“Is it actually hindering your work?”
She made a face somewhere between a grimace and a pout. “Not hindering, exactly. It’s just so damned inconvenient! And time-consuming. Sometimes we have to go over a thing two or three times just to be sure we’ve heard them right. It soaks up time and makes everybody edgy.”
Dan thought it over. “Maybe I can talk them into coming up here.”
“I’ve tried to, god knows. Duncan won’t budge. Neither will any of his people. They’re terrified of nanomachines.”
“No!”
“Yes. Even Professor Vertientes. You’d think he’d know better, at his age.”
“They’re scared of nanomachines?”
“They won’t admit it, of course,” said Cardenas. “They say that they might not be allowed to return to Earth if the authorities know that they’ve been working with nanomachines. I think that’s a crock; they’re just plain scared.”
“Maybe not,” Dan said. “Those Earthside bureaucrats get wonky ideas, especially about nanotechnology. I sure haven’t told anybody that I’m dealing with nanomachines.”
Her brows shot up. “But everybody knows—”
“Everybody knows that you and your staff are building a fusion rocket with nanos. As far as the general public is concerned, I don’t come near ’em. I’m a bigshot tycoon, I don’t get involved in the dirty work. I’ve never even been in your lab.”
Cardenas nodded with newfound understanding. “That’s why you sneak in here late at night.”
“I don’t sneak anywhere,” Dan said, with great dignity. “I’ve never been here. Period.”
She laughed. “Of course.”
“Kris,” he said, more seriously, “I think Duncan and the rest of them have legitimate reasons to be scared of coming up here and working with you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with that three-second lag. It’s their safety net.”
Cardenas took a deep breath. “If I have to.”
“You’ve accomplished a helluva lot in just four weeks,” Dan pointed out.
“I suppose that’s true. It’s just… it’d be so much easier if we could all work together under the same roof.”
Smiling gently, Dan said, “I never promised you a rose garden.”
She was about to reply when the door to the corridor banged open, all the way across the mostly-darkened laboratory. Instinctively, Dan started to duck behind the big microscope tube, like a boy hiding from his mother.
Then he recognized the hulking, shaggy, red-bearded figure of Big George Ambrose.
“That you, Dan?” George called as he strode between workstations toward them. “Been lookin’ everywhere for you, y’know.”
Despite his size, George moved gracefully, light on his feet and perfectly at home in the low lunar gravity.
“I’m not here,” Dan growled.
“Right. But if you were, I’d hafta tell you that Pancho Lane’s missin’.”
“Missing?”
“Not in her quarters,” George said as he approached. “Not in any of the Astro offices. Not in the spaceport or the Grand Plaza. Not anyplace I’ve looked. Blyleven’s worried about her.”
Frank Blyleven was chief of Astro’s security department. Dan glanced at Cardenas, then said to George, “She could be in someone else’s quarters, you know.”
George looked surprised at the idea. “Pancho? She doesn’t have a guy and she doesn’t sleep around.”
“I wouldn’t worry—”
“She didn’t show up at the office t’day. She’s never missed an hour of work, let alone a whole day.”
That worried Dan. “Didn’t show up at all?”
“I asked everybody. No Pancho, all day. I been lookin’ for her all night. Nowhere in sight.”
“Did you ask her roommate?”
“Mandy Cunningham? She was out havin’ dinner with Humphries.”
“She should be back by now.”
George made a leering smirk. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Turning to Cardenas, Dan said, “I’d better look into this. George is right, Pancho’s had her nose to the grindstone ever since she came up here.”
“So maybe she’s taking a little r and r,” Cardenas said, unruffled.
“Maybe,” Dan admitted. But he didn’t think so.
PELICAN BAR
Pancho had spent the entire day being invisible. The night before, she had gone to the Pelican Bar for a little relaxation after another long, grueling day of study and simulation runs in the Astro office complex.
The incongruously-named Pelican Bar had been started by a homesick Floridian who had come to Selene back in the days when the underground community was still known as Moonbase. Hired to be the base’s quartermaster, he had developed a case of hypertension that kept him from returning to Earth until a regime of exercise and medication brought his blood pressure under control.