The Precipice

SPACEPORT ARMSTRONG

Flanked by his chief of security and the head of his legal department, Martin Humphries arrived at the spaceport just in time to see Starpower 1 light up and break orbit.

He stood at the rear of the control center, arms folded across his chest, and watched the telescopic view of the fusion ship displayed on the main wallscreen. It was not a spectacular sight: Starpower 1’s four rocket nozzles glowed slightly, and the ship drifted away so slowly that Humphries had to check the numbers running along the right edge of the screen to be certain that it was moving at all. A smaller screen on the side wall showed a lunar jumper approaching the spaceport.

Four rows of consoles took up most of the control center; only three of the consoles were occupied, but Humphries could sense the consternation and confusion among the controllers.

“Jumper Six, answer!” the controller on the left was practically shouting into his headset mike.

The ponytailed, bearded man sitting in the middle of the trio was whispering heatedly with the woman on his other side. Then he whipped around in his swivel chair and grabbed his own headset from the console.

“Pancho!” he yelled in a rumbling basso voice. “Where the hell are you people?

What’s going on?”

Humphries knew perfectly well what was going on.

The woman controller looked up and saw Humphries standing there. She must have recognized him. Her face went white and she jabbed the chief controller’s shoulder, then pointed in Humphries’s direction.

The chief literally jumped out of his chair, sailing high enough almost to clear the console behind his station. But not quite. He banged his shins painfully on the top edge of the console and went sprawling in lunar slow motion into the unoccupied chair behind it, ponytail flying. He was enough of a lunik to reflexively put out his hands and grab the chair’s arms to break his fall. But the chair rolled backward into the last row of consoles, and the chief controller crashed ungracefully to the floor with a loud thud and an audible, “Ooof!”

Humphries’s security chief instinctively hustled down to the fallen controller and yanked him to his feet while Humphries himself and his lawyer stood impassively watching the idiotic scene.

The security man half-dragged the controller, limping, to Humphries. “Mr. Humphries,” the controller babbled, “we don’t know what’s going on—”

“Isn’t that Starpower 1 accelerating out of its orbit?” Humphries asked frostily. “Yessir, it is, but it wasn’t scheduled to launch for another half-hour yet and I think Pancho Lane and three other people are aboard it and they don’t have the authorization for a crewed flight. The IAA is going to—”

“Is there any way to get them back?” Humphries asked, deadly calm. The chief controller scratched his beard, blinking rapidly.

“Well?”

“Nosir. No way in hell, Mr. Humphries.”

“Who else is aboard her?”

“That’s just it, we don’t know if they’re aboard the vessel! They might be on the jumper but they’re not answering our calls. Maybe their radio broke down.”

“They are aboard Starpower 1” Humphries said flatly. “Who else was with Pancho Lane?”

“Um…” The chief controller turned to his two assistants, wincing. The woman called, “Amanda Cunningham, co-pilot; Lars Fuchs, planetary astronomer; and C. N. Barnard, flight surgeon.”

“And you allowed them to go aboard my ship?” Humphries asked, his voice sharp as an icepick.

“They had proper authorization,” the chief controller said, sweating noticeably. “IAA approval.” The other two controllers, still standing at their stations, nodded their agreement.

“Amanda Cunningham was definitely with them?”

All three nodded in unison.

Humphries turned and started out of the control center. The chief controller exhaled a relieved sigh. His coveralls were stained with sweat. But Humphries stopped at the doorway and turned back toward him. “I want you to know that the so-called Dr. Barnard is actually Dan Randolph.” All three of the controllers looked stunned.

“You never bothered to check their identifications, did you?”

“We never…” The controller’s deep voice dwindled into silence under Humphries’s furious glare.

“I know you work for Selene, and not for me. But I’m going to do my best to see to it that you three incompetent morons never get within a thousand kilometers of a control center again.”

Then he went through the door and headed for the tunnel that led back to Selene proper.

“Shall I start the proceedings for the Astro takeover?” Humphries’s lawyer asked him.

He nodded grimly.

With a satisfied smile, the lawyer said,”He won’t have any part of the corporation by the time he gets back here.”

“He’s not coming back,” Humphries said darkly. “None of them are.” Sitting in the tiny wardroom behind Starpower’s bridge, Dan Randolph felt truly relaxed for the first time in months. The ship was accelerating smoothly. Fuchs looked a lot better now, with the feeling of weight that came from the acceleration. No more floating in zero-g; they could sit in chairs without having to strap themselves down.

He marveled at his good mood. The Earth’s melting down, your corporation is going broke, you’ve busted every regulation the IAA ever wrote, Humphries is after your scalp, you’re heading out for parts unknown, and you’re sitting here with a grin on your face.

He knew why.

I’m free, he told himself. Maybe for only a couple of weeks, but I’m free of all of them, free of all their crap. We’re on our own and nobody can bother us. Until we come back.

Pancho ducked through the hatch and went straight to the juice dispenser.

“How’s it going?” Dan asked casually.

“All systems working jus’ fine,” she said, filling a mug and coming to the table to sit next to Dan.

“Must be okay if you feel good enough to leave the bridge.”

“Mandy’s up there, keepin’ an eye on ever’thing. The bird will actually fly on her own; we don’t need to be on the bridge every minute of the day.”

“Any incoming calls?” Dan asked.

She shrugged. “Only about six or seven million. Ever’body from Doug Stavenger to the Global News Network wants to talk to you.”

“Global News?” Dan’s ears perked up.

“Lots of news media. They all want to interview you.” Dan stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Might not be a bad idea. If we’re going to do an interview it’ll have to be before we get so far away the time lag makes it impossible to have a real-time conversation.”

“Better do it quick, then,” Pancho said. “Once we goose this bird to one-third g, we’ll really be sprintin’ fast.”

Dan nodded his agreement. Pointing to the phone console built into the bulkhead, he asked, “Can you patch me through?”

“Easy.”

“Okay… lemme talk to La Guaira.”

The head of Astro’s corporate public relations staff was a sweet-faced brunette who was older — and much tougher — than she looked. Dan asked her if she could arrange a news conference with the world’s major news networks. “It has to be today,” he pressed. “We’re zipping out so fast that by tomorrow we won’t be able to talk back and forth without a four-to-five-minute lag.”

“Understood,” said the PR woman.

“Can you do it?”

She arched a carefully-drawn brow. “Arrange a major news conference with the man who’s hijacked his own superduper spaceship to go out past Mars and start mining the asteroids? Just get off the line, boss, and let me get to work.” Dan laughed and obliged. He was glad that he had decided to keep his public relations team intact, despite the layoffs in other corporate departments. Fire the accountants and the lawyers, he reminded himself. Get rid of the paper shufflers and bean counters. But keep the people who polish your public image. They’re the last to go — except for the people who do the real work: the engineers and scientists.

Pancho watched him as she sipped at her juice. When Dan ended his call to La Guaira, she asked, “So now what happens?”

“Now we wait while my PR people do their jobs.”

“Uh-huh. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“We’ll know in an hour or so,” Dan said. “If it takes longer than that, it’s not going to go down.”

Pancho nodded. “I could hear it. The lag between you and her’s already longer than the usual Earth-Moon delay.”

Dan got to his feet and went to the coffee dispenser. He really wanted a pleasant glass of Amontillado, but there was no alcohol on the ship. Remembering the story the two women had told him about the goons Humphries had sent after Amanda, Dan asked, “Whatever happened to your snake?”

“Elly?”

“Is that the snake’s name?”

“Yup.”

“So what’d you do with her?”

Pancho reached down to her ankle and came up with the glittering blue krait.

Dan flinched back. “You brought that thing aboard?”

Shrugging, Pancho said, “I was gonna leave it with Pistol Pete, he’s the guy who owns the Pelican Bar. But with those goons and all, I didn’t have the time.”

“We’ve got a poisonous snake on the ship!”

“Relax, boss,” Pancho said easily. “I’ve got four mice in my travel bag. That’s enough to keep Elly fat and happy for more’n a month.” Dan stared at the snake. Its beady eyes stared back at him.

He started to shake his head. “I don’t want that thing on this ship.”

“Elly won’t be a problem,” Pancho insisted. “I’ll keep her in a nice, cool spot.

She’ll sleep most of the time.” Then, with a smirk, she added, “And digest.”

“But if something should happen…”

Pancho’s face went deadly serious. She seemed to Dan to be struggling with herself.

He suggested, “Maybe we could freeze the snake for the duration of the flight.

Thaw her out when we get back to Selene.”

“She’s not poisonous,” Pancho blurted.

“What?”

“I don’t like to admit it, but Elly’s not really poisonous. I just tell people that to keep ’em respectful. You think Selene’s safety board would let a poisonous critter into the city?”

“But you said…”

Looking almost apologetic, Pancho said, “Aw, you can’t believe ever’thing I say, boss. A gal’s got to protect herself, doesn’t she?”

“But what about that guy she bit?”

“Elly was gengineered. They modified her toxin so she produces a tranquillizer, not a lethal poison.”

Dan gave her a hard look. Can I believe anything she says? he wondered. “The science guys wanted to use Elly to trank animals in the wild that they wanted to study. It never worked.”

“And you got the snake for a pet.”

“A bodyguard,” Pancho corrected.

“What about the antiserum?”

She laughed. “Saline solution. Just a placebo. The guy would’ve woke up whether they used it or not.”

Dan broke into a chuckle, too. “Pancho, you’re something of a con artist.”

“I suppose,” she admitted easily.

Amanda’s voice came through on the intercom. “I’ve got an incoming call from La Guaira.”

“I’ll take it here,” Dan said.

It took several frenzied hours, but Dan’s PR director finally set up an interactive news conference with reporters from virtually every major media network on Earth, plus Selene’s own news director, Edith Elgin, who happened to be Mrs. Douglas Stavenger when she wasn’t on the air.

Dan sat back in the little plastic chair in Starpower’s wardroom and smiled into the camera of the phone console set into the bulkhead. His PR director acted as moderator, choosing which reporter was allowed to ask a question, and a backup. Dan found that the time lag from the ship to Earth worked in his favor; it gave him time to think before the next question arrived.

It’s always smart to think before you talk, he told himself. Engage brain before putting mouth in gear.