The Precipice

STARPOWER 1

Lars Fuchs was scowling as he peered at the display screen. “Well?” Dan prompted.

The two men stood in the cramped sensor bay, where Fuchs had rigged a makeshift laboratory by yanking one of the ship’s mass spectrometers from its mounting and putting it on the repair bench where he was using it to examine the sample of dull gray wire that Pancho had brought in. A thin sky-blue coolant tube lay alongside the wire. Dan knew the wire had originally run through the tube, like an arm in a sleeve.

“There is no leak in the coolant line,” Fuchs said. “I drove pressurized nitrogen through it and it didn’t leak.”

Dan felt puzzled. “Then what’s causing the hot spot?” Pointing to the tangle of curves displayed on the screen, Fuchs said, “The composition of the wire seems to match the specifications quite closely: yttrium, barium, copper, oxygen — all the elements are in their proper proportions.”

“That doesn’t tell us diddley-squat,” Dan groused.

Fuchs’s frown deepened as he studied the display. “The copper level seems slightly low.”

“Low?”

“That might be a manufacturing defect. Perhaps that’s the reason for the problem.”

“But there’s no leak?”

Fuchs rubbed his broad, square chin. “None that I can detect with this equipment. Really, we don’t have the proper equipment for diagnosing this. We would need a much more powerful microscope and—”

“Dan, we’re receiving a call for you,” Amanda’s voice came through the speaker in the sensor bay’s overhead. “It’s from George Ambrose, marked urgent and confidential.”

“I’d better get back up to the bridge,” Dan said. “Do the best you can, Lars, with what you’ve got.”

Fuchs nodded unhappily. How can a man accomplish anything without the proper tools? he asked himself. With a heavy sigh, he turned back to the display screen while Randolph ducked through the hatch and headed forward. What other sensors can I take from the set we have to examine this bit of wire? Everything we have here has been designed to measure gross chemical composition of asteroids, not fine details of a snippet of superconducting wire. With nothing better that he could think of, Fuchs fired up the mass spectrometer again and took another sampling of the wire’s composition. When the curves took shape on the display screen his eyes went wide with surprised disbelief. George held one meaty hand over the earphone clamped to the side of his head, listening intently to Dan Randolph’s tense, urgent voice. There was no video transmission; Dan had sent audio only.

“… you go with Blyleven to Stavenger himself and tell him what’s happened. Stavenger can bypass a lot of red tape and get Selene’s security people to turn the place upside down. You can’t hide much in a closed community like Selene. A really thorough search will find Dr. Cardenas… or her body.” George nodded unconsciously as he listened. Once, ten years earlier, he had lived as a fugitive on the fringes of Selene, an outcast among other outcasts who called themselves the Lunar Underground. But they had survived principally on the sufferance of Selene’s “straight” community. They could exist on the fringes because nobody cared about them, as long as they didn’t make nuisances of themselves.

George agreed with Dan, up to a point. If Selene’s security cops wanted to find a person, there wasn’t much chance of hiding. But a dead body could be toted outside, concealed in a tractor, and dumped in the barren wilderness of the Moon’s airless surface.

“Okay, Dan,” he half-whispered into the pin-mike at his lips. “I’ll get to Stavenger and we’ll find Dr. Cardenas, unless she’s already dead.” Frank Blyleven was head of Astro corporate security. A round, florid-faced, joviallooking man with thinning straw-colored hair that he wore down to his collar, Blyleven seemed to have a grandfatherly smile etched permanently on his face. It unnerved George to see the security director smiling as he explained about Dr. Cardenas’s disappearance.

“This is way out of our league,” he said, without the slightest change in expression. “I mean, I only have half-a-dozen people in my group. We chase down industrial espionage and petty theft, for the lord’s sweet sake, not kidnappings.” George knew how well Astro’s security team chased down petty theft. The Lunar Underground lived on small “borrowings” from corporate storerooms. “Dan said we should go to Stavenger,” said George.

Nodding cheerfully, Blyleven turned to his desktop phone and asked for Douglas Stavenger.

When George and Blyleven were ushered into Stavenger’s office, up in the Grand Plaza, a fourth man was sitting in front of Stavenger’s broad, glistening desk. Stavenger introduced him as Ulrick Maas, director of security for Selene. Maas looked like a real cop to George: muscular build, dark, suspicious eyes, scalp shaved bald.

“You realize that this may be nothing to get alarmed about,” Stavenger said once all four men were seated. “But Kris Cardenas isn’t the kind of woman who suddenly goes into hiding, so I think we ought to try to find her.”

“She’s in Humphries’s place, down at the bottom level,” George said flatly. Stavenger leaned back in his desk chair. Maas stared at George through narrowed eyes; Blyleven looked as if he were thinking about much more pleasant things. Through the office windows George could see the broad expanse of the Grand Plaza. A couple of kids were flying above the greenspace like a pair of birds, flapping their brightly-colored rented plastic wings.

Grimacing, Stavenger asked, “You’re certain of that?”

“It’s Humphries she was scared of,” George replied. “Where else would he stash her?”

“That area down there is the property of the Humphries Trust,” Maas pointed out.

“Selene doesn’t have legal authority to go in and search it.”

“Not even if her life’s on the line?” George asked.

Stavenger said to Maas, “Rick, I think you’ll have to initiate a search.”

“Of Humphries’s place?” George asked.

“Of all of Selene proper,” Stavenger said. “Humphries’s place is a different matter.” He turned to the phone and asked it to connect him with Martin Humphries.

“Dr. Cardenas?” Martin Humphries said to Stavenger’s image on his patio wallscreen. “You mean the scientist?”

“Yes,” said Stavenger, looking strained. “She’s missing.” Humphries got up from the chaise longue on which he’d been reclining while he reviewed his father’s holdings in Libya.

“I don’t understand,” he said to Stavenger’s image, trying to look puzzled. “Why are you telling me about this?”

“The security office has initiated a search for her throughout Selene. I’d appreciate it if you allowed them to search your premises, as well.”

“My home?”

“It’s just a formality, Mr. Humphries,” Stavenger said, with an obviously false smile. “You know security types: they want to dot every eye and cross every tee.”

“Yes, I suppose they do,” Humphries replied, smiling back. “I suppose someone could hide out in the gardens, couldn’t they?”

“Or inside the house. It’s rather large.”

“H’mm, yes, I suppose it is — by Selene standards.” He took a breath, then said reluctantly, “Very well, let them send a team down here. I have no objections.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome,” said Humphries. He snapped his fingers to shut down the connection. Then he went into the house, walking swiftly to his office. He snapped his fingers as he entered the office. The phone screen lit up. “Get Blyleven down here on the double. I’ve got a job for him.”