The Precipice

SELENE NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Dan was watching intently as Kris Cardenas manipulated the roller dial with one manicured finger, her eyes riveted on the scanning microscope’s display screen. The image took shape on the screen, blurred, then came into crisp focus. The picture was grainy, gray on gray, with a slightly greenish cast. Dan could make out a pair of fuel tanks with piping that led to a spherical chamber. On the other side of the sphere was a narrow straight channel that ended in the flared bell of a rocket nozzle.

“It’s the whole assembly!” he blurted.

Cardenas turned toward him with a bright California smile. “Not bad for a month’s work, is it?”

Dan grinned back at her. “Kinda small, though, don’t you think?” They were alone in the nanotech lab this late at night. The other workstations were empty, all the cubicles dark, the ceiling lights turned down to their dim nighttime setting. Only in the corner where Dan and Cardenas sat on a pair of swivel stools were the overhead lights at their full brightness. The massive gray tubing of the scanning microscope loomed above them both like a hulking robot. Dan marveled inwardly that the big, bulky machine was capable of revealing individual atoms. Cardenas said, “Size isn’t important right now. It’s the pattern that counts.”

“Swell,” said Dan. “If I want to send a team of bacteria to the Belt, you’ve got the fusion drive all set for them.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Dan.”

“I was trying to be funny.”

Cardenas did not appreciate his humor. Tapping a bright blue-polished fingernail against the microscope’s display screen, she said, “We’ve programmed this set of nanos to understand the pattern of your fusion system: the tankage, the reactor chamber, the MHD channel, and the rocket nozzle.”

“Plus all the plumbing.”

“And the plumbing, yes. Now that they’ve learned the pattern, it’s just a matter of programming them to build the same thing at full scale.” Dan scratched his chin, then said, “And the full-scale job will be able to handle the necessary pressures and temperatures?”

“Most of it’s built of diamond.”

That wasn’t an answer to his question, Dan realized. Okay, so the virus-sized nanomachines could take individual atoms of carbon from a pile of soot and put them together one by one to build structures with the strength and thermal properties of pure diamond.

“But will that do the job?” he asked Cardenas.

Her lips became a tight line. She was obviously unhappy about something.

“Problem?” Dan asked.

“Not really,” Cardenas said, “But…”

“But what? I’ve got to know, Kris. I’m hanging my cojones out in the breeze on this.”

Raising both hands in a don’t-blame-me gesture, she said, “It’s Dun-can. He refuses to come up here. None of his team will leave Earth.” Dan had known that Duncan, Vertientes, and the rest of the team had opted to remain Earthside and communicate with Cardenas and her nanotech people electronically.

“You talk to him every day, don’t you?”

“Sure we do. We even have interactive VR sessions, if you can call them interactive.”

Feeling alarmed, Dan asked, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s that damned three-second lag,” Cardenas said. “You can’t really be interactive, you can’t even have a normal conversation when there’s three seconds between your question and their answer every blasted time.”

“Is it actually hindering your work?”

She made a face somewhere between a grimace and a pout. “Not hindering, exactly. It’s just so damned inconvenient! And time-consuming. Sometimes we have to go over a thing two or three times just to be sure we’ve heard them right. It soaks up time and makes everybody edgy.”

Dan thought it over. “Maybe I can talk them into coming up here.”

“I’ve tried to, god knows. Duncan won’t budge. Neither will any of his people.

They’re terrified of nanomachines.”

“No!”

“Yes. Even Professor Vertientes. You’d think he’d know better, at his age.”

“They’re scared of nanomachines?”

“They won’t admit it, of course,” said Cardenas. “They say that they might not be allowed to return to Earth if the authorities know that they’ve been working with nanomachines. I think that’s a crock; they’re just plain scared.”

“Maybe not,” Dan said. “Those Earthside bureaucrats get wonky ideas, especially about nanotechnology. I sure haven’t told anybody that I’m dealing with nanomachines.”

Her brows shot up. “But everybody knows—”

“Everybody knows that you and your staff are building a fusion rocket with nanos. As far as the general public is concerned, I don’t come near ’em. I’m a bigshot tycoon, I don’t get involved in the dirty work. I’ve never even been in your lab.” Cardenas nodded with newfound understanding. “That’s why you sneak in here late at night.”

“I don’t sneak anywhere,” Dan said, with great dignity. “I’ve never been here.

Period.”

She laughed. “Of course.”

“Kris,” he said, more seriously, “I think Duncan and the rest of them have legitimate reasons to be scared of coming up here and working with you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with that three-second lag. It’s their safety net.” Cardenas took a deep breath. “If I have to.”

“You’ve accomplished a helluva lot in just four weeks,” Dan pointed out. “I suppose that’s true. It’s just… it’d be so much easier if we could all work together under the same roof.”

Smiling gently, Dan said, “I never promised you a rose garden.” She was about to reply when the door to the corridor banged open, all the way across the mostly-darkened laboratory. Instinctively, Dan started to duck behind the big microscope tube, like a boy hiding from his mother. Then he recognized the hulking, shaggy, red-bearded figure of Big George Ambrose.

“That you, Dan?” George called as he strode between workstations toward them.

“Been lookin’ everywhere for you, y’know.”

Despite his size, George moved gracefully, light on his feet and perfectly at home in the low lunar gravity.

“I’m not here,” Dan growled.

“Right. But if you were, I’d hafta tell you that Pancho Lane’s missin’.”

“Missing?”

“Not in her quarters,” George said as he approached. “Not in any of the Astro offices. Not in the spaceport or the Grand Plaza. Not anyplace I’ve looked. Blyleven’s worried about her.”

Frank Blyleven was chief of Astro’s security department. Dan glanced at Cardenas, then said to George, “She could be in someone else’s quarters, you know.”

George looked surprised at the idea. “Pancho? She doesn’t have a guy and she doesn’t sleep around.”

“I wouldn’t worry—”

“She didn’t show up at the office t’day. She’s never missed an hour of work, let alone a whole day.”

That worried Dan. “Didn’t show up at all?”

“I asked everybody. No Pancho, all day. I been lookin’ for her all night. Nowhere in sight.”

“Did you ask her roommate?”

“Mandy Cunningham? She was out havin’ dinner with Humphries.”

“She should be back by now.”

George made a leering smirk. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Turning to Cardenas, Dan said, “I’d better look into this. George is right, Pancho’s had her nose to the grindstone ever since she came up here.”

“So maybe she’s taking a little r and r,” Cardenas said, unruffled.

“Maybe,” Dan admitted. But he didn’t think so.