Ferrer started to nod, then thought better of it. “What about this new company, Nairobi Industries?”
“They don’t have anything going in the Belt.”
“They might move that way, eventually.”
Humphries made a snorting, dismissive laugh. “By the time they get their base built here on the Moon and start thinking about expanding to the Belt, I’ll have the whole thing in my hands. They’ll be shut out before they even start.”
She looked dubious, but said nothing.
Humphries smacked his hands together. “Okay! The gloves come off. All the preparations are in place. We knock Astro out of the Belt once and for all.”
Ferrer still looked less than enthusiastic. She rose from her chair and started for the door.
Before she got halfway across the office, though, Humphries said, “Tell Grigor I want to see him. In half an hour. No, make it a full hour.”
And he crooked his finger at her. Dutifully, she turned around and headed back to him.
TORCH SHIP STARPOWER III
Like most torch ships, Starpower III was built like a dumbbell, bulbous propellant tanks on one end of a kilometer-long bucky-ball tether, habitation module on the other, with the fusion rocket engine in the center. The ship spun lazily on the ends of the long tether, producing a feeling of gravity for the crew and passengers.
Pancho’s quarters aboard her personal torch ship were comfortable, not sumptuous. The habitation module included the crew’s quarters, the bridge, work spaces and storage areas, as well as Pancho’s private quarters plus two more compartments for guests.
Pancho was afraid that her lone guest on this trip from Ceres to Selene would become obstreperous. Levi Levinson was flattered almost out of his mind when Pancho told him she wanted to bring him to Selene to meet the top scientists there. “Two of ’em are on the Nobel committee,” Pancho had said, with complete truthfulness and a good deal of artful suggestion.
Levinson had immediately packed a travel bag and accompanied her to the torch ship.
Now, though, as they approached Selene, Pancho broke the unpleasant news to him. She invited him to dinner in her private quarters and watched with secret amusement as he goggled at the array of food spread on the table between them by the ship’s two galley servers.
“You’ve made a terrific scientific breakthrough,” she told Levinson, once the servers had left. “But I’m not sure the rock rats are gonna take advantage of it.”
Levinson’s normal expression reminded Pancho of a deer caught in an automobile’s headlights. Now his brows shot even higher than usual. “Not take advantage of it?” he asked, a spoonful of soup trembling halfway between the bowl and his mouth. “What do you mean?”
Pancho had spent most of the day talking with Big George via a tight-beam laser link. George had hammered it out with the rock rats’ governing council. They were dead-set against using anything that would drop the prices of the ores they mined.
“Fookin’ prices are low enough,” George had growled. “We’ll all go broke if they drop much more.”
Now Pancho looked into Levinson’s questioning eyes and decided to avoid the truth. The kid’s worked his butt off to make this breakthrough, she told herself, and now you’ve got to tell him it was all for nothing.
“It’s the safety problem,” she temporized. “The rock rats are worried about using nanos that can’t be disabled by ultraviolet light.”
Levinson blinked, slurped his soup, then put the spoon back into the bowl. “I suppose some other safety features could be built into the system,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Trouble is, the nanos have to work in a high radiation environment. They’ve got to be hardened.”
“And that makes them dangerous,” said Pancho.
“Not really.”
“The miners think so.”
Levinson took a deep, distressed breath. “But if they handle the nanos properly there shouldn’t be any problems.”
Pancho smiled at him like a mother. “Lev, they’re miners. Rock rats. Sure, most of ’em have technical degrees, but they’re not scientists like you.”
“I could work out protocols for them,” he mumbled, half to himself. “Safety procedures for them to follow.”
“Maybe you could,” Pancho said vaguely.