As the tractor slowly trundled back to Selene’s main airlock, Dan thought about what he had just seen. Before his eyes, the MHD channel was growing: slowly, he admitted, but it was visibly getting longer as the virus-sized nanomachines took carbon and other atoms from the supply bins and locked them into place like kids building a Tinkertoy city.
“How much longer?” he asked into the microphone built into his helmet.
Cardenas, sitting beside him, understood his question. “Three weeks, if they go as programmed.”
“Three weeks?” Dan blurted. “Looks like they’re almost finished now.”
“They’ve still got to finish the MHD channel, which is a pretty tricky piece of work. High-current-density electrodes, superconducting magnets and all. Then comes the pumps, which is no bed of roses, and finally the rocket nozzles, which are also complex: buckyball microtubes carrying cryogenic hydrogen running a few centimeters away from a ten-thousand-degree plasma flow. Then there’s—”
“Okay, okay,” Dan said, throwing up his gloved hands. “Three weeks.”
“That’s the schedule.”
Dan knew the schedule. He had been hoping for better news from Cardenas. Over the past six weeks his lawyers had hammered out the details of the new Starpower, Ltd. partnership. Humphries’s lawyers had niggled over every detail, while Selene’s legal staff had breezed through the negotiation with little more than a cursory examination of the agreement, thanks largely to Doug Stavenger’s prodding.
So now it was all in place. Dan had the funding to make the fusion rocket a reality, and he still had control of Astro Manufacturing. Astro was staggering financially, but Dan calculated that the company could hold together until the profits from the fusion system started rolling in.
Still, he constantly pushed Cardenas to go faster. It was going to be a tight race: Astro had already started construction of its final solar power satellite. When that one’s finished, Dan knew, we go sailing over the disaster curve. No new space construction contracts in sight.
“Can’t this buggy go any faster?” Cardenas asked, testily.
“Full throttle, ma’am,” said the imperturbable technician at the controls.
To take her mind off her fears of being out in the open, Dan asked her, “Did you see this morning’s news from Earthside?”
“The food riots in Delhi? Yeah, I saw it.”
“They’re starving, Kris. If the monsoon fails again this year there’s going to be a monster famine, and it’ll spread a long way.”
“Not much we can do about,” Cardenas said.
“Not yet,” Dan muttered.
“They got themselves into this mess,” she said tightly, “breeding like hamsters.”
She’s really bitter, Dan thought. I wonder how she’d feel if her husband and kids had decided to stay on the Moon with her. With a sigh, he admitted, she’s got plenty to be bitter about.
Big George was waiting for Dan in his private office, sitting on the sofa, a sheaf of printouts scattered across the coffee table.
“What’s all this?” Dan asked, sitting in the chair at the end of the coffee table. When George sat on the couch there really wasn’t much room for anyone else.
“Stuff I lifted from Humphries’s files,” George said, his red-bearded face wrinkled with worry. “He’s out for your balls, y’know.”
“I know.”
Tapping a blunt finger on the pile of printouts, George said, “He’s buyin’ every share of Astro stock he can get his hands on. Quietly. No greenmail, no big fuss, but he’s pushin’ his brokers to buy at any price.”
“Great,” Dan grunted. “Maybe the damned stock will go up a little.”
George grinned. “That’d be good. Been in free fall long enough.”
“You’re not thinking of selling, are you?”
With a laugh, George replied, “The amount I’ve got? Wouldn’t make any difference, one way or the other.”
Dan was not amused. “If you ever do want to sell, you come to me first, understand? I’ll buy at the market price.”
“Humphries is buyin’ at two points above the fookin’ market price.”
“Is he?”
“In some cases, where big blocks of stock are involved.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dan said fervently, pronouncing each word distinctly. “He knows I don’t have the cash to buy out the minor stockholders.”
“It’s not all that bad,” George said. “I did a calculation. At the rate he’s acquiring Astro shares, it’ll take him two years to buy up a majority position.”