Dan Randolph: If we accelerate at one-sixth g halfway and then decelerate to our destination, yes, two weeks.
Global News: Do you think this stunt will help the price of Astro Manufacturing stock?
Dan Randolph [grinning]: You must be a stockholder. Yes, if we’re successful I think Astro’s price should climb considerably. But that’s just my guess. I’m in enough trouble with the IAA; I wouldn’t want the GEC’s regulators on my back, too.
Global News: How many people are on the ship with you? Could you introduce them?
Leaning back in his reclining chair as he watched the interview, Martin Humphries felt whipsawed by emotions. Try as he might to remain calm, he seethed inwardly with cold fury at Dan Randolph and Amanda Cunningham.
Yet when Amanda appeared on the wallscreen, sitting at the ship’s control panel alongside Pancho Lane, looking properly businesslike in her flight coveralls and her hair pinned up, his anger melted in the light from her eyes.
How could you? He silently asked Amanda. I offered you everything and you turned your back on me. How could you?
After hardly a minute of seeing her on-screen he abruptly snapped the broadcast off. The wallscreen went blank.
It’s over and done with, he told himself as he called up his appointments calendar on his desk screen. Put it behind you. Grimly he searched for the date of the next quarterly meeting of Astro Manufacturing’s board of directors. He marked the date in red. Randolph will be dead by then. I’ll be able to pick his bones and snap up Astro for a song. They’ll all be dead by then. Her too.
Furious at the way his hands trembled, Humphries called up his most reliable dating service and began scrolling through the videos of the women who were available and ready to please him.
None of them were as desirable as Amanda, he realized. But he began making his choices anyway.
OUTWARD BOUND
An adenoidal woman lamented lost love as country music twanged softly in the bridge of Starpower 1. “That was some performance you put on,” said Pancho. She was sitting in the command-pilot’s seat at the instrument panel. Dan was in the right-hand seat, beside her, separated by a bank of control knobs and rocker switches. He saw that half the touchscreens on the panel had been personalized by Pancho: they showed data against backgrounds of the Grand Canyon, sleek acrobatic aircraft, even muscular male models smilingly reclining on sunny beaches.
“The interview?” Dan laughed softly. “I could’ve predicted three-quarters of the questions they asked. Maybe more.”
He stared out at the view through the wide glassteel port that ran the length of the instrument panel and wrapped around its sides. To his left, behind Pancho, was the Sun, its brilliance toned down by the port’s heavy tinting but still bright enough to dominate the sky. It made Pancho look as if she had a halo ringing her close-cropped hair. The zodiacal light stretched out from the Sun’s middle clear across the width of the port; dust motes scattered the sunlight, leftovers from the solar system’s early days of creation. Beyond was darkness, the deep black infinity of space. Only a few of the brightest stars shone through the port’s tinting.
“You really think the stock price’ll go up?” Pancho asked, her eyes shifting back and forth among the displays on the panel.
“Already has, a couple of points,” Dan said. “That’s one of the reasons I did the interview.”
She nodded. “From what I heard afterward, the IAA wants to slap your butt in jail the instant you get back into their jurisdiction.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in jail,” Dan muttered. “Yeah, but that wouldn’t do the stock any good, would it?”
“Pancho, you talk like a worried stockholder.”
“I’m a stockholder.”
“Are you worried?”
“What, me worry?” she joked. “I got no time for worryin’. But I would like to know exactly where we’re heading.”
“Would you?”
“Come on, boss, you can razzle-dazzle the reporters but I know you got an asteroid all picked out. Maybe a couple of ’em.”
“I want to get to three of them.”
“Three?”
“Yep. One of each type: stony, metallic, and carbonaceous.”