“Mining asteroids is a lot easier than scooping gases from Jupiter’s atmosphere.”
“Yes,” Stavenger admitted, “but your idea of moving large segments of Earth’s industry off the planet is only part of the solution to the greenhouse warming, Dan.”
“I know, but it’s a big part.”
“The other half is to wean them off fossil fuel burning. They’ve got to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if they’re going to have any chance of stopping the global warming.”
“And fusion is a way to do that,” Dan muttered.
“It’s the only way,” Stavenger said firmly. “Your solar power satellites can provide only a small fraction of the energy that Earth needs. Fusion can take over the entire load.”
“If we can bring in enough helium-three.”
“There are other fusion processes that could be even more efficient than burning deuterium with helium-three. But they all depend on isotopes that are vanishingly rare on Earth.”
“But plentiful on Jupiter,” Dan said.
“That’s right.”
Dan nodded, thinking, He’s right. Fusion could be the answer. If we could replace all the fossil-fueled electricity-generating plants on Earth with fusion plants we could cut down the greenhouse emissions to almost nothing. Fusion power plants could generate the electricity for electric cars. That’d eliminate another big greenhouse source.
He looked at Stavenger with new respect. Here’s a man who’s exiled from Earth, yet he wants to help them. And he sees farther than I do.
“Okay,” he said. “After the flight to the Belt, we make a run out to Jupiter. I’ll start the planning process right away.”
“Good,” said Stavenger. Then he added, “Will this be a Starpower project or will you keep it for Astro Corporation?”
For a moment Dan was dumbstruck. When he found his voice, it was a shocked whisper. “You want to cut out Humphries?”
“He’s maneuvering to get a stranglehold on asteroidal resources,” Stavenger said, as cold as steel. “I don’t think it would be wise to let him control fusion fuels as well.”
By all the gods that ever were, Dan thought, this guy is ready to go to war with Humphries.
BOARD MEETING
The filters in his nostrils were giving Dan a headache; they felt as big as shotgun shells. He had come back to Earth reluctantly for this quarterly meeting of his board of directors. Dan always felt he could run Astro Manufacturing just fine if the double-damned board would simply stay out of his way. But they always had to poke their noses into the corporation’s operations, complaining about this, asking about that, insisting that he follow every crack-brained suggestion they came up with.
It was all so unnecessary. Dan held a controlling interest of the corporation’s outstanding stock; not an absolute majority of the shares, but enough to outvote the other board members if he had to. The board could not throw him out of his seat as corporate president and chief executive officer. All they could do was nibble away, waste his time, drive up his blood pressure.
To top it off, now Martin Humphries had joined the board, smiling, making friends, chatting up the other members as they milled around the sideboard scarfing up drinks and tea sandwiches before sitting in their places at the long conference table. Humphries was out to get an absolute majority, that was as clear to Dan as a gun aimed at his head.
Through the sweeping window that ran the length of the board room Dan could see the surging waters of the Caribbean sparkling in the morning sun. The sea looked calm, yet Dan knew it was inching ever higher, encroaching on the land, patiently, inexorably. Humphries kept his back to the window, deep in intense discussion with a trio of elderly directors. Dan had flown back to La Guaira specifically for this meeting. He could have stayed in Selene and chaired the meeting electronically, but that three-second lag would have driven him crazy. He appreciated how Kris Cardenas felt, dealing from the Moon every day with Duncan and his team in Scotland.
Dan stood at one end of the sideboard, beneath the big framed photograph of Astro’s first solar-power satellite, glinting in the harsh sunlight of space against the deep black background of infinity. He sipped on his usual aperitif glass of Amontillado, speaking as pleasantly as he could manage with the people closest to him. Fourteen men and women, most of the men either gray or bald, most of the women looking youthful, thanks to rejuvenation treatments. Funny, he thought: the women are taking rejuve therapy but the men are holding back from it. I am myself, he realized. The ultimate machismo stupidity. What’s wrong with delaying your physical deterioration? It’s not like a face-lift; you actually reverse the aging of your body’s cells.