The Precipice

GRAND PLAZA

This is getting silly, Pancho thought. Humphries doesn’t trust phones or electronic links, too easy to tap, he says. So we have to meet face-to-face, in person, but in places where we won’t be noticed together. And he’s running out of places. He had stopped inviting Pancho to his home, down at the bottom level. Worried about somebody seeing her down there where she doesn’t belong, he claimed. But Pancho knew he’d stopped inviting her down there once she’d introduced him to Mandy. So his house was now out.

Going outside on tourist jaunts is dumb, she thought. Besides, sooner or later some tourist is gonna recognize the high and mighty Martin Humphries on his bus. And how many times can an Astro employee take an afternoon off to go on a bus ride up on the surface? It’s silly.

So now she was strolling along one of the paved paths that meandered through the Grand Plaza. Lots of grass and flowery shrubs and even some trees. Nothing as lush as Humphries had down at his grotto, but the Plaza was pleasant, relaxed, open and green.

For a town that’s only got about three thousand permanent residents, Pancho thought, there’s an awful lot of people up here sashaying around. The walking paths weren’t exactly crowded, but there were plenty of people strolling along. Pancho had no trouble telling the Selene citizens from the rare tourists: the locals shuffled along easily in the low gravity and dressed casually in coveralls or running suits, for the most part; the few tourists she spotted wore splashy tee-shirts and vacation shorts and hopped and stumbled awkwardly, despite their weighted boots. Some of the women had bought expensive frocks in the Plaza shops and were showing them off as they oh-so-carefully stepped along the winding paths. The Selenites smiled and greeted each other as they passed; the tourists tended to be more guarded and uncertain of themselves. Funny, Pancho thought: anybody with enough money and free time to come up here for a vacation oughtta be more relaxed.

The outdoor theater was jammed, Pancho saw. She remembered a news bulletin about Selene’s dance club performing low-gravity ballet. All in all, it seemed a normal weekday evening in the Plaza, nothing out of the ordinary. All the paths winding through the greenery led to the long windows set into the far end of the Plaza dome. Made of lunar glassteel, they were perfectly transparent yet had the structural strength of the reinforced concrete that made up the rest of the dome’s structure. It was still daylight outside, and would be for another two hundred-some hours. A few tourists had stopped to gape out at the cracked, pockmarked floor of Alphonsus.

“It looks so dead!” said one of the women.

“And empty,” her husband muttered.

“Makes you wonder why anyone ever came up here to live.” Pancho huffed impatiently. You try growing up in Lubbock, or getting flooded out in Houston, see how much better the Moon looks to you. “Good evening,” said Martin Humphries.

Pancho had not seen him approaching; she’d been looking through the windows at the outside, listening to the tourists’ comments.

“Howdy,” she said.

He was wearing dark slacks with a beige pullover shirt. And sandals, no less. His “ordinary guy” disguise, Pancho thought. She herself was in the same sky-blue coveralls she’d been wearing all day, with an Astro Corporation logo over the left breast pocket and her name stenciled just above it.

Gesturing to a concrete bench at the edge of the path, Humphries said, “Let’s sit down. There are no cameras out here to see us together.” They sat. A family strolled by, parents and two little boys, no more than four or five. Lunatics. Selenites. The kids might even have been born here, she thought. “What have you been up to lately?” Humphries asked casually.

Truthfully, Pancho reported, “We’ve started the detailed mission planning. Randolph’s picked out a couple of target asteroids for us to rendezvous with, and now Mandy and me are workin’ out the optimum trajectory, trip times, supply needs, failure modes… stuff like that.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Not when your life hangs on it.”

Humphries conceded the point with a nod. “The construction of the propulsion system is proceeding on schedule?”

“You’d know more about that than I would.”

“It is,” he said.

“That’s what I figured. Dan’d go ballistic if there were any holdups there.”

“Amanda refuses to see me,” he said.

For a moment Pancho was jarred by the sudden change of subject. Recovering quickly, she replied, “Mandy’s got enough on her hands. This isn’t the time for her to get involved with somebody… anybody.”

“I want her off the mission.”

“You can’t do that to her!” Pancho blurted.

“Why not?”

“It’d ruin her career, that’s why. Bounced off the first crewed mission to the Belt:

how’d that look on her resume?”

“She won’t need a resume. I’m going to marry her.”

Pancho stared at him. He was serious.

“For how long?” she asked coldly.

Anger flared in Humphries’s eyes. “Just because my first two marriages didn’t work out, there’s no reason to think this one won’t.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Besides,” Humphries went on, “if it doesn’t work out she’ll get a very handsome settlement out of me. She’ll never have to work again.” Pancho said nothing. She was thinking, If it doesn’t work out he’ll use every lawyer he’s got to throw Mandy out into the cold without a cent. If it doesn’t work out he’ll hate her just as much as he hates his first two wives. “I want you to help convince her to marry me,” Humphries said. Pancho’s mind was spinning. You gotta be careful here, she warned herself. Don’t get him mad at you.

“Mr. Humphries, that’s something I just plain can’t do. This isn’t a business deal, I can’t talk her into doin’ something she doesn’t want to do. Nobody can. Except maybe you.”

“But she won’t see me!”

“I know, I know,” she said, as sympathetically as she could. “It’s just too much pressure for her, what with the mission and all.”

“That’s why I want her off the mission.”

“Don’t do that to her. Please.”

“My mind’s made up.”

Pancho sighed unhappily.”Well, you’re just gonna have to talk to Dan Randolph about that. He’s the boss, not me.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Humphries said firmly.

“I wish you wouldn’t. Whyn’t you let us go out to the Belt. When we get back Mandy’ll be able to give you her full attention.”

“No.” Humphries shook his head. “You might not get back.”

“We will.”

“You might not. I don’t want to take the chance of losing her.” Pancho looked into his eyes. They were still cold, unreadable, like the eyes of a professional card shark she’d known once while she’d been supporting herself through the University of Nevada in Las Vegas by working at one of the casinos. Not the eyes of a lovesick swain. Not the eyes of a man whose heart might break.

“Better talk to Randolph, then,” she said.

“I will.”

Feeling weary and more than a little afraid of what was going to happen with Mandy, Pancho got to her feet. Humphries stood up, too, and she noticed that he was several centimeters shorter than she’d thought him to be. Glancing down at his sandals, she thought, the sumbitch must have lifts in his regular shoes. “By the way,” Humphries said, his voice hard-edged, “someone’s hacked into my private files.”

She was genuinely surprised that he’d found out so quickly. It must have shown on her face.

“Randolph is a lot smarter than I thought he was, but it won’t do him any good.”

“You mean he’s the one who hacked you?”

“Who else? One of his people, obviously. I want you to find out who. And how.”

“I can’t do that!” Pancho blurted.

“Why not?”

“I’ll get caught. I’m not a chip freak.”

His eyes bored into her for a painfully long moment. “You find out who did it.

And how it was done. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

With a grim smile, Humphries answered, “I’ll think of something.”