Cardenas pulled an old laboratory stool from her desk and perched on it before her visitors, locking her legs around its high rungs. “So, how are you?” she asked again.
Fuchs cocked an eye at her. “That’s what we come to you to find out.”
“Oh, your physical.” Cardenas laughed. “That’s tomorrow, at the clinic. How are you getting along? What’s the news?”
With a glance at Amanda, Fuchs answered, “I think we’ll be able to go ahead with the habitat project.”
“Really? Has Pancho agreed—”
“Not with Astro’s help,” he said. “We’re going to do it ourselves.”
Cardenas’s eyes narrowed slightly. Then she said, “Is that the wisest course of action, Lars?”
“We really don’t have that much of a choice. Pancho would help us if she could, but Humphries will hamstring her as soon as she brings it up to the Astro board of directors. He doesn’t want us to improve our living conditions here.”
“He’s going to establish a depot here,” Amanda said. “Humphries Space Systems will, that is.”
“So you and the other rock rats are going to pursue this habitat program on your own?”
“Yes,” said Fuchs, quite firmly.
Cardenas said nothing. She clasped her knees and rocked back slightly on the stool, looking thoughtful.
“We can do it,” Fuchs insisted.
“You’ll need a team of specialists,” Cardenas said. “This isn’t something that you and your fellow prospectors can cobble together.”
“Yes. I understand that.”
Amanda said slowly, “Lars, I’ve been thinking. While you’re working on this habitat project you’ll have to stay here at Ceres, won’t you?”
He nodded. “I’ve already given some thought to leasing Star-power to someone else and living here in the rock for the duration of the project.”
“And how will you earn an income?” Cardenas interjected.
He spread his hands. Before he could reply, though, Amanda said, “I think I know.”
Fuchs looked at his wife, clearly puzzled.
“We can become suppliers for the other prospectors,” Amanda said. “We can open our own warehouse.”
Cardenas nodded.
“We can deal through Astro,” Amanda went on, brightening with each word. “We’ll obtain our supplies from Pancho and sell them to the prospectors. We can sell supplies to the miners, too.”
“Most of the mining teams work for Humphries,” Fuchs replied darkly. “Or Astro.”
“But they still need supplies,” Amanda insisted. “Even if they get their equipment from the corporations, they’ll still need personal items: soap, entertainment videos, clothing…”
Fuchs’s face was set in a grimace. “I don’t think you would want to handle the kinds of entertainment videos these prospectors buy.”
Undaunted, Amanda said, “Lars, we could compete against Humphries Space Systems while you’re directing the habitat construction.”
“Compete against Humphries.” Fuchs rolled the idea on his tongue, testing it. Then he broke into a rare grin. It made his broad, normally dour face light up. “Compete against Humphries,” he repeated. “Yes. Yes, we can do that.”
Amanda saw the irony in it, although the others didn’t. The daughter of a small shopkeeper in Birmingham, she had grown up hating her middle-class background and the lower-class workers her father sold to. The boys were rowdy and lewd, at best, and they could just as easily become dangerously violent. The girls were viciously catty. Amanda discovered early that being stunningly beautiful was both an asset and a liability. She was noticed wherever she went; all she had to do was smile and breathe. The trick was, once noticed, to make people see beyond her physical presence, to recognize the highly intelligent person inside that tempting flesh.
While still a teenager she learned how to use her good looks to get boys to do what she wanted, while using her sharp intellect to keep one jump ahead of them. She escaped her father’s home and fled to London, took lessons to learn to speak with a polished accent, and—to her complete astonishment—found that she had the brains and skill to be a first-rate astronaut. She was hired by Astro Manufacturing Corporation to fly missions between Earth and the Moon. With her breathless looks and seeming naiveté, almost everyone assumed she had slept her way to the top of her profession. Yet the truth was just the opposite; Amanda had to work hard to fend off the men—and women—who wanted to bed her.