“Yes,” she said low, “to feed your computer models, to coordinate this also into your blandly running socioeconomic structure.”
He heard but ignored the venom. “Since you have enterprises out there, my lady,” and all the asteroid colonists were Lunarians, who could tolerate weak gravity, “I wonder if you might have some knowledge.”
Her voice became teasing, “If the undertaking be secret, how should I?”
“I don’t mean directly. Someone may have noticed something and mentioned it to you, incidentally.”
“Nay. I am too distant from those realms. I have been too long away.” Intensity: “Eyach, too long away.”
Because she must stay here to wage her hidden war?
“A forlorn hope of mine, no doubt,” he said. “And the whole thing may be a mistake, a wrong interpretation of ours.” What it was was a farce. He had no expectation of really sounding her out. He was after intangibles, personality, traits, loves, hatreds, strengths, weaknesses, her as a living person. Given that, he might better cope with her. “1’11 be very grateful if you’d look into your memory, put a search through your personal files, whatever may possibly call up something relevant.”
“Indeed I have memories. Yet you must tell me more. Thus far this is vacuum-vague.”
“I agree.” He did have specifics to offer her, concocted details that might be convincing.
“Best we range it at leisure.” Her fingers touched his wrist. She smiled afresh. “Come, you’ve barely tasted your wine, and it a pride of my house. Let us get acquainted. You spoke of your African childhood—”
He must be careful, careful. But with a mind like hers, it should not be too difficult to steer conversation away from the trivia that would betray him.
The daycycle passed. They drank, talked, wandered, dined, and went on from there.
To him, sexual activity had been an exercise desirable occasionally for health’s sake. He discovered otherwise.
She bade him farewell next mornwatch, cool as a mountain spring. He was only dimly aware of his flight back to Tychopolis. Not until he had been in oneness and cleared his head did he see how she had told him nothing meaningful, and how he might well have let slip a few inklings to her.
For a while he had even thought there was some justice on her side. But no. In the long term, hers was the fire that must be quenched. In the near future— well, Terrans had brought the Moon to life, beginning before there were any Lunarians. They had their own claim, their own rights, on this world, won for them hundreds of years ago by the likes of Dagny Beynac.
The great meteorite that blasted out Tycho Crater had been richer in iron and nickel than most of its kind. Fragments lay far-scattered, shallowly buried under the regolith. The larger ones, chondrules fused together by the impact, thus became ore deposits such as are rare on weatherless basaltic Luna. When expanding operations demanded a Nearside base in the southern hemisphere, they were a major reason to site it in Tycho.
Dagny Ebbesen was helping build it when her boss sent her to the Rudolph lode. “We’ve promised the workers better quarters, you know,” Petras Gedminas explained. “It will be a standard assembly, but you will get experience in directing a job.” He paused. “No. We are far from the stage at which any task is standard. Expect the unexpected.”
His warning was unnecessary. In the course of two years, Dagny had learned it well. A habitations engineer, no matter how junior, must needs be quite a bit of everything.
Three daycycles after she reached the mine, about one-tenth of a Lunar day, the disaster happened.
A field van had newly rolled in. Calling ahead, the driver identified himself as Edmond Beynac, home-bound from an expedition with his assistant. They would like a little rest and sociability before going on. Dagny was eager to meet the geologist. His reports had been important to construction, showing where the rock could be trusted, in what ways and how much. Moreover, his discoveries and analyses had changed several ideas about the entire globe. And then the adventure of it, roving and beholding where no human had ever trod!