Atlantis was still moving slowly out, away from Earth and farther from the Sun. At an acceleration of only a thousandth of a gee it would take a long time to spiral out to the Asteroid Belt, to the region where Regulo was planning to perform his next project.
“Of course, what we’ll be doing this time is just a small rehearsal for the real thing,” he said to Rob, as they sat again in the big, darkened study. “I’ve picked out a tiny one, just a few hundred meters across. You may think it isn’t worth bothering with, but I want to see if everything hangs together the way I’m expecting.”
“I agree with you. Always do a trial run.” Rob looked at the other man’s gaunt face. There seemed to be an urgency and a hardness there that he had never seen before. “Have you decided yet what your `real thing’ will be?”
“I fancy Lutetia. It’s an asteroid that’s not too far out, a good deal closer to the Sun than any of the really big ones. According to Sycorax, Lutetia is loaded with metals and big enough to be interesting.”
“What’s the diameter?”
“About a hundred and fifteen kilometers, give or take a couple.”
Rob leaned back in his chair. “And you think you can mine that?”
Regulo grinned at his expression. “Sure.” He leaned slowly across the desk and placed the palm of one hand at a point on the top of it. When he took it away, the glowing sign, THINK BIG, was revealed. “See that? You’re getting there, but you have to work at it. You still let your thinking become too crowded. I told you I was going to use a new method of mining the asteroids, and I meant it. Let’s get the screens working, and I’ll show you what we’re about.”
He sat up straight, slowly and painfully in spite of the low gravity. Rob could see him wince at the movement of each joint. “Anything I can do to help?” he asked.
“Not one thing,” Regulo grunted. “I don’t feel good today, that’s all. My own fault. I should have had treatment three days ago, and I put it off because we had a problem again with those damned shipping permits. If I ran my business the way Earth handles its trade laws, I’d be bankrupt in a month.”
“I was sorry to hear about your sickness,” Rob ventured. “If you want to put off the demonstration until you feel better, let’s do it. The beanstalk is coming along well, so there’s no big reason why I have to rush back there.”
“Never.” Regulo frowned and braced himself, arms straight, on the front of the desk. “Don’t ever suggest that. What do you think keeps me going? Work, and new ideas. Stop looking ahead, and you’re finished. Anyway, who’s been opening his mouth to you, talking about sickness? I don’t like to have it advertised. Bad enough to have the disease, sympathy only makes it worse. Who told you about it?”
Rob hesitated, not sure if honesty would be the best way to handle the brusque question. “Senta Plessey,” he said at last.
Regulo sat motionless for a long moment, his battered face unreadable.
“Senta, eh?” After a few more seconds he laughed, a harsh and humorless noise deep in his throat. “Poor little Senta. Well, she was aware of my sickness, if anybody was. How is she?”
“She’s all right.” Rob hesitated again, not sure how much Regulo already knew. “Less well than she should be. She has a drug problem, I’m afraid. Taliza — she’s a total addict.”
“With taliza, that’s the only sort of addict there is.” Regulo shook his big head. “I’m sorry to hear that. I ought to have guessed it, though. She would always try anything new, anything for a fresh experience. I used to warn her, but it didn’t make any difference.” He sighed, looking past Rob with unfocused eyes. “That’s bad news. My God, but she was a beauty, thirty years ago. I’ve never seen a woman with her looks, before or since.”
His eyes came back to Rob. “She told you, did she, that we lived together?”
“She didn’t say much about it.” Rob shrugged. “Only that it was a long time ago.”
“It surely was. Back before this” — Regulo rubbed his hand along his seamed jaw — “had a real hold. It took a while to get a full diagnosis. As soon as we knew for sure that it was bad and going to get worse, Senta packed her bags. I didn’t try and talk her out of it. I was going to get more and more like a horror-holo star, and Senta had just two things she couldn’t stand: poverty, and ugliness. The second worry turned out to be stronger. You mentioned that you’d had operations, eh? I could match your sixty-two, and then some.”
He was silent for a moment, reflecting. His face showed no fear or bitterness, only a still introspection. “Always worrying about losing her looks,” he said at last. “That was her biggest fear of all. How is she now? It’s been a long time.”
“Still beautiful.” Rob struggled with this new view of Senta Plessey. One perspective from Howard Anson, one from Corrie, and now this. “Look, Regulo, it isn’t any of my business, but you say that she walked out on you. And you still provide her support?”
That earned a piercing look for Rob from those bright blue eyes. “Now where the devil did you hear that?” Regulo said softly.
“Oh, from a man back on Earth,” Rob felt embarrassment, aware that he had gone beyond the acceptable questions. “I wasn’t trying to pry. It’s just something that I’d heard.”
“It’s true enough.” Regulo’s voice sounded even gruffer than usual. “I knew what Senta’s worries were. We had some good years together, and I wouldn’t let her be miserable for nothing. We both know I’ve got enough money, more than I can ever use, more than Senta realizes. She spends, but I don’t restrain her. Why should I? It’s only money.
“Now, let’s get off that subject.” His voice took on its old, eager tone. “I want to see what you’ve been doing, and I want to show you what we’ve been at. You’ll see why I wanted you up here. Take a look at this.”
He switched on a large holoscreen that ran from floor to ceiling on one side of the study. In it appeared a view of a small asteroid, swimming free in space. Away to one side of it Rob could see a familiar shape. He frowned.
“That’s one of my Spiders. I thought they were supposed to be out in the Belt.”
“That one will be, as soon as the demonstration is finished.” Regulo adjusted the control to zoom in on part of the image, and pointed at the upper part of the screen. “Now, take a look at the top of the rock there.”
“It looks like a drive unit.” Rob reached over and increased the magnification a little further. “There’s another one at the bottom, from the look of it.”
“Quite right. You can’t see this on the image, but the whole rock has been covered with a layer of tungsten fibers. They’ll hold their strength up to nearly three and a half thousand degrees. See anything else near where the Spider is hanging?”
Rob moved the joystick and the magnified area shifted until it was centered on the dark bulk of the Spider. “I can see a housing on the surface of the rock. It looks like a power attachment, without the rest of the powersat.”
“Right again.” Regulo was in his element. “We’ll be hooking a powersat in position four hours from now. The connections have been set up to work with either that or a power kernel, to take electricity from the power source and distribute it around the rock. Now, one more fact and then you’re on your own.” Any pain that Regulo was feeling had been pushed away from his conscious thoughts. His voice was full of a huge satisfaction. “Zoom in on the Spider, and tell me what else you see.”
Rob leaned forward, moving his head from side to side to get a better look at the holo-image. “You’ve done something to the proboscis,” he said at last. “It’s been lengthened, and it has a different reflectivity. Hm. Have you changed the composition?”
“To a high-temperature ceramic.” Regulo nodded. “I ought to brush up on my knowledge of spider anatomy. In my ignorance, I’ve been calling it a sting. All right, we’ve changed the proboscis. It will take very high temperatures, and it’s still flexible. Now you’ve seen everything, so you tell me. What game are we playing here?”