The big, shaggy-bearded, redheaded Aussie had started his career as an engineer at Moonbase, long before it became the independent nation of Selene. He had lost his job in one of the economic wobbles of those early days and became a fugitive, a non-person who lived by his wits in the shadowy black market of the “lunar underground.” Then he’d run into Dan Randolph, who made George respectable again. By the time Randolph died, George was a rock rat, plying the dark and lonely expanse of the Belt in search of a fortune. Eventually he was elected chief administrator of Ceres. Now he was returning home from Humphries’s winter solstice party.
He had spent the six days of his return voyage in a liaison with the torch ship’s propulsion engineer, a delightful young Vietnamese woman of extraordinary beauty who talked about fusion rocket systems between passionate bouts of lovemaking. George had been flabbergasted by the unexpected affair, until he realized that she wanted a position on a prospecting ship and a fling with the chief of the rock rats’ community looked to her like a good way to get one.
Well, thought George as he packed his one travel bag, it was fun while it lasted. He told her he’d introduce her to a few prospectors; some of them might need a propulsion engineer. Still, he felt sad about the affair. I’ve been manipulated, he realized. Then, despite himself, he broke into a rueful grin. She’s pretty good at manipulating he had to admit.
Once his travel bag was zipped up, George instructed the ship’s computer to display any messages waiting for him. The wall screen instantly showed a long list. He hadn’t been paying attention to his duties for the past several days, he knew. Being chief administrator means bein’ a mediator, a decision-maker, even a father/confessor to everyone and anyone in the fookin’ Belt, he grumbled silently.
One message, though, was from Pancho Lane.
Surprised and curious, George ordered her message on-screen. The computer displayed a wavering, eye- straining hash of colored streaks. Pancho’s message was scrambled. George had to pull out his personal palmcomp and hunt for the combination to descramble it.
At last Pancho’s lean, lantern-jawed face filled with screen. “Hi George. Sorry we didn’t get to spend more time together before you had to take off. Lemme ask you a question: Can you contact Lars if you need to? I might hafta talk to him.”
The screen went blank.
George stared at it thoughtfully, wondering: Now why in all the caverns of hell would Pancho need to talk to Lars Fuchs?
HELL CRATER
Pancho always grinned when she thought about Father Maximilian J. Hell, the Jesuit astronomer for whom this thirty-kilometer-wide lunar crater had been named. Wily promoters such as Sam Gunn had capitalized on the name and built a no-holds-barred resort city at Hell Crater, complete with gambling casinos and euphemistically named “honeymoon hotels.”
Astro Corporation had made a fair pocketful of profits from building part of the resort complex. But Pancho wasn’t visiting Hell to check on corporate interests. She had received a message from Amanda to meet her at the medical center there. Mandy’s message had come by a tortuously circuitous route, imbedded in a seemingly innocuous invitation to Selene’s annual Independence Day celebration, sent by none other than Douglas Stavenger.
Ever since the Christmas party Pancho had been trying to see Amanda, to renew the friendship that had come to a screeching halt once Mandy had married Humphries. Amanda replied politely to each of Pancho’s invitations, but somehow always had an excuse to postpone a meeting. Mandy never replied in real time; her messages were always recorded. Pancho studied Amanda’s face each time, searching for some hint of how Mandy was and why she wouldn’t—or, more likely, couldn’t—get away from Humphries long enough to have lunch with an old pal.
So when Stavenger’s video invitation popped up on Pancho’s screen, she was staggered to see his youthful face morph into Amanda’s features. “Please meet me at the Fossel Medical Center, Pancho, next Wednesday at eleven-thirty.”
Then her image winked out and Doug Stavenger’s was smiling at her again. Pancho couldn’t recapture Mandy’s message, either. It was gone completely.
Curiouser and curiouser, Pancho thought as she rode the cable car from Selene. The cable lines were the cheapest and most efficient transportation system on the Moon. Rockets were faster, and there was a regular rocket shuttle between Selene and the growing astronomical observatory complex at Farside. But the cable cars ran up and over the Alphonsus ringwall mountains and out to Copernicus, Hell, and the other budding centers being built on the Moon’s near side. There were even plans afoot to link Selene with the bases being built in the lunar south polar region by cable systems.
A corporate executive of Pancho’s stature could have commandeered a car for herself, or even flown over to Hell in her own rocket hopper. But that wasn’t Pancho’s style. She enjoyed being as inconspicuous as possible, and found it valuable to see what the ordinary residents of Selene—the self-styled Lunatics—were thinking and doing. Besides, she didn’t want to call the attention of Humphries’s ever-present spies to the fact that she was going, literally, to Hell.
So she whizzed along twenty meters above the flat, pockmarked, rock-strewn surface of Mare Nubium, wondering what Amanda was up to. The cable car’s interior was almost exactly like a spacecraft’s passenger cabin, except that Pancho could feel it swaying slightly as she sat in her padded chair. Small windows lined each side of the cabin, and there was a pair of larger curving windows up forward, where tourists or romantics could get a broad view of the barren lunar landscape rushing past. What’d that old astronaut call it? Pancho asked herself. Then she remembered: “Magnificent desolation.”
Those front seats were already taken, so Pancho slouched back in her chair and pulled out her palmcomp. Might’s well get some work done, she told herself. But she couldn’t help staring out at the mountains of the highlands rising beyond the horizon, stark and bare in the harsh unfiltered sunlight.
At last the car popped into the yawning airlock at Hell Crater. Pancho hurried through the reception center and out into the main plaza. The domed plaza was circular, which made it seem bigger than the plaza at Selene. Pancho marveled at the crowds that bustled along the shrubbery-lined walkways: elderly couples, plenty of younger singles, whole families with laughing, excited kids. Most of the tourists were stumbling in the low lunar gravity, even in the weighted boots they had rented. Despite the catastrophes that had smitten Earth, there were still enough people with enough wealth to make Hell a profitable resort.
Shaking her head ruefully as she walked toward the medical center, Pancho thought about how Hotel Luna back at Selene was practically bankrupt. It wasn’t enough to a offer first-rate hotel facility on the Moon, she realized. Not anymore. But give people gambling, prostitution, and recreational drugs and they’ll come up and spend their money. Of course, nobody accepted cash. All financial transactions were computerized, which helped keep everybody reasonably honest. For a modest percentage of the gross, the government of Selene policed the complex and saw to it that visitors got what they paid for, nothing more and nothing less. Even the fundamentalists among Selene’s population appreciated the income that kept their taxes low, although they grumbled about the sinful disgrace of Hell.
As Pancho pushed through the lobby door of the Fossel Medical Center, she immediately saw that the center’s clientele consisted almost entirely of two types: senior citizens with chronic complaints, and very beautiful prostitutes—men as well as women—who were required to have their health checked regularly. Pancho was wearing a well-tailored business suit, but still the “working women” made her feel shabby.
She strode up to the reception center, which was nothing more than a set of flat screens set into the paneling of the curved wall. Pancho picked the screen marked visitors and spoke her name slowly and clearly.
“You are expected in Room 21-A,” said a synthesized voice, while the screen displayed a floor plan with Room 21-A outlined in blinking red. “Follow the red floor lights, please.”
Pancho followed the lights set into the floor tiles and found 21-A without trouble. A couple of security people were in the corridor, a man at one end and a woman at the other, both dressed in ordinary coveralls, both trying to look unobtrusive. HSS flunkies, Pancho guessed.
