Moonrise (63 page)

“Don’t worry about me,” said Melissa. “I’ve handled men like him before.”

“Sure.” And the woman made an up-and-down movement with her fist.

Melissa laughed at the crudity. I should give her a lecture on morality, she thought, but I don’t have the time.

As she started out of the tent, the woman said, “I’m damned fuckin’ jealous, you know.”

Surprised, Melissa blurted, “You’d want to have dinner with the boss?”

“Uh-uh,” she replied. “I’d rather have you.”

“Oh,” was all that Melissa could think to reply. But as she left the tent she thought that she would certainly have to give her a morality lecture. Then she wondered if she’d be safer in Rashid’s tent overnight than with the three other women.

Joanna felt miserably alone as she walked along the tunnel toward her quarters.

Instead of bringing them together, I’m driving them further apart, she said to herself. I want Greg and Doug to work in harmony, and here I’ve as much as told Greg I don’t trust his judgment and I’m siding with Doug.

But what else can I do? Doug’s right and Greg’s simply refusing to pay attention to what he’s trying to accomplish. This whole Kiribati business could blow away at any time; Greg thinks he’s being so clever in setting it up, yet it could be a house of straw.

Well, she thought as she slid open the door to her suite, it’s done. I’ve told Greg what I’m going to do. Now I’d better tell Doug. At least he’ll be happy about it. I hope.

The message light on her computer was blinking. Joanna closed her door, then said in a clear, firm voice, “Computer, read messages.”

The screen lit up with the words as the computer announced in a synthesized contralto voice, “Dr. Kristin Cardenas returned your call at fourteen-thirty-five hours today.”

Joanna slid into her desk chair as she asked, “Did she leave a message?”

“Yes.”

“Read it, please.”

Again, the words spelled on the screen as Kris Cardenas’s slightly shaking voice said, “Mrs. Stavenger, I’ve been thinking
about your request that I come to Moonbase to examine your son. Professor Zimmerman is with me, and we would both like to come, if that can be arranged.”

“End of message,” said the computer.

Joanna sat at the blankly glowing screen, thinking hard. Zimmerman! He swore he’d never come back here again. But Switzerland’s going to sign the nanotech treaty. Canada, too. Could it be … ?

“Phone,” said Joanna. “Call Kristin Cardenas.”

Their conversation was brief, cool, and to the point. Kris Cardenas and Wilhelm Zimmerman would leave from Vancouver for Moonbase on the next available flight. Joanna checked the schedules and saw that they could get to an Earth-orbiting transfer station on the next day. Then they’d have to wait for four days before an LTV was scheduled to make the weekly run to Moonbase.

She shook her head. They’re too important to sit around for four days. The authorities might even try to detain them, especially if they wait in Vancouver instead of the space station.

Joanna ordered a special flight to meet them at the orbital station and take them immediately to Moonbase. They’ll be here in three days, she told herself.

The corporate comptroller called an hour later to ask if she knew how much a special lunar flight cost and how thin Moonbase’s profit margin was already.

“I’ll have to clear this with the division head,” he said, glowering out from the screen at Joanna. “And he’ll probably want to check it out with the director of Moonbase before he okays it.”

Joanna sighed. “Put it on my personal account, Lester,” she said.

Once her words reached him, his eyes went wide. “You’re going to pay for it out of your own pocket?” He looked as if she had threatened some fundamental tenet of his inner faith.

“Yes,” Joanna snapped. “And while I’ve got you on the link, I want to buy a lunar transfer vehicle. A used one, if possible; one that’s about to be retired, if there are any such available. But used or new, I want an LTV. Put
that
on my personal account, too.”

She thought the man would faint.

Like most of the major complexes in permanent Earth orbit,
Masterson
was a combination of several purposes: part manufacturing facility, part scientific research laboratory, part observation platform, part maintenance and repair center, and part transfer station for people and cargo heading onward to Moonbase.

Orbiting some two hundred fifty miles above the Earth, at first glance
Masterson
looked like a disconnected conglomeration of odds and ends, a junkyard floating in space. The modules where personnel were housed spun lazily on opposite ends of a two-mile-long carbon filament tether, like two oversized aluminum cans glinting in the sunlight, connected by a string so thin and dark it was for all practical purposes invisible. Outside the circumference of the housing modules’ arc floated the factories, labs, repair shops and transfer center, their angular utilitarian shapes dwarfed by huge wings of solar panels and radiators, massive concave solar mirrors that collected and focused the Sun’s heat for smelting and other processing work, and forests of antennas and sensors—all in zero gravity, or the nearest thing to it.

Spacesuited figures bustled from module to module, some of them jetting along in solo maneuvering units, others riding the bare-bones shuttlecraft that the station personnel called broomsticks.

Jinny Anson shook her head as she peered out the observation port. It had been almost nine months since she’d last been in zero gee, and she was testing her reactions. She felt a little woozy, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

Not so bad for an old lady, she told herself. Just don’t make any sudden moves.

There was a lunar transfer vehicle floating out there next
to the repair sheds, she saw. It wasn’t the regular LTV, which wasn’t due back from its run to Moonbase for another thirty-six hours. As far as Jinny knew, the LTV had no business being there. But a maintenance crew was working on it, and she could see propellant lines feeding into its tanks.

“Are you ready for the inspection tour, Ms. Anson?”

Jinny pushed off the smooth surface of the observation port with her fingertips. The plastiglass felt cold, a reminder that there was nothing on its other side but empty infinity.

Turning toward the earnest young man who was to be her guide through the chemical processing plant, Jinny smiled and resisted the reflex to correct him. I’m still Ms. Anson on the company’s files. I’m only Mrs. Westlake in Austin.

“Let’s get it done, son,” she said.

He pushed off the handgrip projecting from the bulkhead and floated through the hatch. Jinny followed him into the access tube leading out of the observation center, saying, “Take it slow, huh? It’s been a while since I’ve been up here.”

The kid grinned over his shoulder at her.

As far as Masterson Corporation was concerned, Jinny was visiting the space station as part of her duties as quality control manager of the Houston division. The station manufactured the alloys and most of the electronics components that Houston used to build Clipperships. The station itself was now the property of the new Kiribati Corporation, but its new ownership seemed to make no observable difference on the station staff or the work they did.

There had been a rumor that someday they would start using nanomachines to build the Clippers out of pure diamond, but Jinny discounted that as the usual shop-floor out-gassing. If nothing else, the nanotech treaty would scuttle that idea.

Unofficially, Jinny had come to the station to hitch a ride to Moonbase. It wasn’t as simple as catching a bus, of course, but for a former director of the base and a pretty important company official, the rules could be stretched a little. She only wanted to visit Moonbase for a day or so, just long enough to talk with Joanna Stavenger face-to-face. Jinny was convinced that what she had to ask Joanna couldn’t be done
any other way. I’ve got to see the whites of her eyes when I pop the question to her.

“What’s that LTV out there doing?” she asked as casually as she could.

The youngster turned lazily as he floated along the access tube so he could look back at her. “Special job,” he answered. “Rumble is that there are some big gasbags coming up from Savannah, on their way to Moonbase. Ultra-VIP. They pooched out a backup LTV just to take them up to the base, quickie-quick.”

“How many?” Jinny asked.

“Dunno,” the kid said. “Two or three, from what I heard. Could be more, but not enough to fill a whole passenger pod.”

Jinny smiled to herself. There’s my ride. Quickie-quick.

It was startlingly easy to talk her way onto the special LTV. Most of the crew at the station knew her; most of the senior crew, at least. There was plenty of spare capacity aboard the nearly-empty LTV, and an extra body visiting Moonbase for a couple of days wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows—especially when the body was a former base director.

Jinny was supposed to get permission from the current base director, of course, but she knew how to get around that problem. She simply accessed the proper file from the station’s mainframe and okayed her own trip, using the computer codes that hadn’t been changed since she’d been running Moonbase. Easy.

I’ll say hello to Greg Masterson when I get there, she told herself. See his eyes pop.

There were only two other passengers in the LTV’s personnel pod. Jinny recognized the fat old guy as Professor Zimmerman, the nanotech whiz who had saved Doug Stavenger’s life after the big solar flare the previous year. The woman with him looked familiar, but Jinny couldn’t place her. She had “California” written all over her sandy-haired, tanned features. They ignored Jinny almost completely, talking to each other with deep seriousness as the LTV’s co-pilot ducked in to make sure they were buckled safely into their seats.

Silly safety regulation, Jinny thought. This bucket won’t
put out enough thrust to slosh the coffee in a cup, even on a high-energy burn to Moonbase. Still, when the red light came on and the rockets lit, she felt herself squeezed back into her seat.

It was impossible to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom over the thirty-six-hour length of their flight without saying anything to the other passengers. When Jinny went past them to get to the meal dispenser, she hovered weightlessly by their seats long enough to say hello to Professor Zimmerman. The old man didn’t remember her at first, but when he started to unstrap and politely get up from his chair, his face went pale.

“Please, stay in your seat,” Jinny pleaded. “The rules of etiquette are different in zero gee.” Inwardly, she wanted to make sure that the flatlander didn’t puke all over her.

With an effort to maintain his dignity even while seated, Zimmerman introduced Professor Kristin Cardenas to Jinny.

Soon the three of them were talking together the way passengers on a trip will, strangers yet shipmates. Jinny found that Cardenas was also an expert in nanotechnology and they were both going to Moonbase at the personal request of Joanna Stavenger.

She also learned that their
real
reason for allowing Joanna to coax them up to Moonbase was almost exactly the same as Jinny’s own motivation.

“Perhaps we should pool our resources,” Zimmerman said. He was obviously uncomfortable in zero gee; Cardenas looked a little green, too. Jinny had gone to the meal dispenser for them and brought them prepackaged trays. And slow-release anti-nausea patches, which they both stuck behind their ears.

“What do you mean?” Jinny asked. It was impossible to eat in zero gee without spraying crumbs and droplets all around. The compartment’s air circulation sucked them up—slowly—into the ventilator grids along the ceiling.

Zimmerman started to gesture with his hands, then thought better of it. “You know the Stavenger woman much better than I or even Kristin. You could help us to convince her to allow us to remain at Moonbase indefinitely.”

“I work for her,” Jinny said, “but I can’t say that I know her very well. Not socially.”

Kris Cardenas said, “Still, if we all want the same thing, we ought to present a united front.”

“Fine by me,” said Jinny, delighted to have a Nobel prizewinner and her mentor as unexpected allies.

Greg’s face looked like a storm cloud when he stepped into the reception area beneath the rocket landing pads.

“What’s the matter?” Joanna asked him.

“Jinny Anson,” he snapped.

“Jinny?”

“She’s on the incoming ship, with Cardenas and Zimmerman.”

“But she’s supposed to be in Houston.”

“She’s on the ship. She thought she’d sneak in here without my knowing it. Thought I wouldn’t bother checking the LTV’s manifest.”

Joanna immediately recognized the problem. Naturally Greg would be suspicious of having the former director of the base suddenly pop in for a visit. Especially when she hadn’t told anyone she was coming or even asked permission to make the trip.

“They’ll be coming down in a few minutes,” Greg said, in a tight-throated whisper. “Flight control has locked in on them.”

Joanna nodded wordlessly, wondering what she could do or say to ease his misery.

“Where’s Doug?” Greg asked her.

“He went up to the observation bubble,” she said. “He likes to watch the spacecraft land.”

Greg made a sour face. Everything’s a game to Doug; just a big entertainment. Impatiently he went to the wall panel beside the hatch and flicked on the intercom.

“Fifteen … right down the pipe,” said the flight controller’s voice. “Ten … five …”

“Green light,” a different voice announced. The spacecraft’s pilot, Greg assumed.

“Touchdown confirmed.”

“Shutting down.”

“Base power connected. The snake’s on its way.”

Greg paced impatiently across the small room. Doug came in through the door from the flight control center.

“Hi, Greg,” he said.

His half-brother gave him a dark look in return. Joanna thought how strange it was that they could both wear the same color coveralls, but Doug’s sky blue jumpsuit looked bright and sunny while Greg’s seemed somehow darker, more ominous.