She could not hold back: “What do you propose to do about it?”
“What would you, Mother?” Brandir asked. It was not a retort, she felt, it was a response. All four were looking at her with a strange—eagerness?
“It was, was kind of you to invite me,” she stammered, overwhelmed. “You didn’t have to.”
“You knew of the search from the outset,” Fia said, she maybe the most coldly practical of the brood. “You would in any case have guessed what is now afare.”“Above that consideration,” Brandir said, “we honor you.”
Dagny wondered how sincere that was. How candid were they ever, even among each other?
Unworthy thought. She thrust it from her and spoke slowly. “Well, this is … scientifically fascinating, isn’t it? Gives a whole new insight into the early history of the Solar System. What a memorial to your father.”
“It is raised in our hearts, which are ours only,” Brandir replied.
“What do you mean?” Already she knew.
Temerir confirmed it for her: “I foreglimpsed that the thing might have immense potentialities, and hence required secrecy. Should we give it away to Earth? Nay.”
“But what could you do with it?”
“We’ll find out!” Kaino cried.
Temerir nodded. “If naught seems valuable, then may we set the knowledge free.”
And he was the scientist of this bunch, Dagny thought. Was his generation really that alien to hers? Or that alienated?
“We shall need a shipful of robots strong and subtle,” Fia said.
Brandir drew a hand slantwise through the air, a negation. An Earthling would have shaken his head. “Nay. We could not assemble and prepare that much, that costly, unbeknownst,” he said. Clear before Dagny stood the fact that he had been thinking about this for a long while.
“So, a manned expedition?” flared from Kaino. “Eyach!” He threw back his head and laughed against the stars.
It happened he stood nearest to Dagny. The vision flitted through her, the contrast, those red elflocks beside the hair that hung to her shoulders. Since Edmond’s death she had let it go white. The future beside the past—
No, by damn. She wasn’t yet ready for—what was the phrase people used in her childhood? Senior citizen. She bloody well refused to be any sniveling senior citizen. She was an old woman, and she’d soldier on as one till the Old Man came for her.
These folks had not asked her here out of pure goodness. There was something she could do for them.
“To go on trajectory would need too much time and too much supply, as noticeable as robots,” Brandir was saying. “We shall abide until we possess a torchcraft”
That wouldn’t be soon. Only lately had Dagny and her allies gotten pushed through the Federation a grudging permission for Moondwellers to buy, build, and operate spaceships with the thrust and delta v for full interplanetary service. They must do it in stages, slowly raising capital, training crew, acquiring fleet; and the earlier vessels would be relatively short-range, used for easy missions. To be sure, Brandir would hold a large share in most of the enterprises.
Kaino sprang about the room. “Come the hour, I’ll recruit me a trusty gang,” he jubilated.
“How will you cover the departure?” asked Fia.
They spoke as if it could be tomorrow, rather than years hence, in ardor joined with frosty calculation.
“We will give out that Temerir has identified several possible lode comets in the near Kuiper, and I am bound forth to examine them more closely,” Brandir said.
A reasonable story in itself, Dagny considered. The Moon could use a bunch more water and raw organics than had yet been brought to it. Comets of suitable composition and orbit weren’t plentiful. Indeed, the Federation had decided that it had done enough of that and if the Selenites wanted more they’d have to help themselves, unsubsidized. That might put their uppity noses out of joint …
The surprise struck through. Fia spoke before Dagny could, brows lifted over russet eyes: “Your very self, Brandir?”
“Yes,” he said, “Since the emprise will be chiefly mine, I want a full input before I choose what we shall do afterward.” His laugh purred. “Furthermore, I fear life on Luna will be flattening,” as he achieved other goals, wealth, power, and desires more inward. “My mood will be no secret, and will help explain why men go, rather than robots. By then, sister mine, you ought to be able to manage the cityside affairs of Zamok Vysoki in my absence, under the direction of Ivala and Tuori,” his wives. Evidently Fia had proven her worth in the subordinate executive position she currently occupied. It involved some tough, risky work.