“I s’pose not. Still, to go this blue-sky at this earlyish stage of their space program—It looks like betting the store. For what?”
“She gave you no hint?”
“None, except that because her children boda-ciously want this, she does. Oh, there was talk of it as a symbol that’ll help quiet down the rebellious mood in the younger Moon generation. A sop, I’d call it. And there was talk of it as an investment, training, experience, et cetera. But mainly, she admits, they’re impatient.”
“They grow no younger,” Lars muttered. Ulla tightened her grip on his hand.
“I thought you might have the information or ideas to help me decide.”
“I am sorry, no. That Lunarian generation is as foreign to me as to you.”
Ulla raised her head. “I suspect this is no simple impulse,” she offered. “They have something specific in mind.”
“My selfsame hunch,” Guthrie agreed.
Lars repeated himself: “I cannot believe my mother would endorse it, so wholeheartedly, if it were any threat to us.”
“No, no, certainly not,” Guthrie said. “But a substantial expense, recoverable maybe, and for me a royal ruckus with my directors.”
“A treasure trove? Perhaps they have learned of an extraordinary lode on some distant body?”
“That’s the obvious guess. I asked Dagny forthright. She said no, and asked me in return how the hell they could get wind of any such thing if they didn’t have a ship to prospect in or even robot probes with the needful capabilities.”
“A spacecraft in orbit is potentially a terrible weapon. One like that—”
“No!” Ulla cried.
“No is right,” Guthrie said. “The Lunarians may in THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE323 assorted ways be crazy, but they aren’t insane. Nor stupid.”
Lars nodded. “I didn’t mean that seriously,” he explained. “I simply wanted to dismiss it. Also because of what my mother is. They could not hoodwink her, and she would never allow—“ He drew breath. “Aside from the economics, what harm, jefe? Knowledge or wealth or whatever they hope to gain, does it not in the end come to all humankind?”
“That’s a natural-born explorer talking, and, I’m afraid, an idealist. I’m less naive. Nor is Fireball in the business of do-gooding.”
“It does do good,” Ulla insisted.
“Sort of, in the course of doing well,” Guthrie said. “Though Lord knows we’ve got our share of shortsighted greed, hog-wild foolishness, and the rest of the human condition. They weren’t left out of my program, either … But this wanders. Should we or should we not underwrite the venture?”
“I am inclined to think we should—“ Lars began.
“In hopes of satisfying our curiosity about it, hey?” And again Guthrie laughed.
“That may never happen. I am thinking of discovery, and diversity, and—But we must talk together more. Can you really only stay until tomorrow?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Well, in what hours we’ve got, we’ll puzzle along as best we can. I’m inclined to think we’ll end up with ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!’“
Ulla looked a while at the robot and then said to the mind within it: “Because you too are what you are.” Venator had returned to Central after his interview with Matthias, less than satisfied. He had no simple need to do so. He could be as closely in touch with developments, including any thoughts from the cy-bercosm, anyplace on Earth where there was an interlink terminal. But he felt that here he would find the calm and sureness from which his mind could win total clarity.
He well understood the reason for that feeling. This was “holy ground.
He was among the few humans who knew of it, other than vaguely. He was among the very few who had ever walked it.
The morning after his arrival, he set forth on an hours-long hike. Though athletic, he was not acclimated to the altitude. However, the evening before he had gotten an infusion of hemoglobin surrogate and now breathed easily. The air entered him cold, quiet, utterly pure.
Domes, masts, parabolic dishes soon dropped from view behind him. They were no more than a cluster, a meteorological station. Nothing showed of what the machines had wrought underground. Instruments aboard a monitor satellite could detect radiations from below, but those were subtle, electromagnetic, infrared, neutrino; and the cybercosm edited all such data before entering them in the public base.