the far horizon, Fuchs said, “We’ve done quite well so far, don’t you think?”
For a long moment she said nothing as the three of them watched the habitat glide down the sky. It looked like an unfinished pinwheel, several spacecraft joined end to end and connected by long buckyball tethers to a similar collection of united spacecraft, the entire assembly slowly rotating as it moved toward the horizon.
“Tell you the truth, Lars old buddy,” said Pancho, “it kinda reminds me of a used-car lot back in Lubbock.”
“Used-car lot?” Fuchs sputtered.
“Or maybe a flyin’ junkyard.”
“Junkyard?”
Then he heard Ripley laughing. “Don’t let her kid you, Lars. She was pretty impressed, going through the units we’ve assembled.”
Pancho said, “Well, yeah, the insides are pretty good. But it surely ain’t a thing of beauty from the outside.”
“It will be,” Fuchs muttered. “You wait and see.”
Ripley changed the subject. “Tell me more about these handheld lasers. How powerful are they?”
“It’ll cut through a sheet of steel three centimeters thick,” Pancho said.
“How long does it take?” asked Ripley.
“Couple nanoseconds. It’s pulsed. Doesn’t melt the steel, it shock-blasts it.”
They chatted on while the habitat sank out of sight and the distant, pale Sun climbed higher in the dark, star-choked sky. Fuchs noticed the zodiacal light, like two long arms outstretched from the Sun’s middle. Reflections from dust motes, he knew: microscopic asteroids floating out there, leftovers from the creation of the planets.
As they started toward the airlock, Pancho turned to Fuchs. “Might’s well talk a little business.”
She raised her left arm and tapped the key on her cuff that switched to a secondary suit-radio frequency. Ripley was cut out of their conversation now.
Fuchs hit the same key on his control unit. “Yes, business by all means.”
“You asked us to reduce the prices for circuit boards again,” Pancho said. “We’re already close to the bone, Lars.”
“Humphries is trying to undersell you.”
“Astro can’t sell at a loss. The directors won’t stand for it.”
Fuchs felt his lips curl into a sardonic smile. “Humphries is on your board of directors still?”
“Yup. He’s promised not to lower HSS’s prices any further.”
“He’s lying. They’re offering circuit boards, chips, even repair services at lower and lower prices. He’s trying to drive me out of the market.”
“And once he does he’ll run up the prices as high as he pleases,” she said.
“Naturally. He’ll have a monopoly then.”
They had reached the airlock hatch. It was big enough for two spacesuited people, but not three, so they sent Ripley through first.
Pancho watched the engineer close the hatch, then said, “Lars, what Humphries really wants is to take over Astro. He’s been after that since the git-go.”
“Then he’ll have a monopoly on all space operations, everywhere in the Belt…everywhere in the whole solar system,” Fuchs said, feeling anger rising within him.
“That’s what he’s after.”
“We’ve got to prevent that! Whatever it takes, we must stop him.”
“I can’t sell you goods at below cost, buddy. The board’s made that clear.”
Fuchs nodded wearily. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
“Like what?”
He tried to shrug his shoulders, but inside the spacesuit it was impossible. “I wish I knew,” he admitted.
CHAPTER 6
I’m becoming dependant on this woman, Humphries thought, watching Diane Verwoerd as they rode down the moving stairs toward his mansion, in Selene’s bottommost level.
She was coolly reading out the daily list of action items from her handheld palmcomp, ticking them off one by one, asking him to okay the staff assignments she had already made to handle each item.
Humphries rarely left his house. Instead, he had made it into a haven of luxury and security. Half the house was living quarters, the other side given over to the scientists and technicians who maintained and studied the gardens that surrounded the mansion. Il had been a brilliant idea, Humphries thought, to talk Selene’s governing board into letting him create a three-hundred-hectare garden down in the deepest grotto in Selene. Officially, the house was the Humphries Trust Research Center that ran the ongoing ecological experiment: Can a balanced ecology be maintained on the Moon with minimal human intervention, given adequate light and water? Humphries didn’t care in the slightest what the answer was, so long as he could live in comfort in the midst of the flourishing garden, deep below the radiation and other dangers of the Moon’s surface.
He relished the knowledge that he had fooled them all, even Douglas Stavenger, Selene’s founder and youthful eminence grise. He had even talked them into rescinding their foolish decision toe exile him from Selene after his part in Dan Randolph’s death had become known. But he hadn’t fooled the tall, exotic, silky Diane Verwoerd, he knew. She saw right through him.