“Pancho Lane wants to visit your base?” Nobuhiko Yamagata replied at last.
Tsavo nodded vigorously. “She just called. She’s at the Astro facility in the Malapert Mountains, no more than a hundred kilometers from where I sit.”
Again the interminable lag. Tsavo used the time to study Yamagata. His round, flat face looked frozen, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. Yet he must be thinking furiously, Tsavo thought. Come on, come on. Tell me what I should do.
“This is a striking opportunity,” Yamagata said at last. Tsavo agreed heartily. “I took it on my own authority to invite her to come over tomorrow.”
Yamagata again seemed lost in thought. At last he said, “Don’t delay. Bring her to your base as quickly as you can. I will send an interrogation team immediately on a high-g burn. There is much we can learn from her.”
Pancho felt slightly nervous being out on the surface with a solar flare cloud on its way. The scientists had estimated that it would take more than six hours for the radiation to even begin building up, but still she felt edgy about it. She was wearing a standard hard-shell space suit as she followed the Astro base director along the crest of Mount Randolph. Approaching storm or not, the director wanted to show off what his people were doing and Pancho had no intention of showing any fear in front of her own people.
I should be testing the softsuit I brought with me, she said to herself. Yet she answered silently, You know what they say about test engineers: more guts than brains. I’ll wear a softsuit when they’ve been in use for a year or two. Momma Lane didn’t raise any of her daughters to get themselves killed trying out new equipment.
She was being conducted on a quick walk through the small forest of gleaming white towers that reached up into the bright sunlight. Their wide, circular tops were dark with solar cells that drank in the Sun’s radiant energy and converted it silently to electricity. They look like great big mushrooms, Pancho thought. Then she corrected herself. Nope, they look more like giant penises. She giggled inwardly. A forest of phalluses. A collection of cocks. Monumental pricks, all standing at attention.
“As you can see,” the base director’s voice rasped in her earphones, “another advantage of the power towers is that the solar cells are placed high enough above the surface so they’re not bothered by dust.”
It took an effort for Pancho to control her merriment. “You don’t need to clean ’em off,” she said, trying to sound serious.
“That’s correct. It saves quite a bit of money over the long run.”
She nodded inside her helmet. “What about damage from micrometeoroids?”
“The cells are hardened, of course. Deterioration rate is about the same for the ground arrays around Selene.”
“Uh-hmm.” Pancho seemed to recall a report that said otherwise. “Didn’t the analysis that—”
A new voice broke into their conversation. “Ms. Lane, ma’am, we have an incoming call for you from the Nairobi base at Shackleton.”
“Put it through on freak two,” she said.
It was voice only, but she recognized Tsavo’s caramel-rich baritone. “Ms. Lane, Pancho, this is Daniel. I’m sending a hopper over to your facility within the next half-hour. Please feel free to visit us whenever you’re ready to.”
Grinning, delighted, Pancho answered, “I’ll get over there soon’s I can, Danny.”
“You know that a solar storm is approaching,” he said. Pancho nodded inside her helmet. “Yup. I’ll get to you before it hits.”
“Fine. That’s wonderful.”
Pancho cut her inspection tour short, apologizing to the base director, who frowned with undisguised disappointment.
Sure enough, there was a Nairobi Industries hopper standing on its spindly little legs, waiting for her at the launchpad. It was painted a vivid green with the corporate logo—an oval Masai shield and two crossed spears—stenciled just below the glassteel bubble of the cockpit.
She dashed to the room that the base director had given her for her quarters, picked up her still-unopened travel bag, and headed out toward the pad. She called Jake Wanamaker on her handheld to tell him where she was going and why. Then she buzzed her security chief and asked him why in the name of hell-and-gone he hadn’t been able to locate Lars Fuchs yet.