Reasons already aplenty, swirled through her.
Energy. Criswell solar collectors going up around the globe, to beam to Earth electric power clean and cheap and well-nigh limitless.
Science. Astronomy on Farside, a stable platform, a planet-sized shield against radio interference and light pollution. Chemistry, biology, physiology, agronomy under conditions unique and enlightening. Who could foretell how much more?
Industry. Today, small specialties. Ultimately, gigantic factories of every kind, with no surrounding vulnerable biosphere, their products easily launched for the mother world in aerodynamic containers that descended gently to destination. Or sent into deeper space—
Astronautics, building the fleet and homeporting the ships, at least until humankind had struck roots elsewhere. And so the future. Yes, Luna was poor in heavy elements, airless, waterless; but wealth of that kind waited unbounded in the asteroids and comets, along with the day when no more need be torn out of living Earth.
Adventure, discovery, deeds to do and songs to sing.
“We’ll swing it!” she cried.
Heat rushed into her face. This was a business meeting. Why hadn’t she felt such a childish outburst rising, and stopped it? Fuentes, that very proper man, looked the least bit embarrassed. Guthrie’s image hadn’t yet had time to show reaction. She foresaw him chuckling indulgently and moving the conversation onward. Beynac—Beynac’s gaze had come to rest on her. And now he himself smiled. “Good for you, mademoiselle,” he said.
Sunlight spilldd from aloft and shattered into a million dancing brilliances. The sea ran sapphire-blue, turquoise-blue, cobalt-blue, amethyst, surges and swirls over long, gentle swells. It shushed and rumbled, noises as tender as the wind and as deep as itself. Westward a bank of cumulus towered white above a dim streak that was land. Elsewhere reached distances, moving hues, odors of salt and air.
Then the day went black. For a moment Aleka knew only the eidophone before her, the sights in its screen and the rage out of its speaker. Fuller awareness returned, but the warmth and breeze that washed her stopped at her skin.
Small loss, gibed a thought fleeting by. She had been in a mucho hard mood already, outbound to her rendezvous.
Now time was like a shark behind her. She sprang to her feet and leaned out above the port side. “Ka’eo!” she shouted. “Hele mail Aboard, awfwi!”
Her companion reared out of the water and thrust himself over the low gunwale. The boat canted. It rocked back as his bulk slithered across the deck to the middle, forward of the cockpit where she stood. “K&ohi mai ‘oe,” she warned: Hold fast. The swimmer pushed his front flippers into a pair of cuffs secured to the framework. His dark sleekness dripped and shimmered.
They had been idling along at four or five knots, for Aleka was in no hurry to meet those people who awaited her. She made the boat leap. In a minutest was planing, up and down in eagle swoops, forward at a unicorn gallop. The engine purred quietly, being almost half as efficient as a spaceship’s plasma thrust, but air brawled around the hyalon screen in front of her.
Through it, Ka’eo’s liquid brown gaze met the woman’s. He barked and grunted loudly enough for her to make out. The language was basically Anglo, with many Hawaiian and Japanese loan words and a number—larger year by year, it seemed—that were purely of the Keiki Moana. But no human mouth could have shaped just those sounds.
“[What hastens us, oath-sister?]”
Aleka touched a disc on the pilot panel and a supersonic carrier beam gave him her reply, clear through the racket, in her version of the same tongue. “A fight between the inspectors and some kauwa. At least two dead.” She looked at the transmission in the flat screen, tiny images, cries she barely heard amidst the booming of her speed.
To her eyes, the seal face did not change, save that whiskers stood straight out from the muzzle and fangs briefly gleamed. She had sometimes wondered what his kind read in the mobile features of hers. Maybe they were too alien for a play of expressions to convey much. She did sense horror in his tone. “[This is bad, orca-bad. Speak to them, sister mine! Make them stop!]”