mountains like the brink of eternity, nothing but utterly black sky and solemn unblinking stars hanging beyond its edge.
The floor of the plain was dotted with lunar factories, open to vacuum of course, tended by sterile robots under remote control by sweaty, breathing humans sitting safely underground in their offices inside Alphonsus City . Each factory was protected from the occasional meteoroid by a gracefully curved roof of light honeycomb metal. Most of the roofs bore the flying-heron symbol of Yamagata Industries. A few were marked with the more prosaic STRO logo of Dan’s company.
On the other side of the ringwall, Dan’s company ran a fleet of automated vehicles patiently plying the Mare Nubium, scooping up the top layers of the lunar regolith the way a herd of cows grazes a field. There was oxygen in the powdery upper layers of the lunar soil, and aluminum, titanium, plenty of silicon and even some iron. But the most precious element in the regolith was an isotope of helium—helium-three—born in the Sun and carried across interplanetary space on the solar wind to be imbedded in the porous regolith over long eons.
Helium-three made fusion power practical on Earth. Lunar fuel was beginning to light the overcrowded cities of Earth, cleanly, cheaply, with minuscule pollution and radioactive waste.
It was making Dan Randolph a new fortune.
If he had thought about it, he would have grinned at the cosmic justice of it. Helium-three was created in the Sun by the fusion processes that made Earth’s daystar shine. Some of it was wafted off into space; a scant fraction of that found its way to the Moon. Humans mined the stuff and shipped it to their home world, where it was used to power fusion generators: man-made artificial suns that generated the electrical power to run an overpopulated world. It was elegantly beautiful. And profitable.
But Dan was thinking of other things as he waited for the shuttle to land. In the hip pocket of his
coveralls was a message from Jane Scanwell inviting him to meet her at Tetiaroa. No reason given. Just a one-line note, as impersonal as a bill of lading:
IMPERATIVE WE MEET AT TETIAROA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. JANE.
Imperative, Dan repeated to himself. What could be so imperative? Why Tetiaroa, way out in the middle of the Pacific? Why won’t she answer my calls to her? What’s happening down there that she has to see me as soon as possible?
A flicker of light caught his eye.
Craning his neck, Dan could just make out the angular ungainly shape of the shuttle falling like a rock in slow motion. Another puff of its retros, the cold gas glittering briefly in the sunlight, and the
spraddle-legged vehicle slowed. It seemed to rock slightly, then squirted several brief jets of retro fire as it steadied and settled down softly on the landing pad, a full kilometer out on the floor of the plain from the edge of the dome where Dan was standing.
Half an hour later, Zach Freiberg lay sprawled across the couch in Dan’s office, a morose expression on his boyish face. In the ten years Dan had known Freiberg , it still surprised him to realize how tall the scientist really was. Zach gave the impression of being a small, soft pooh-bear of a guy. But when they stood face-to-face, he was several inches taller than Dan.
“It’s real, boss,” he was saying mournfully, his head resting on one arm of the couch, his booted feet on the other. “I’ve had the best people in the business check out the numbers.”
Dan, seated tensely behind his desk, said, “Now let me get this straight. You’re saying that the greenhouse effect is going to hit suddenly, within ten years. Right?”
Freiberg stared up at the paneled ceiling. “It’s already hitting, Dan. You know that. Droughts in the middle latitudes; floods in the tropics. Killer storms getting worse every year.”
“Yeah, but you were saying that the ice caps-“ “Will melt suddenly, right. Not gradually. Ten years from now the
The floor of the plain was dotted with lunar factories, open to vacuum of course, tended by sterile robots under remote control by sweaty, breathing humans sitting safely underground in their offices inside Alphonsus City . Each factory was protected from the occasional meteoroid by a gracefully curved roof of light honeycomb metal. Most of the roofs bore the flying-heron symbol of Yamagata Industries. A few were marked with the more prosaic STRO logo of Dan’s company.
On the other side of the ringwall, Dan’s company ran a fleet of automated vehicles patiently plying the Mare Nubium, scooping up the top layers of the lunar regolith the way a herd of cows grazes a field. There was oxygen in the powdery upper layers of the lunar soil, and aluminum, titanium, plenty of silicon and even some iron. But the most precious element in the regolith was an isotope of helium—helium-three—born in the Sun and carried across interplanetary space on the solar wind to be imbedded in the porous regolith over long eons.
Helium-three made fusion power practical on Earth. Lunar fuel was beginning to light the overcrowded cities of Earth, cleanly, cheaply, with minuscule pollution and radioactive waste.
It was making Dan Randolph a new fortune.
If he had thought about it, he would have grinned at the cosmic justice of it. Helium-three was created in the Sun by the fusion processes that made Earth’s daystar shine. Some of it was wafted off into space; a scant fraction of that found its way to the Moon. Humans mined the stuff and shipped it to their home world, where it was used to power fusion generators: man-made artificial suns that generated the electrical power to run an overpopulated world. It was elegantly beautiful. And profitable.
But Dan was thinking of other things as he waited for the shuttle to land. In the hip pocket of his
coveralls was a message from Jane Scanwell inviting him to meet her at Tetiaroa. No reason given. Just a one-line note, as impersonal as a bill of lading:
IMPERATIVE WE MEET AT TETIAROA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. JANE.
Imperative, Dan repeated to himself. What could be so imperative? Why Tetiaroa, way out in the middle of the Pacific? Why won’t she answer my calls to her? What’s happening down there that she has to see me as soon as possible?
A flicker of light caught his eye.
Craning his neck, Dan could just make out the angular ungainly shape of the shuttle falling like a rock in slow motion. Another puff of its retros, the cold gas glittering briefly in the sunlight, and the
spraddle-legged vehicle slowed. It seemed to rock slightly, then squirted several brief jets of retro fire as it steadied and settled down softly on the landing pad, a full kilometer out on the floor of the plain from the edge of the dome where Dan was standing.
Half an hour later, Zach Freiberg lay sprawled across the couch in Dan’s office, a morose expression on his boyish face. In the ten years Dan had known Freiberg , it still surprised him to realize how tall the scientist really was. Zach gave the impression of being a small, soft pooh-bear of a guy. But when they stood face-to-face, he was several inches taller than Dan.
“It’s real, boss,” he was saying mournfully, his head resting on one arm of the couch, his booted feet on the other. “I’ve had the best people in the business check out the numbers.”
Dan, seated tensely behind his desk, said, “Now let me get this straight. You’re saying that the greenhouse effect is going to hit suddenly, within ten years. Right?”
Freiberg stared up at the paneled ceiling. “It’s already hitting, Dan. You know that. Droughts in the middle latitudes; floods in the tropics. Killer storms getting worse every year.”
“Yeah, but you were saying that the ice caps-“ “Will melt suddenly, right. Not gradually. Ten years from now the
Similar Books
The Trees And The Night (Book 3)
Daniel McHugh
A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel
Matthew Dunn
Sparhawk's Angel
MIRANDA JARRETT
Bedding The Bad Boy (Dalton Brothers Novels)
Virna DePaul
Fun House
Chris Grabenstein
Rocket Writes a Story
Tad Hills
Who Loves You Best
Tess Stimson
The Woman in Oil Fields
Tracy Daugherty
Bloodroot
Bill Loehfelm
Mortal Bonds
Michael Sears