dwarfed everything available to Kate Lonaker’s whole division. His mother was going to pressure him to do that. And, of course, they were all going to push him on the other thing, the matter he had intended to explain to Kate days ago but had evaded yet again.
He didn’t think she would understand — could understand. He had to live with it ail the time, two hundred and fifty years of family tradition and obligation, invisible to anyone but pressing down on Alex’s shoulders far harder than Ganymede’s gravity.
Ligon Industries dated back to Alonzo Ligon, the nineteenth-century tyrant who had built some of the first iron-hulled ships that sailed the oceans of Earth. Alex was a direct descendant, nine generations removed from Alonzo.
And that might not be the worst of it. Since setting off for the meeting, Alex had been cursed with another thought. He had been reviewing in his mind’s eye yesterday’s image of his mother as it had appeared in the display, and thought he could detect some troubling elements.
He came to the bronzed double doors with the discreet brass plate, Ligon industries; by appointment only, and peered into the eye-level camera above the plate. His retinal pattern was recognized, and the great doors swung silently open. The Level Three Fax on duty said, “Welcome, Mr. Alex. The meeting has already begun, and it is in the chamber to your right.”
Alex steeled himself and went straight in. The marble-topped oval table had sixteen positions, each with its own work station. Eleven seats were occupied. Alex stepped quietly across a deep carpet of living purple and green and sat down next to his mother. Lena Ligon nodded a greeting. The man at the end of the table did not nod, or change for a moment his tone of voice.
“That phase of the work is concluded,” he said. “The Starseed is on its way, and a financial accounting must be made. The details are available to anyone here who wishes to examine them, but my summary is simple: Ligon Industries took a calculated risk in accepting a contract to mine helium-three from the atmosphere of Jupiter and deliver it into rendezvous orbit with the Starseed vessel. We also took a bath. At the time, I recommended against signing the contract, and it proves to have been a financial disaster.”
Alex glanced around the table. Prosper Ligon was the ranking family member by virtue of seniority. No matter who was senior, however, Prosper Ligon’s conclusions on questions like this were not likely to be challenged. Alex’s great-uncle was the chief financial analyst and de facto head of the company, a lifelong bachelor and a celibate, slow, deliberate, and precise in thought and deed. Those thoughts and deeds excluded sexual activities of any kind. Although only in his mid-sixties, with his long face and yellowed teeth Prosper was easy to imagine in old age as a skinny and weathered donkey.
His lifestyle and work habits were legendary. Rising at three, he ate a simple breakfast and proceeded at once to his office in a dark corner of the company’s corporate facility. There he sat at a cluttered desk and worked, through the day, through the evening, and on late into the night. No task appeared boring to him when it involved financial elements. Numbers were the donkey’s passion, and apparently numbers alone. It was rumored — and probably no more than rumor — that he disliked computers, and performed his voluminous calculations by hand. When he ate it was infrequently, alone, and in random amounts.
“The contract provides an option,” Prosper went on, “to continue the work and collect the helium-3 needed to fuel Starseed-Two. That leaves us with a difficult decision.”
Alex did his survey of the family members present. Around the table, to his left, were his mother Lena, then the two childless great-aunts, Cora and Agatha, and then Cousin Hector Ligon, with two empty chairs between him and Prosper Ligon. Two more empty seats lay on Prosper’s left. The other four places were occupied by girl cousins Juliana, Rezel, and Tanya, and in the place to Alex’s right Uncle Karolus sat scowling down at the table.
“It’s obvious what we do,” Karolus growled. “We get out now, and cut our losses. We should never have taken that bloody contract. I was against it.”
As Alex recalled, his uncle had been the one who pushed hardest for taking on the Starseed contract. However, Prosper Ligon did not choose to argue. “Perhaps you were opposed,” he said. “So was I. And if, five years ago, we had known about the difficulty of mining Jupiter’s atmosphere, even with the best Von Neumanns available, then everyone at this table would surely have sided with us. That, however, is history. The number of Von Neumanns lost during ascent from Jupiter wrote red all over our balance sheet.”
Cousin Juliana was interested only in certain things, but company finance was one of them. If Uncle Prosper ever retired — or, more likely, his dead body was dragged away from his desk to the knacker’s yard — then she was a logical candidate to take over. She said, “The Von Neumanns are not much better today than they were three years ago. If it was a loss operation then, it will still be one. How much of a disaster?”
Prosper Ligon’s voice did not waver. “We sacrificed approximately twenty percent of Ligon Industries’ total assets.”
Cousin Hector said, “Wow!”
“Wow, indeed.” Prosper Ligon nodded slowly. His head seemed a size too large for his skinny neck. “However, I am in favor of accepting the contract option to provide helium-3 for Starseed-Two.”
Eyebrows were raised all around the table.
Hector had his brow furrowed in obvious thought. He glanced at his cousins, but his comment was directed to his great-uncle. “You’re going to lose all our money!”
“Thank you, Hector, for that acute observation. Such, however, is not my intention.”
Cousin Juliana, as usual, came in on Hector’s behalf. “Do you think that our learning curve on the first contract was steep enough to turn another one profitable?”
“We are certainly more familiar with the Von Neumanns’ performance, and with other risk factors. But the big changes are elsewhere.” At Prosper Ligon’s gesture, the lights in the room dimmed. In the display volume behind him appeared an image of Jupiter with its train of satellites.
“Mine Jupiter for helium-3,” he said softly, as though talking to himself in the dim light. “It seemed like the right decision at the time. The isotope is more abundant there than anywhere else in the System. We could construct Hebe Station, for docking of the loaded Von Neumanns and their general service. Ganymede was close enough for overall command and control. We could see acceptable profit margins. There was one great problem, and it was an invisible one.” He swiveled to point at the display. “Jupiter itself. Or rather, Jupiter’s gravity field. The escape velocity from the upper atmosphere is sixty kilometers a second. The Von Neumanns were strained to the limit, and in many cases past the limit. Their loss and the accompanying delays were largely responsible for our financial losses.”
“Hmm.” Karolus snorted from the other end of the table. If Prosper Ligon was a donkey, Karolus was a bull. “The Von Neumanns are no better than they were, you just admitted that. And Jupiter was still the same size, last time I looked. I haven’t noticed any change.”
“Nor have I. But there have been other changes.” Prosper Ligon made some unseen gesture, and the glowing image of the Jovian system vanished. “Every year,” he said in the darkness, “human civilization advances a little farther outward. Every year, the available resources beyond Jupiter increase.”
The room brightened again with light from the display volume, but it had changed. Now it showed another planet, recognizable as Saturn from the flattened disk, complex ring system, and attendant moons.
“The atmosphere of Saturn also contains an abundance of helium-3,” Prosper went on. The escape velocity is thirty-six kilometers a second — substantial, but little more than half that of Jupiter. This difference creates a vast change in the economics. I have performed a financial assessment. If we switch to Saturn as the source of fuel for Starseed-Two and move the ship itself and our own operations there, we will recoup all the losses suffered on the contract to date.”
The rest of the room went dead silent. At last Lena Ligon ventured, “You mean — leave Ganymede?”
The last upheaval had been close to half a century ago, when Gonville Ligon had moved family and empire from the bustling metropolis of Buenos Aires to the stark caverns of Ganymede. That transition had taken place over the strenuous objections of everyone. Gonville, a true descendant of iron-man Alonzo Ligon, had refused to listen. He simply said, “The future of industrial development isn’t on Earth, or even on Mars. It’s in the Outer System. That’s where we’re going. Anybody who doesn’t want to come along, bugger them. They can stay behind and try to scratch out a living on Earth.”
The Great War had proved Gonville right in a way that he had never anticipated. Now Prosper allowed himself a dry little neigh of amusement. “No, no, not at all. I am not proposing relocation. Most of us will remain here. The Starseed operation will move out. As to our base there, I have examined the choices.”
