“The sensor suite is in perfect working order,” Fuchs volunteered. “I’m already recording data.”
“We’ll have to do the turnaround maneuver soon,” said Amanda.
Gesturing vaguely toward infinity, Dan asked Fuchs, “Have you picked a destination point out there?”
“A general area only,” he replied. “The outer Belt has not been mapped well enough to pick a precise asteroid. Most of them are not even numbered yet.”
“Have you given Pancho the coordinates?”
Fuchs’s face colored slightly. “I gave them to Amanda.”
“I’ve put the data into the nav computer,” Amanda said quickly, looking at Pancho.
Pancho nodded. “Okay. I’ll go check it out.”
“Onward and upward,” said Dan, rising from his chair. “We’ll be breaking distance records, if nothing else.”
“Four AUs,” Pancho muttered, getting to her feet also.
She headed for the bridge. Dan followed her, leaving Amanda and Fuchs still sitting at the table.
Pancho slid into the pilot’s chair and tapped on her main touch-screen, the one showing the hunk on the beach. Standing behind her, Dan saw the navigation computer program come up over the muscles and teeth.
But Pancho was looking at one of the smaller screens, where an amber light was blinking slowly.
“What’s that?” Dan asked.
“Dunno,” said Pancho, working the screen with her fingers. “Running a diagnostic… h’mmph.”
“What?”
Without turning her head from the display screens, Pancho muttered, “Says there’s a hot spot on one of the superconducting wires outside.”
A jolt of alarm surged through Dan. “The superconductor? Our storm shield?”
She glanced up at him. “Don’t get frazzled, boss. Happens all the time. Might be a pinhole leak in the coolant line. Maybe a micrometeor dinged us.”
“But if the coolant goes—”
“The rate of loss ain’t much,” Pancho said calmly. “We’re due for turnaround in six hours. I can angle the ship then so’s that side’s in the shade. If the hot spot doesn’t go away then, Mandy and me will go EVA and fix the leak.”
Dan nodded and tried to feel reassured.
STAVENGER THEATER
Kris Cardenas marveled at the crowd’s willingness to leave their comfortable homes and jam themselves cheek-by-jowl into the cramped rows of narrow seats of the outdoor theater. A considerable throng of people was flowing into the theater. It was built in the Grand Plaza, “outdoors.” Exactly one thousand seats were set in a shallow arc around the graceful fluted shell that backed the stage.
Even with three-dimensional interactive video and virtual reality programs that were nearly indistinguishable from actuality, people still went to live performances. Maybe it’s because we’re mammals, Cardenas thought. We crave the warmth of other mammals. We’re born to it and we’re stuck with it. Lizards have a better deal.
There was one particular mammal Cardenas wanted to see: George Ambrose. That morning she had phoned the Astro corporate office trying to find him, only to reach his video mail. Late in the afternoon he returned her call. When she said she had to talk to him in person as soon as possible, and preferably in a public place, George had scratched at his thick red beard for a moment and then suggested the theater.
“I’ve got a date comin’ with me,” he said cheerfully, “but we can get together in the intermission and chat for a bit. Okay?”
Cardenas had quickly agreed. Only as an afterthought did she ask what the theater was playing.
George sighed heavily, “some fookin’ Greek tragedy. This date of mine, she’s a nut for th’ classics.”
Usually the theater was sold out, no matter what the production might be. In the days before the greenhouse cliff, when tourism was building up nicely, Selene’s management invited world-class symphony orchestras, dance troupes, drama companies to come to the Moon. Now, most of the performances were done by local amateur talent.
Medea, performed by Selene’s very own Alphonsus Players. Cardenas would have shuddered if it had mattered to her at all. Still, the theater was fully booked. Only Cardenas’s status as one of Selene’s leading citizens wheedled a ticket out of the system, and she had to go all the way up to Doug Stavenger for that. He smilingly admitted that he wasn’t going to use his.