The Precipice

SELENE CITY

Don’t you intend ever to return to Earth?”

Martin Humphries leaned back in his exquisitely padded reclining chair and tried to hide the dread he felt as he gazed at his father’s image on the wall screen. “I’m working hard here, Dad,” he said.

It takes almost three seconds for radio or light waves to make the round-trip between the Earth and the Moon. Martin Humphries used the time to study his father’s sallow, wrinkled, sagging face. Even though the old man had made his fortune in biotech, he still refused rejuvenation treatments as “too new, too risky, too many unknowns.” Yet he wore a snow-white toupee to hide his baldness. It made Martin think of George Washington, although George was alleged never to have told a lie and anyone who had ever dealt with W. Wilson Humphries knew that you had to count your fingers after shaking hands with the old scoundrel. “I need you here,” his father admitted grudgingly. “You need me?”

“Those bastards from the New Morality are pushing more tax regulations through the Congress. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve bankrupted every corporation in the country.”

“All the more reason for me to stay here,” Martin replied, “where I can protect my assets.”

“But what about my assets? What about me? I need your help, Marty. I can’t fight these psalm-singing fundamentalists by myself!”

“Oh, come on, Dad. You’ve got more lawyers than they do.”

“They’ve got the whole damned Congress,” his father grumbled. “And the Supreme Court, too.”

“Dad, if you’d just come up here you’d be able to get away from all that.”

His father’s face hardened. “I’m not going to run away!”

“It’s time to admit that the ship is sinking, Dad. Time to get out, while you can. Up here on the Moon I’m building a whole new organization. I’m creating Humphries Space Systems. You could be part of it; an important part.” The old man glared at him for much longer than it took his son’s words to reach him. At last he growled, “If you stay up there too long your muscles will get so deconditioned you won’t be able to come back to Earth.” He hasn’t heard a word I’ve said, Humphries realized. He talks and he never listens.

“Dad, I’m in the middle of a very complicated deal here. I can’t leave. Not now.”

He hesitated, then said, “I might never come back to Earth.” Once he heard that reply, his father’s image went from its normal unhappy scowl to a truly angry frown. “I want you here, dammit! This is where you belong and this is where you’re going to be. That’s final.”

“Father,” said Martin, feeling all the old fear and frustration swirling inside him like a whirlpool pulling him down, drowning him. “Father, come here, come be with me. Please. Before it’s too late.”

His father merely glowered at him.

“Give it up, Dad,” Humphries pleaded. “Earth is finished. Everything down there is going to crash; can’t you understand that?”

The old man sputtered, “Dammit, Marry, if you don’t listen to me…” He faltered, stopped, not knowing what to say next.

“Why can’t you listen to me for a change?” Martin snapped. Without waiting for a response, he said, “I’m trying to build an empire up here, Dad, an empire that’s going to stretch all the way out to the Asteroid Belt and beyond. I’m putting the pieces together right now. I’m going to be the wealthiest man in the solar system, richer than you and all your brothers put together. Maybe then you’ll treat me with some respect.”

Before his father could reply, Humphries sat up in his recliner and pressed the stud set into the armrest to terminate the videophone link. The old man’s face disappeared from the wall, revealing a holowindow that showed a realtime view of Jupiter as seen by the twenty-meter telescope at the Farside Observatory. For a long moment Humphries simply sat there, alone in the office he had set up for himself in the house deep below the lunar surface. Then he took a long slow breath to calm the furies that raged inside him.

The old man has no understanding of the real world. He’s still living in the past.

He’d rather go down with the ship than admit that I’m right and he’s wrong. Unbidden, the memory of his drowning engulfed him again. Nine years old. His father insisting that the trimaran was in no trouble despite the dark storm winds that heaved the boat so monstrously. The wave that washed him overboard. The frothing water closing over him. Desperately clawing for the surface but sinking, sinking, can’t breathe, everything going dark.

Martin Humphries died at the age of nine. After they revived him, he learned that it had been one of the crew who’d dived into the sound to rescue him. Watching the boy sink out of sight, his father had stayed aboard the trimaran and offered a bonus to any crewman who could rescue his son. Form that moment on, Humphries knew that there was no one in the world he could trust; he was alone, with only his inner fears and yearnings to drive him. And only his money to protect him.

Talking with his father always brought those terrible moments back to mind. And the gasping, choking paralysis that clamped his chest like a merciless vise. He reached into the top desk drawer for his inhalator and took a desperate whiff of the cool, soothing drug.

All right, Humphries thought, waiting for his breathing to return to normal, trying to calm himself. He’s going to stay down there and try to fight the New Morality until they burn him at the stake. Nothing I say will budge him a millimeter. Very well, then.

I’ll stay here in Selene where it’s safe and everything’s under control. No storms, no rain; a world built to suit me in every detail. From here I can pull the strings just as effectively as if I were down in New York or London. Better, really. There’s no reason for me to go Earthside anymore.

Except for the divorce hearing, he remembered. I’m supposed to show up in the judge’s chambers for that. But I can do even that from here, get my lawyers to make the excuse that I can’t return to Earth, I’ve been on the Moon too long, it would be dangerous to my health. I can get a dozen doctors to testify to that. No sweat.

Humphries laughed aloud. I won’t have to be in the same room with that bitch!

Good! Wonderful!

He leaned back again and stared up at the ceiling. It was set to a planetarium display, the sky as it appeared above Selene. Briefly he thought about calling up a porno video, but decided instead to put on the latest informational release from the International Astronautical Authority about the microprobes searching through the asteroids in the Belt.

The IAA’s motivation for investigating the asteroids was to locate locks that might one day hit the Earth. They had good tracks on all the hundreds of asteroids in orbits that brought them close. Now they were sorting through the thousands of rocks out in the Belt big enough to cause serious damage if they were ejected from the Belt and impacted Earth.

The good news was that so far they had not found any asteroid in an orbit that threatened the homeworld — although the asteroids in the Belt were always being jostled by Jupiter and the other planets, perturbing their orbits unpredictably. A constant watch was a vital necessity.

The better news was that, as a byproduct of the impacter watch, the IAA was getting detailed data on the composition of the larger asteroids. Iron, carbon, nickel, phosphorus, nitrogen, gold, silver, platinum, even water was out there in vast abundance. Ripe for picking. Waiting for me to turn them into money, Humphries told himself, smiling happily.

Dan Randolph will send a team out to the Belt on a fusion rocket. The first mission will fail, of course, and then I’ll have Randolph where I want him. I’ll take control of Astro Corporation and we can put Randolph out to pasture, where he belongs.

Then a thought clouded his satisfaction. It’s been damned near six months since I hired Pancho Lane to keep an eye on Randolph. Why haven’t I heard from her?