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SPIRALS


by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle


    There are always people who want to revise history. No hero is so great that someone wonÆt take a shot at him. Not even Jack Halfey.
    Yes, I knew Jack Halfey. You may not remember my name. But in the main airlock of industrial Station One thereÆs an inscribed block of industrial diamond, and my name is sixth down: Cornelius L. Riggs, Metallurgist. And you might have seen my face at the funeral.
    You mast remember the funeral. All across the solar system work stopped while Jack Halfey took his final trek into the sun. He wanted it that way, and no spacer was going to refuse Jack HalfeyÆs last request, no matter how expensive it might be. Even the downers got in the act. They didnÆt help pay the cost, but they spent hundreds of millions on sending reporters and cameras to the Moon..
    That funeral damned near killed me. The kids who took me to the Moon werenÆt supposed to let the ship take more than half a gravity. My bones are over a hundred years old, and theyÆre fragile. For that young squirt of a pilot the landing may have been smooth, but she hit a full gee for a second there, and I thought my time had come.
    I had to go, of course. The records say I was JackÆs best friend, the man whoÆd saved his life, and being one of the last survivors of the Great Trek makes me somebody special. Noth ing would do but that I push the button to send Jack on his ôfinal spiral into the sun.ö to quote a downer reporter.
    I still see TriVee programs about ships ôspiralingö into the sun. YouÆd think seventy yeals and more after the Great Trek the schools would teach kids something about space.
    When I staggered outside in lunar gravityùlighter than the 20% gravity we keep in the Skylark. just enough to feel the differenceùthe reporters were all over me. Why, they demanded, did Jack want to go into the sun? Cremation and scattering of ashes is good enough for most spacers. It was good enough for JackÆs wife. Some send their ashes back to Earth; some are scattered into the solar wind, to be flung throughout the universe; some prefer to go back into the soil of a colony sphere. But why the sun?
    IÆve wondered myself. I never was good at reading JackÆs mind. The question that nearly drove me crazy, and did drive me to murder, was: why did Jack Halfey make the Great Trek in the first place?
    I finally did learn the answer to that one. Be patient.

    Probably there will never be another funeral like JackÆs. The Big Push is only a third finished, and itÆs still two hundred miles of the biggest linear accelerator ever built, an electronicpowered railway crawling across the Earthside face of the Moon. One day weÆll use it to launch starships. WeÆll fire when the Moon is full, to add the EarthÆs and MoonÆs orbital velocities to the speed of the starship, and to give the downers a thrill. But we launched Jack when the Moon was new, with precisely enough velocity to cancel the EarthÆs orbital speed of eighteen miles per second, It would have cost less to send him into interstellar space.
    Jack didnÆt drop in any spiral. The Earth went on and the coffin stayed behind, then it started to fall into the Sun. It fell ninety-three million miles just like a falling safe, except for that peculiar wiggle when he really got into the sunÆs magnetic field. Moonbase is going to do it again with a probe. They want to know more about that wiggle.
    The pilot was a lot more careful getting me home, and now IÆm back aboard the Skylailc in a room near the axis where the heart patients stay; and on my desk is this pile of garbage
from a history professor at Harvard who has absolutely proved that we would have had space industries and space colonies without Jack Halfey. There are no indispensible men.
    In the words of a famous American president: Bullshit! WeÆve made all the downers so rich that they canÆt remember what it was like back then.
    And it was grim. If we hadnÆt got space industries established before 2020 weÆd never have been able to afford them at all. Things were that thin. By 2020 AD. there wouldnÆt have been any resources to invest. TheyÆd have all gone into keeping eleven billion downers alive (barely!) and anybody who proposed ôthrowing money into outer spaceö would have been lynched.
    God knows it was that way when Jack Halfey started.

    I first met Jack Halfey at UCLA. He was a grad student in architecture, having got his engineering physics degree from Cal Tech. HeÆd also been involved in a number of construction jobsùamong them Hale ObservatoryÆs big orbital telescope while he was still an undergrad at Cal Techùand he was already famous. Everyone knows he was brilliant, and theyÆre right, but he had another secret weapon: he worked his arse off. He had to. Insomnia. Jack couldnÆt sleep more than a couple of hours a night, and to get even that much sleep he had to get laid first.
    I know about this because when I met, Jack he was living with my sister. Ruthie told me that theyÆd go to bed, and Jack would sleep a couple of hours, and up heÆd be, back at work, because once he woke up there was no point in lying in bed.
    On nights when they couldnÆt make Out he fltver went to bed at all, and he was pure hell to live with the next day.
    She also told me he was one mercenary son of a bitch. That doesnÆt square with the public image of Jack Halfey, savior of mankind, but it happens to be true, and he never made much of a secret of it. He wanted to get rich fast. His ambition was to lie around Rio de JaneiroÆs beaches and sample the local wines and women; and he had his life all mapped out so that heÆd be able to retire before he was forty.
    I knew him for a couple of months, then he left UCLA to be a department head in the construction of the big Tucson arcology. There was a tearful scene with Ruthie: she didnÆt fit
into JackÆs image for the future, and he wasnÆt very gentle about how he told her he was leaving. He stormed out of her apartment carrying his suitcase while Ruthie and I~ shouted curses at him, and that was that.
    I never expected to see him again.
    When I graduated there was this problem: I was a metallurgist, and there were a lot of us. Metallurgists had been in big demand when I started UCLA, so naturally everybody studied metallurgy and matCrials science; by the time I graduated it was damned tough getting a job.
    The depression didnÆt help much either. I graduated right in the middle of it. Runaway inflation, research chopped to the bone, environmentalists and Only One Earthers and Friends of Man and the Earth and other such yo-yoÆs on the rise; in those days there was a new energy crisis every couple of years, and when I got my sheepskin we were in the middle of. I think, number 6. Industry was laying off, not hiring.
    There was one job I knew of. A notice on the UCLA careers board. ôMetallurgist wanted. High pay, long hours, high risk. Guaranteed wealthy in ten years if you live through it.ö
    That doesnÆt sound very attractive just now, but in those days it looked better. Better than welfare, anyway, especially since the welfare offices were having trouble meeting their staff payrolls, so there wasnÆt a lot left over to hand Out to their clients.
    So, I sent in an application and found myself one of about a hundred whoÆd got past the paperwork screening. The interview was on campus with a standard personnel officer type who seemed more interested in my sports record than my abilities as a metallurgist. He also liked my employment history: IÆd done summer jobs in heavy steel construction. He wouldnÆt
tell me what the job was for.
    ôNot secret work,ö he said. ôBut weÆd as soon not let it out to anyone weÆre not seriously interested in.ö He smiled and stood up, indicating the interview was over. ôWeÆll let you knowö
    A couple of days later I got a call at the fraternity house.
    They wanted me at the Wilshire headquarters of United Space Industries.

    I checked around the house. but didnÆt get any new information. USI had contracts for a good bit of space work, including the lunar mines. Maybe thatÆs it. I thought. I could hope, anyway.
    When I got to USI the receptionist led me into a comfortable room and asked me to sit down in a big Eames chair. The chair faced an enormous TV screen (flat: TriVee wasnÆt common in those days. Maybe it was before TriVee at all; itÆs been a long time, and I donÆt remember). She typed something on an input console, and we waited a few minutes, and the screen came
to life.
    It showed an old man floating in mid-air..
    The background looked like a spacecraft, which wasnÆt surprising. I recognized Admiral Robert McLeve. He had to be eighty or more, but he didnÆt look it.
    ôGood morning,ö he said.
    The receptionist left. ôGood morning,ö I told the screen. There was a faint red light on a lens by the screen, and I assumed he could see me as well as! could see him. ôIÆd kind of hoped for the Moon. I didnÆt expect the OÆNeill colony,ö I added.
    It took a while before he reacted, confirming my guess: a second and a half each way for the message, and the way he was floating meant zero gravity. I couldnÆt think of anything but the Construction Shack (thatÆs what they called it then) that fit the description.
    ôThis is where we are,ö McLeve said. ôThe duty tour is five years. High pay, and you save it all. Not mush to spend money on out here. Unless you drink. Good liquor costs like UÆansplant rights on your kidneys. So does bad liquor, because you still have to lift it.ö
    ôSavings donÆt mean much,ö I said.
    ôTrue.ö McLeve grimaced at the thought. Inflation was running better than 20%. The politicians said they would have it whipped Real Soon Now, but nobody believed them. ôWeÆve got arrangements to have three quarters of your money banked in Swiss francs. If you go back early, you lose that part of your pay. We need somebody in your field, part time on the Moon, part time up here in the Shack. From your record I think youÆd do. Still want the job?ö
Industries.
    I wanted it all right. I was never a nut on the space industries bitùI was never a nut on anythingùbut it sounded like good work. Exciting, a chance to see something of the solar system (well, of near-Earth space and the Moon; nobody had gone further than that) as well as to save a lot of money. And with that job on my record IÆd be in demand when I came home.
    As to why me. it was obvious when I thought about it. There were lots of good metallurgists, but not many had been finalists in the Olympic gymnastics team trials. I hadnÆt won a place on the team, but IÆd sure proved I knew how to handle myself. Add to that the heavy construction work experience and I was a natural. I sweated out the job appointment, but it came through, and pretty soon I was at Canaveral. strapping myself into a Shuttle seat, and having second and third thoughts about the whole thing.
    There were five of us. We lifted out from the Cape in the Shuttle, then transfened in Earth orbit to a tug that wasnÆt a lot bigger than the old Apollo capsules had been. The trip was three days, and crowded. The others were going to Moon base. They refueled my tug in lunar orbit and sent me off alone to the Construction Shack. The ship was guided from the Shack.
and It was scary as hell becaus~there wasnÆt anything to do but wonder if they knew what they were doing. It took as long to get from the Moon to the Shack as it had to get to the Moon from Earth,. which isnÆt surprising because itÆs the same dis. tance: the Shack was in one of the stable libration points that make an equilateral triangle with the Earth and the MoOn. Anything put there will stay there forever.
    The only viewport was a small thing in the forward end of the tug. Naturally we came in ass-backwards so I didnÆt see much.
    Today we call it the Skylark, and what you see as you approach is a sphere half a kilometer across. It rotates every two minutes, and thereÆs all kinds of junk moored to the axis of rotation. Mirrors, the laser and power targets, the long thin spine of the mass driver, the ring of agricultural pods, the big telescope; a confusion of equipment.
    It wasnÆt that way when I first saw it. The sphere was nearly all there was, except for a spiderweb framework to hold the solar power panels. The frame was bigger than the sphere, but
it didnÆt look very substantial. At first sight the Shack was a pebbled sphere, a golf ball stuck in a spiderÆs web.
    McLeve met me at the airlock. He was long of limb, and startlingly thin, and his face and neck were a maze of wrinkles. But his back was straight, and when he smiled the wrinkles all aligned themselves. Laugh-lines.
    Before I left Earth I read up on his history: Annapolis, engineer with the space program (didnÆt make astronaut because of his eyes); retired with a bad heart; wrote a lot of science fiction. IÆd read most of his novels in high school, and I suppose half the people in the space program were pulled in by his stories.
    When his wife died he had another heart attack. The Old Boys network came to the rescue. His classmates wangled an assignment in space for him. He hadnÆt been to Earth for seven years, and low gravity was all that kept him alive. He didnÆt even dare go to the Moon. A reporter with a flair for mythological phraseology called him ôThe Old Man of Space.ö It was certain that heÆd never go home again, but if he missed Earth he didnÆt show it.
    ôWelcome aboard.ö He sounded glad to see me. ôWhat do they call you?ö he asked.
    A good question. Cornelius might sound a dignified name to a Roman, but it makes for ribald comments in the USA. ôCorky,ö I told him. I shrugged, which was a mistake: we were at the center of the sphere, and there wasnÆt any gravity at all. I drifted free from the grabbandle IÆd been clinging to and drifted around the airlock.
    After a moment of panic it turned out to be fun. There hadnÆt been mom for any violent maneuvers in the tug, but the airlock was built to get tugs and rocket motors inside for repairs; it was big, nine meters acrOss, and I could twirl around in the zero gravity. I flapped my arms and found I could swim.
    McLeve was watching with a critical air. He must have liked what he saw because he grinned slightly. ôCome on,ö he said. He turned in the air and drifted without apparent motionù it looked like levitation. ôIÆll showÆ you around.ö He led the way out of the airlock into the sphere itself.
    We were at the center of rotation. All arnund, above and below, were fields of dirt, some plowed, some planted with grass and grains.
    There were wings attached to hooks at the entrance. McLeve took down a set and began strapping them on. Black bat wings. They made him look like a fallen angel, MiltonÆs style. He handed me another pair. ôLike to fly?ö he asked. I returned the grin. ôWhy not?ö I hadnÆt the remotest idea of what I was doing, but if I could swim in theÆ air with my hands. I ought to be able to handle wings in no gravity. He helped me strap in, and when I had them he gave some quick instructionS.
    ôMain thing is to stay high,ö he said. ôThe further down the higher the gravity, and the tougher it is to control these things.ö He launched himself into space, gliding across the center of the sphere. After a moment I followed him.
    I was a tiny chick in a vast eggshell. The landscape was wrapped around me: fields and houses, and layout yards of construction gear, and machinery, and vats of algae, and three huge windows opening on blackness. Every direction was down, millions of light years down when a window caught my atten.lion. For a moment that was terrifying. But McLeve held himself in place with tiny motions of his wings, and his eyes were on me. I swallowed my fear and looked.
    There were few roads. Mostly the colonists flew with their wings, flew like birds, and if they didnÆt need roads, they didnÆt need squared-off patterns for the buildings either. The ôhousesö looked like theyÆd been dropped at random among the green fields. They were fragile partitions of sheet metal (wood was far more costly than sheet steel here), and they could not have borne their own weight on Earth, let alone stand up to a stiff breeze. They didnÆt have to. They existed for privacy alone.
    I wondered about the weather. Along the axis of the sphere I could see scores. of white pufiballs. Clouds? I gathered my courage and flapped my way over to the white patch. It was a flock of hens. Their feet were drawn up. their heads were tucked under their wings, and they roosted on nothing.
    ôThey like it in zero gravity." McLeve said. ôOnly thing is, when youÆre below them you have to watch out.ö
    He pointed. A blob of chicken splat had left the flock and moved away from us. It fell in a spiral pattern. Of course the splat was actually going in a straight lineùwe were the ones who were rotating, and that made the falling stuff look as if it were spiraling to the ground below.
    ôAutomatic fertilizer machine,ö I said. McLeve nodded.
    ôI wonder you donÆt keep them caged,ö I said.
    ôSome people like their sky dotted with fleecy white hens.ö
    ôOh. Where is everybody?ö I asked.
    ôMost are outside working.ö McLeve said. ôYouÆll meet them at dinner.ö
    We stayed at the axis, drifting with the air currents, literally floating on air. I knew already why people who came here wanted to stay IÆd never experienced anything like it, soaring like a bird. It wasnÆt even like a sail plane: you wore the wings and you flew with-them, you didnÆt sit in a cockpit and move controls around.
    There were lights along part of the axis. The mirrors would take over their job when they were installed; for the moment the lights ran off solar power cells plastered over the outside of the sphere. At the far end of the sphere was an enormous cloud of dust We didnÆt get close to it. I pointed and looked a question.
    ôRock grinder,ö McLeve said. ôMaking soil. We spread it over the northern end.ö He laughed at my frown. ôNorth is the end toward the sun. We get our rocks from the Moon. ItÆs our radiation shielding. Works just as well if we break it up and spread it around, and that way we can grow crops in it. Later on weÆll get the agricultural compartments built, but thereÆs always five times as much work as we have people to do it with.ö
    TheyÆd done pretty well already. There was grass, and millet and wheat for the chickens, and salad greens and other vegetable crops. Streams ran through the fields down to a ringshaped pond at the equator. There was also a lot of bare soil that had just been put in place and hadnÆt been planted. The Shack wasnÆt anywhere near finished.
    ôHow thick is that soil?ö I asked.
    ôNot thick enough. I was coming to that. If you hear the flare warnings, get to my house. North pole.ö
    I thought that one over. The only way to ward yourself from a solar flare is to put a lot of mass between you and, the sun. On Earth that mass is a hundred miles of air. On the Moon they burrow ten meters into the regolith, The Shack had only the rock we could get from the Moon, and Moonbase had problems of its own. When they had the manpower and spare energy theyÆd throw more rock our way, and weÆd plaster it across the outer shell of the Shack, or grind it up and put it inside; but for now there wasnÆt enough, and come flare time McLeve was host toan involuntary lawn party.
    But what the hell, I thought. ItÆs beautiful. Streams rushing in spirals from pole to equator. Green fields and houses, skies dotted with fleecy white hens; and I was flying as man flies in dreams.
    I decided it was going to be fun, but there was one possible hitch.
    ôThere are only ten women aboard,ö I said.
    McLeve nodded gravely
    ôAnd nine of them are married.ö
    He nodded again. ôUp to now weÆve mostly needed muscle. Heavy construction experience and muscle. The next big crew shipmentÆs in six months, and the companyÆs trying like hell to recruit women to balance things off. Think you can hold out that long?ö
    ôGuess I have to.ö
    ôSure. IÆm old navy. We didnÆt have women aboard ships and we lived through it.ö
    I was thinking that IÆd like to meet the one, unmarried woman aboard. Also that she must be awfully popular. McLeve must have read my thoughts, because he waved me toward aÆ big stnlcture perched on a ledge partway down from the north pole. ôYouÆre doing all right on the flying. Take it easy and letÆs go over there.ö
    We soared down, and I began to feel a definite ôupö and ôdownö; before that any direction I wanted it to be was ôup.ö We landed in front of the building.
    ôCombination mess hail and administration offices,ö McLeve said. ôTen percent level.ö
    It took a moment before I realized what he meant. Ten percent level- ten percent of EarthÆs gravity.
    ôItÆs as heavy as I care to go.ö McLeve said. ôAnd any lighter makes it hard to eat. The labs are scattered around the ring at the same level.ö
    He helped me off with my wings and we went inside. There were several people, all men, scurrying about purposefully. They didnÆt stop to meet me.
    They werenÆt wearing much, and I soon found that was the custom in the Shack; why wear clothes inside? There wasnÆt any weather. It was always warm and dry and comfortable. You mostly needed clothes for pockets.
    At the end of the corridor was a room that hummed; inside there was a bank of computer screens, all active. In front of them sat a homely girl.
    ôMiss Hoffman,ö McLeve said. ôOur new metallurgist, Corky Riggs.ö
    ôHi.ö She looked at me for a moment, then back at the computer console. She was mumbling something to herself as her fingers flew over the keys.
    ôDot Hoffman is our resident genius,ö McLeve said. ôAnything from stores and inventories to orbit control, if a computer can figure it out she can make the brains work the problem.ö
    She looked up with a smile. ôWe give necessity the praise of virtue,ö she said.
McLeve looked thoughtful. ôCicero?ö ôQuintilian.ö She turned back to her console again, ôSee you at dinner,ö McLeve said. He led me out.
    ôMiss Hoffman,ö Isaid.
    He nodded.
    ôI suppose she wears baggy britches and blue wool stockings and that shiti because itÆs cool in the computer room,ö I said.
    ôNo, she always dresses that way
    ôOh.ö
    ôOnly six months, Riggs,ö the Admiral said. ôWell, maybe a year. YouÆll survive.ö
    I was thinking IÆd damned well have to.
    I fell in love during dinner.
    The chief engineer was named Ty Plauger, a long, lean chap with startling blue eyes. The chief ecologist was his wife, Jill. They had been married about a year before they came up, and theyÆd been aboard the Shack for three, ever since it started up. Neither was a lot older than me, maybe thirty then.
    At my present age the concept of love at first sight seems both trite and incredible, but it was true enough. I suppose I could have named you reasons then, but I donÆt feel them now.
Take this instead:
    There were ten women aboard out of ninety total. Nine were married, and the tenth was Dot Hoffman. My first impression of her was more than correct. Dot never would be married.
Not only was she homely, but she thought she was homelier still. She was terrified of physical contact with men, and the blue wool stockings and blouse buttoned to the neck were the least of her defenses.
    If I had to be in loveùand at that age, maybe I didùI could choose among nine married women. Jill was certainly the prettiest of the lot. Pug nose, brown hair chopped off short, green eyes, and a compact muscular shape. very much the shape of a woman. She liked to talk, and I liked to listen.
    She and Ty had stars in their eyes. Their talk was full of what space would do for mankind.
    Jill was an ex-Fromate; sheÆd been an officer in the Friends of Man and the Earth. But while the Fromates down below were running around sabotaging industries and arcologies and nuclear plants and anything else they didnÆt like, Jill went to space Her heart bled no less than any for the baby fur seals and the three-spined stickleback and all the fish killed by mine tailings, but sheÆd thought of something to do about it all.
    ôWeÆll put all the dirty industries into space,ö she told me. ôThrow the pollution into the solar wind and let it go Out to the cometary halo. The Fromates think they can talk everyone into letting Kansas go back to buffalo grassùö
    ôYou canÆt make people want to be poor,ö Ty put in.
    ôRight! If we want to clean up the Earth and save the wild things, weÆll have to give people a way to get rich without harming the environment. This is it! Someday weÆll send down enough power from space that we can tear down the dams and put the snail darter back where he caine from.ö
    And more. Jill tended to do most of the talking. I wondered about Ty. He always seemed to have the words that would set her off again.
    And one day, when we were clustered around McLeveÆs house with, for a few restful hours, nothing to do, and Jill was well out of earshot flying awundand among the chickens in her wonderfully graceful wingstyle, Ty said to me, ôI donÆt care if we turn the Earth into a park. I like space. I like flying, and I like free fall, and the look of stars with no air to cloud them. But donÆt tell Jill.ö

    I learned fast. With Ty in charge of engineering, McLeve as chief administrator, and Dot HoffmanÆs computers to simulate the construction and point up problems before they arose, the project went well. We didnÆt get enough mass from the Moon, so that my smelter was always short of raw materials, and Congress didnÆt give us enough money. There werenÆt enough flights from down below and we were short of personnel and goods from Earth. But we got along.
    Two hundred and forty thousand miles below us,everything was going to hell.
    First, the senior senator from Wisconsin lived long enough to inherit a powerful committee chairmanship, and heÆd been against the space industries from the start. Instead of money we got ôGolden Fleeceö awards. Funds already appropriated for flights weÆd counted on got sliced, and our future budgets were completely in doubt.
    Next, the administration tried to bail itself out of the tax revolt by running the printing presses. What money we could get appropriated wasnÆt worth half as much by the time we got it.
    Moonbase felt the pinch and cut down even more on the rock they flung out our way.
    TyÆs answer was to work harder: get as much of the Shack finished as we could, so that we could start sending down power.
    ôGet it done,ö he told us nightly. ôGet a lot of it finished. Get so much done that even those idiots will see that weÆre worth it. So much that itÆll cost them less to supply us than to bring us home.ö
    He worked himself harder than anyone else, and Jill was right out there with him. The first task was to get the mirrors operating.
    We blew them all at once over a couple of months. They came in the shuttle that should have brought our additional crew; it wasnÆt much of a choice, and weÆd have to put off balancing out the sex ratio for another six months.
    The mirrors were packages of fabric as thin as the cellophane on a package of cigarettes. We inflated them into great spheres, sprayed foam plastic on the outside for struts, and sprayed silver vapor inside where it would precipitate in a thin layer all over. Then we cut them apart to get spherical mirrors. and sliced a couple of those into wedges to mount behind the windows in the floor of the Shack.
    They reflected sunlight in for additional crops. Jill had her crew out planting more wheat to cut down on the supplies weÆd need from Earth.
    Another of the mirrors was my concern. A hemisphere a quarter of a kilometer across can focus a lot of sunlight onto a small point. Put a rock at that point and it melts, fast. When we got that set up we were all frantically busy smelting iron for construction out of the rocks. Moonbase shIpped up when they could. When Moonbase couldnÆt fling us anything we dismounted rock weÆd placed for shielding, smelted it, and plastered the slag back onto the sphere.
    Days got longer and longer. ThereÆs no day or night aboard the Shack anyway, of course: open the mirrors and you have sunlight, close them and you donÆt. Still, habit dies hard, and wekept track of time by days and weeks; but our work schedulcs bore no relation to them. Sometimes we worked the clock around, quitting only when forced to by sheer exhaustion.
    We got a shipment from Moonbase, and in the middle of the refining process the mounting struts in the big me1ter mirror got out of alignment. Naturally Ty was out to work on it.
    He was inspecting the system by flying around with a reaction pistol. The rule was that no one worked without a safety line; a man who drifted away from the Shack might or might not be rescued, and the rescue itself would Cost time and manpower we didnÆt have.
    TyÆs line kept pulling him up short of where he wanted to go, He gave the free end to Jill and told her to pay out a lot of slack. Then he made a jump from the mirror frame. He must have thought heÆd use the reaction pistol to shove him off at an angle so that heÆd cross over the bowl of the mirror, the other side.
    The pistol ran out of gas. That left Ty floating straight toward the focus of the miner.
    He shouted into his helmet radio, and Jill franticallyhauled in slack, trying to get a purchase on him. I made a quick calculation and knew I would ever reach him in time; if I tried IÆd likely end up in the focus myself. Instead I took a dive across his back path. If I could grab his safety line, the jerk as I pulled up short ought to keep him out of the hottest area, and my reaction pistol would take us back to the edge.
    I got the line all right, but it was slack. It had burned through. Ty went right through the hot point. When we recovered his body, metal parts on his suit had melted.

    We scattered his ashes inside the sphere. McLeveÆs navy prayer buok opened the burial service with the words ôWe brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we shall take nothing out.ö Afterwards I wondered how subtle McLeve had been in his choice of that passage.
    We had built this world ourselves, with Ty leading us. We had brought everything into this world, even down to TyÆs final gift to us; the ashes which would grow grass in a place no human had ever thought to reach Until now.
    For time next month we did without him; and it was as if we had lost half our men. McLeve was a good engineer if a better administrator, but he couldnÆt go into the high gravity areas, and he couldnÆt do active construction work. Still, it wasnÆt engineering talent we lacked. It was TyÆs drive.
    Jill and Dot and McLeve tried to make up for that. They were more committed to the project than ever.
    Two hundred and forty thousand miles down, they were looking for a construction boss. TheyÆd find one, we were sure. We were thebest, and we were paid like the best. There was never a problem with salaries. Salaries were negligible next to the other costs of building the Shack. But the personnel shuttles were delayed, and delayed again, and we were running out of necessities, and the US economy was slipping again.
    We got the mirrors arrayed. Jill went heavily into agriculture, and the lunar soil bloomed, seeded with earthworms and bacteria from earthly soil. We smelted more of the rocky crust around the Shack and put it back as slag. We had plans for the metal we extracted, starting with a lab for growingmetal whiskers. There was already a whisker lab in near-Earth orbit, but its output was tiny. The Shack might survive if we could show even the beginnings of a profit-making enterprise.
    Jill had another plan: mass production of expensive blologicals, enzymes and various starting organics for ethical drugs.
    We had lots of plans. What we didnÆt have was enough people to do it alL You can only work so many twenty-hour days. We began to make mistakes. Some were costly.
    My error didnÆt cost the Shack. Only myself. I like to think it was due to-Mtigue and nothing more.
    I made a try at comforting the grieving widow, after a decent wait of three weeks.
    When Ty was alive everyone flirtedwith Jill, She pretended not to notice. YouÆd have to be crude as well as rude before sheÆd react.
    This time it was different. I may not have been very subtle, but I wasnÆt crude; and she told me instantly to get the hell out of her cabin and leave her alone.
    I went back to my refinery mirror and brooded.
    Ninety years later I know better. Ninety years is too damned late. If IÆd noticed nothing else, I should have known that nearly eighty unmarried men aboard would all be willing to comfort the grieving widow, and half of them were only too willing to use the subtle approach: ôYouÆre all that keeps us working so hard.ö
    I wonder who tried before I did? It hardly matters, when my turn came, JillÆs reaction was automatic. Slap him down before itÆs too late for him to back away. And when she slapped me down, I stayed slapped, more hurt than mad, but less than willing to tiy again.
    I hadnÆt stopped being in love with her. So I worked at being her friend again. It wasnÆt easy. Jill was cold inside. When she talked to people it was about business, never herself.
Her dedication to the Shack, and to all it stood for in her mind, was hardening, ossifying. And she spent a lot of time with Dot Hoffman and Admiral McLeve.
    But the word came: another shuttle. Again there were no women, The Senator from Wisconson had found out how expensive it would be to get us home. Add fifty women and it would be half again as expensive. So no new personnel.
    Still they couldnÆt stop the company from sending up a new chief engineer, and we heard the-shuffle was on its way, with a load of seeds, liquid hydrogen, Vitamin pills, and Jack Halley.
    I couldnÆt believe it. Jack wasnÆt the type.
    To begin with, while the salary you could save in five years amounted to a good sum, enough to let you start a business and still have some income left, it wasnÆt wealth. You couldnÆt live the rest of your life in Rio on it; and I was pretty sure JackÆs goals hadnÆt changed.
    But there he was, the new boss. From the first day he arrived things started humming. It was the old Jack, brilliant, always at work, and always insisting everyone try to keep up with him although no one ever could. He worked our arses off, in two months he had us caught up on the time we lost after Ty was killed.
    Things looked good. They looked damned good. With the mirrors mounted we could operate on sunlight, with spare power for other uses. Life from soil imported from Earth spread throughout the soil imported from the Moon; and earthly plants were in love with the chemicals in lunar soil. We planted strawberries, corn and beans together, we planted squashes and melons in low-gravity areas and watched them grow into jungles of thin vines covered With fruit.
    The Smelter worked overtime, and we had moie than enough metals for the whisker lab and biological vats, if only a shuttle would bring us the pumps and electronics we needed, and if necessary weÆd make pumps in the machine shops, and Jack had Dot working out time details of setting up integrated-cireult manufacture.
    But the betterthings looked in space, the worse they looked on Earth.
    One of the ways we were going to make space colonies pay for themselves was through electricity. We put out big arrays of solar cells, monstrous spiderwebs a kilometer long by half that wide, so large that they needed small engines dotted all over them just to keep them oriented properly toward the sun.
    We made the solar cells ourselves; one of the reasons they needed me was to get out the rare metals from the lunar regotith and save them for the solar-cell factory. And it was working.
    We had the structure and we were making the cells. Soon ≤nough weÆd have enormous power~ megaWatts of power, enough to beam it down to Earth where it could .pay back some of the costs of building the system. The orbiting power stations cost a fortune to put up, but not much to maintain; they would be like dams, big front end costs but then nearly free power forever.
    We were sure that would save us. How could the United States turn down free electricity?
    It looked good until the Fromates blew up the desert antenna that we would have been beaming the power down to, and the lawyers got their reconstruction tied into legal knots that would probably take five years to untangle.
    The Senator from Wisconsin continued his crusade. This time we got three Golden fleece awards. Down on Earth the company nominated him for membership in the Flat Earth Society. He gleefully accepted and cut our budget again.

    We also had problems on board. Jack had started mean; it was obvious he had never wanted to come here in the first place. Now he turned mean as a rattlesnake. He worked us. If we could get the whisker lab finished ahead of time, at lower cost than planned, then maybe we could save the station yet; so he pushed and pushed again; and one day he pushed too hard.
    It wasnÆt a mutiny- It wasnÆt even a strike. We all did a dayÆs work; but suddenly, without as far as I know any discussion among us. nobody would put in overtime. Ten hours a day, yes; ten hours and one minute, no.
    Jill pleaded. The Admiral got coldly formal. Dot cried. Jack screamed.
    We cut work to nine and a half hours.
    And then it all changed. One day Jack Halfey was smiling a lot. He turned polite. He was getting his two or three hours sleep a night.
    Dot described him. ôLike Mrs. Fezziwig.ö she said. æôOne vast substantial smile.Æ I hope sheÆs happy. I wonder why she did it? To save the Shack. She was trying to keep her voice cheerful, but-her look was bitter. Dot wasnÆt naive; just terrified. I suppose that to her the only reason a woman would move in with a man would be to save some noble cause like the Shack.

    As to Jill, she didnÆt change much. The Shack was the first step in the conquest of the universe, and it was by God going to be finished and self-sufficient. Partly it was a memorial to Ty, I think; but she really believed in what she was doing, and it was infectious.
    I could see how Jack could convince her that he shared her goal. To a great extent he did, although it was pure selfishness; his considerable reputation was riding on this project. But Jack never did anything half-heartedly. He drove himself at whatever be was doing.
    What I couldnÆt understand was why he was here at all. He must have known how thin were the chances of completing the Shack before he left Earth.
    I had to know before it drove me nuts.

    Jack didnÆt drink much. When he did it was often a disaster, because he was the worldÆs cheapest drunk. So one night I plied him.
    Night is generally relative, of course, but this-one was real: the Earth got between us and the sun. Since we were on the same orbit as the Moon, but sixty degrees ahead, that happened to us exactly as often as there are eclipses of the Moon on Earth; a rare occasion, one worth celebrating.
    Of course weÆd put-in a dayÆs work first, so the party didnÆt last long, we were all too beat. Still it was a start, and when the formalities broke up and Jill. went off to look at the air system, I grabbed Jack and got him over to my quarters. We both collapsed in exhaustion.
    I had brought a yeast culture with me from Canaveral. McLeve had warned me that liquor cost like diamonds up here; and a way to make my own alcohol seemed a good investment. And it was. By now I had vaccum distilled vodka made from fermented fruit bars and a mash of strawberries from the farmù they werenÆt missed; the farm covered a quarter of the inner surface now. My concoction tasted better than it sounds, and it wasnÆt hard to talk Jack into a drink, then another.
    Presently he was trying to sing the verses to ôThe Green Hills of Earth.ö A mellower man you never saw. I seized my chance.
    ôSo you love the green hills of Earth so much, what are you doing here? Change your mind about Rio?ö
    Jack shook his head; the vibration ran down his arm and sloshed his drink. ôNope    Outside a hen cackled, and Jack collapsed in laughter. ôLet me rest my eyes on the fleecy
skies..."
    Grimly I stuck to the subject. ôI thought you were all set with that Tucson arcology.ö
    ôOh, I was. I was indeed. It was a beautiful setup. Lots of pay, and-ö He stopped abruptly.
    ôAnd other opportunities?ö I was beginning to see the light.
    ôWelll. . . yes. You have to see it the way I did. First, it was a great opportunity to make a name for myself. A city in a building! Residential and business and industry all in the same place, one building to house a quarter... of a million people. And it would have been beauliful. Corky. The plans were magnificent! I was in love with it. Then I got into it, and I saw what was really going on.
    ôCorky. everyone was stealing that place blind! The first week I went to the chief engineer to report shortages in deliveries and he just looked at me. æStick to your own work, Halfey.Æ says he. Chief engineer, the architects, construction bosses, even the catering crew-every one of them was knocking down twenty-five, fifty percent! They were selling the cement right off the boxcars and substituting sand. There wasnÆt enough cement in that concrete to hold up the walls.ö
    ôSo you took your share.ö
    ôDonÆt get holy on me! Dammit. look at it my way. I was willing to play square, but they wouldnÆt let me. The place was going to fall down. The weight of the first fifty thousand people would have done it. What I could do was make sure nobody got inside before it happened.ö Jack Halfey chortled. æIÆm a public benefactor. I am. I sold off the reinforcing rods. The inspectors couldnÆt possibly ignore that.ö
    ôNothing else?ö I asked.
    ôWelll, those rods were metal-whisker compote. Almost as strong as diamond, and almost as expensive. I didnÆt need anything else. Rut I made sure theyÆd never open that place to the public. Then I stashed my ill-gotten gains and went underground and waited for something to happen.ö.
    ôI never heard much about it. Of course I wouldnÆt, up here.ö
    ôNot many down there heard either. Hush hush while the FBI looked into it. The best buy I ever made in my life was a subscription to the Wall Sireet Journal. Just a paragraph about how the Racket Squad was investigating Mafia involvement in the Tucson arvology. ThatÆs when things fell into place.ö
    I swung around to refill his glass, carefully. We use great big glasses, and never fill them more than half full. Otherwise they slosh all over the place in the lOW gravity. I had another myself. it was pretty good vodka. and if I felt it, Jack must be pickled blue. ôYou mean the building fell in?ö
    ôNo, no. I realized why there was so much graft.ö Jack sounded aggrieved. ôThere was supposed to be graft. I wasnÆt supposed to get in on it.ö
    "Aha."
    ôAha you know it. I finished reading that article on a plane to Canaveral. The FBI couldnÆt follow me to Rio, but the Mafia sure could. IÆd heard there was a new opening for chief engineer for the Construction Shack, and all of a sudden the post looked very, very good.ö
    He chuckled. ôAlso, I hear that things are tightening up in the USA. Big crackdown on organized crime. Computer assisted. Income tax boys and Racket Squad working together. It shouldnÆt be long before all the chiefs who want my arse are in jail. Then I can go back, cash my stash, and head for Rio.ö
    ôSwitzerland?ö
    ôOh no. Nothing so simple as that. I thought of something else. Say, I better get back to my bunk.ö He staggered out before I could stop him. Fortunately it was walking distance from my place to his; if heÆd had to fly, heÆd probably have ended up roosting with the chickens.
    ôBloody hell,ö says I to myself
Should I add that I had no intention of robbing Jack? I was just curious: what inflation-proof investment had he thought up? But I didnÆt find out for a long time...

    A month later the dollar collapsed. Inflation had been a fact of life for so long that it was the goal of every union and civil service organizer to get inflation written into their contractS, thereby increasing inflation. The govemment printed money faster to compensate: more inflation. One of those vicious spirals. Almost suddenly the dollar, was down the drain. There followed a full-scale taxpayer revolt.
    The Administration got the message: they were spending too much money. And clearly that had to stop. The first things to go were all the projects that wouldnÆt pay off during the current PresidentÆs term of office. Long term research was chopped out of existence. Welfare, on the other hand, was increased, and a comprehensive National Health Plan was put into effect, even though they had to pay the doctors and hospitals in promissory notes.
    The Senator from Wisconsin didnÆt even bother giving us his customary Golden Fleece award. Why insult the walking dead?
    We met in our usual place, a cage-work not far from the north.pole. Admiral MeLeve was in the center, in zero gravity. The rest of us perched about the cage-work, looking like a scene from HitchcockÆs The Birds.
    Dot had a different picture, from Aristophanes. ôSomewhere, what with all these clouds and all this air, there must be a rare name, somewhere. . . How do you like Cloud-Cuckoo-
Land?"
    Putting on wings does things to people. Halfey had dyed his wings scarlet, marked with yellow triangles enclosing an H. Dot wore the plumage of an eagle, and I hadnÆt believed it the fast time I saw it; it was an incredibly detailed, beautiful job. McLeveÆs were the wings of a bat, and-I tell you he looked frightening, as evil as Dracula himself. Leon Briscoe, the chemist, had painted mathematical formulae all over his, in exquisite medieval calligraphy. Jill and Ty had worn the plumage of male and female Least Terns, and she still wore hers. There were no two sets of wings alike in that flock. We were ninety birds of mnety species, all gathered as if the ancient roles of predator and prey had been set aside for a larger cause. CloudCuckoo-Land;
    A glum Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
    ôItÆs over.ö McLeve said. ôWeÆve been given three months to phase out and go home. Us, Moonbase, the whole space operation. TheyÆll try to keep some of the near-Earth Operations going a while longer, but weÆre to shut down.ö
    Nobody said anything at first. WeÆd been expecting it; those of us whoÆd had time to follow news from Earth. Now it was here,, and nobody was ready. I thought about it: back to high gravity again. Painful.
    And Jill. Her dream was being shot d°wn, Ty died for nothing. Then I remembered McLeve. He wasnÆt going anywhere. Any gravity at all was a death sentence.
    And I hated Jack Halfey for the grin he was hiding. There had been a long piece in the latest newscast about the roundup of the Mafia lords; grand juries working overtime,, and the District of Columbia jail filled, no bail to be granted. It was safe for Jack down there, and now he could go home early.
    ôThey canÆt do this to us!ö Jill wailed. A leftover Fromate reflex, I guess. ôWeÆllùö Go on strike? Bomb something? She looked around at our faces, and when I followed the look I stopped with Dot Hoffman. The potato face was withered in anguish, the potato eyes were crying. What was there for Dot on Earth?
    ôWhat a downer,ö she said.
    I almost laughed out loud, the old word was so inadequate. Then McLeve spoke in rage. ôDowners. Yes. Nine billion downers sitting on their fat arses while their childrenÆs future slides into the muck. Downers is what they are.ö
    Now you know. McLcve the wordsmith invented that word, on that day.
    My own feelings were mixed. Would the money stashed in Swiss francs be paid if we left early, even though we had to leave? Probably, and it was not a small amount; but how long would it last? There was no job waiting for me. . . but certainly I had the reputation IÆd set out for. I shouldnÆt have much trouble getting a job.
    But I like to finish what I start. The Shack was that close to being self-sufficient. We had the solar power grids working. We even had the ion engines mounted all over the grid to keep it stable. We djdn~t have the microwave system to beam the power back to Earth.,, but it wouldnÆt be that expensive to put in...except that Earth had no antennae to receive the power.
They hadnÆt even started reconstruction. The permit hearings were tied up in lawsuits.
    No. The Shack was dead. And if our dollars were worthless, there were things that werenÆt. Skilled labor couldnÆt be worthless. I would get my francs, and some of my dollar salary had been put into gold. I wouldnÆt be broke. Andùthe clincherù there were women on Earth.
    McLeve let us talk a while. When the babble died down and he found a quiet lull, he said, very carefully, ôOf course, we have a chance to keep the station going.ö
    Everyone talked at once. JillÆs voice came through loudest, ôHow?ö
    ôThe Shack was designed to be a self-sufficient environment,ö McLeve said. ôItÆs not quite that yet, but what do we need?ö
    ôAir.ö someone shouted. ôWater,ö cried another.
    I said, ôShielding. It would help to have enough mass to get us through a big solar flare. If theyÆre shutting down Moonbase weÆll never have it.ö
    JillÆs voice carried like a microphone. ôRocks? Is that all we need? Ice and rocks? WeÆd have both in the asteroid beltÆ.ö It was a put-up job. She and McLeve must have rehearsed it.
    I laughed. ôThe Belt is two hundred million miles away. We donÆt have ships that will go that far, let alone cargo ships...ö And then I saw what they had in mind.
    ôOnly one ship,ö MeLeve said. ôThe Shack itself. We can move it out into the belt.ö
    ôHow long?ö Dot demanded.. Hope momentarily made her beautiful.
    ôThree years,ö McLeve said. He looked thoughtful. ôWell, not quite that long.ö
    "We canÆt live three years,ö I shouted. I turned to Jill, twsting idiot that I was then. ôThe air system canÆt keep us alive that long, can it? Not enough chemicalsùö
    ôBut we can do it!ö she shouted. ôIt wonÆt be easy, but the farm is growing now. We have enough plants to make up tbr the lack of chemical air purification. We can recycle everything. WeÆve got the raw sunlight of space. Even out in the asteroids that will be enough. We can do it!ö
    ôCanÆt hurt to make a few plans,ö McLeve said.
    It couldnÆt help either, thought I; but I couldnÆt say it, not to Dot and Jill.


    These four were the final architects of The Plan: Admiral McL.eve, Jill Plauger, Dot Hoffman, and Jack Halfey.
    At first the most important was Dot. Moving something as large as the Shack, with inadequate engines, a house in space never designed as a ship; that was bad enough. Moving it farther than any manned ship, no matter the design, should have been impossible.
    But behind that potato face was a brain tuned to mathematics. She could solve any abstract problem. She knew how to ask questions; and her rapport with computers was a thing to envy.
    Personal problems stopped her cold. Because McLeve was one of the few men she could see as harmless, she could open up to him. He had told me sometime before we lost Ty, ôDot tried sex once and didnÆt like it.ö I think he regretted saying even that much. Secrets were sacred to him. But for whatever reason, Dot couldnÆt relate to people; and that left all her energy for work.
    Dot didnÆt talk to women either, through fear or envy or some other reason I never knew. But she did talk to Jill. They were fanatical in the same way. It wasnÆt hard to understand DotÆs enthusiasm for The Plan.
    McLeve had no choices at all. Without the Shack he was a dead man.
    Jack was in the Big Four because he was needed. Without his skills there would be no chance at all. So he was dragged into it, and we watched it happen.
    The day McLeve suggested going to the asteroids, Jack Halfey was thoroughly amused, and showed his mirth to all. For the next week he was not amused by anything whatever.
He was a walking temper tantrum. So was Jill. I expect he tried to convince her that with sufficient wealth, exile on Earth could be tolerable. Now he wasnÆt sleeping, and we all suffered.

    Of course our miseries, including JackÆs, were only ternporary. We were all going home. All of us.
    Thus we followed the downer news closely, and thus was there a long line at the communications room. Everyone was trying to find an Earthside job. It hardly mattered. There was plenty of power for communications. It doesnÆt take much juice to close down a colony.
    We had no paper, so the news was flashed onto a TV for the edification of those waiting to use the transmitter. I was waiting for word from Inco: they had jobs at their new smelter in Guatemala. Not the worldÆs best location, but I was told it was a tropical paradise, and the quetzal was worth at least as much as the dollar.
    I donÆt know who Jack was expecting to hear from. He looked like a man with a permanent hangover, except that he wasnÆt so cheerful.
    The news, for a change, wasnÆt all bad. Something for everyone. The United States had issued a new currency, called ômarksö (it turns out there were marks in the US during revolutionary times); they were backed by miniscule amounts of gold.
    Not everyone was poor. Technology proceeded apace. Texas instruments announced a new pocket computer, a million bits of memory and fully programmable, for twice what a calculator cost. Firestone Diamondsùwhich had been manufacturing flawless blue-white diamonds in a laboratory for the past year, and which actually was owned by a man named Firestoneù had apparently swamped the engagement ring market, and was now making chandeliers. A diamond chandelier would cost half a yearÆs salary, of course, but that was expected to go down.
    The ôalleged Mafia chieftainsö now held without bail awaiting trial numbered in the thousands. I was surprised: I hadnÆt thought it would go that far. When the dollar went worthless, apparently Mafia bribe money went worthless too. Maybe IÆm too cynical. Maybe there was an epidemic of righteous wrath in government.
    Evidently someone thought so. because a bond issue was approved in California, and people were beginning to pay their taxes again.
    Something for everyone. I thought the Mafia item would cheer Jack up, but he was sitting there staring at the screen as if he hadnÆt seen a thing and didnÆt give a damn anyway. My call was announced and I went in to talk to Inco. When I came out Jack had left, not even waiting for his own call. Lack of sleep can do terrible things to a man.
    I wasnÆt-surprised when Jack had a long talk with McLeve, nor when Jill moved hack in with him. Jack would promise anything, and Jill would believe anything favorable to her mad scheme.
    The next day JackÆs smile was back, and ill thought it was a bit cynical, what could I do? Tell Jill? She wouldnÆt have believed me anyway.

    They unveiled The Plan a week later. I was invited to McLeveÆs house to hear all about it..
    Jack was there spouting enthusiasm. ôTwo problems,ö he told us. ôFirst, keeping us alive during the trip. ThatÆs more JillÆs department, but whatÆs the problem? The Shack was designed to last centuries. Second problem is getting out there. WeÆve got that figured out.ö    I said, ôThe hell you do. This isnÆt a spaceship, itÆs just a habitat. Even if you had a big rocket motor to mount on the axis, you wouldnÆt have fuel for it, and if you did, the Shack would break up under the thrust.ö I hated him for what he was doing to Jill, and I wondered why McLeve wasnÆt aware of it. Maybe he was. The Admiral never let anyone know what he thought.
    ôSo we donÆt mount a big rocket motor.ö Jack said. ôWhat weÆve got is just what we need: a lot of little motors on the solar panels. We use those and everything else we1iave. Scooters and tugs, the spare panel engines, and, last but not least, the Moon. WeÆre going to use the Moon for a gravity sling.ö
    He had it all diagrammed out in four colors. ôWe shove the Shack toward the Moon. if we aim just right, weÆll skim close to the lunar surface with everything firing. WeÆll leave.
the Moon with that velocity plus the MoonÆs orbital velocity, and out we go.ö
    ôHow close?ö
    He looked to Dot. She pursed her lips. ôWeÆll clear the peaks by two -kilometers.ö
    ôThatÆs close.ö
    ôMore than a mile,ö Jack said. ôThe closer we come the faster we leave.ö
    ôBut you just donÆt have the thrust!ö
    ôAlmost enough,ö Jack said. "Now look. We keep the panel thrusters on full blast. That gives us about a quarter percent of a gravity, not nearly enough to break up the Shack, Corky.
And we use the mirrors.ö He poked buttons and another diagram swam onto McLeveÆs drafting table. ôSee.ö
    It showed the Shack with the window mirrors opened all the way for maximum surface area. My smelter minor was hung out forward. Other mirrors had been added. ôSails! Light pressure adds more thrust. Not a lot, but enough to justify carrying their mass. We can get to the Belt.ö
    "YouÆre crazy,ö I informed them.
    ôProbably,ö McLeve muttered. ôBut from my viewpoint it looks good.ö
    ôSure. YouÆre dead anyway, no offense intended. WeÆre playing a game here, and itÆs getting us nowhere.ö
    ôIÆm going.ö JillÆs voice was very low and very convincing. It stined the hair on my neck.
    ôMe too,ö Dot added. She glared at me. the enemy.
    I made one more try. TheyÆd had more time to think about it than I did, but the thrust figures were right there, scrawled in an upper corner of the dingram. ôNow pay attention. You canÆt possibly use the attitude jets on the solar panels for that long. They work by squirting dust through a magnetic field, throwing it backward so the reaction pushes you forward. Okay, youÆve got free solar power, and you can get the acceleratIon. But where can you possibly get enough dust?ö I saw JackÆs guilty grin, and finished, ôHoly shit!ö
    Jack nodded happily
    ôWhy not?ö Jill asked. ôWe wonÆt need solar flare shielding around Ceres. On the way we can keep what we do have between us and the Sun, while we grind up the surplus.ö
    They meant it. They were going to make dust out of the radiation shields and use that.-

    In theory it would work. The panel engines didnÆt care what was put through them; they merely charged the stuff up with electricity gathered from the solar cells and let the static charge provide the push. A rocket is nothing more than a way to squirt mass overboard; any mass will do. The faster you can throw mass away, the better your rocket.
    At its simplest a rocket could be a man sitting in a bucket throwing rocks out behind him. Since a man canÆt throw very fast that wouldnÆt be a very good rocket, but it would work.
    But you have to have rocks, and they were planning on using just about all of ours.
    It was a one-way mission. TheyÆd have to find an asteroid, and fast, when they got to the Belt; by the time they arrived theyÆd be grinding up structure, literally taking the Shack apart, and all that would have to be replaced.
    It would have to be a special rock, one that had lots of metal, and also had ice. This wasnÆt impossible, but it wasnÆt any sure thing either. We knew from Pioneer probes that some of the asteroids had strata of water ice, and various organics as well; but we couldnÆt tell which ones. We knew one more thing from the later probes, and The Plan was geared to take advantage of that.
    The Skylarkùnewly named by McLeve, and IÆve never known why he called it thatùwould head for Ceres. There were at least three small hill-sized objects orbitting that biggest of the asteroids.
    A big solar flare while they were out that far would probably kill the lot of them. Oh, they had a safety hole designed: a small area of-the Shack to huddle inside, crowded together like sardines, and if the flare didnÆt last too long theyÆd be all right. Except that it would kill many of the plants needed for the air supply.
    I didnÆt think the air recycling system would last any three years either, but Jill insisted it was all right.
    It didnÆt matter. I wasnÆt going, and neither was Jack; it was just something to keep Jill happy until the shuttle came.

    There was more to The Plan. All the nonessential personnel would go to Moonbase, where there was a better chance. Solar flares werenÆt dangerous to them. Moonbase was buried under twenty feet of lunar rock and dust. They had lots of mass. There a oxygen chemically bound in lunar rock, and if you have enough power and some hydrogen you can bake it out. They had power: big solar mirrors, not as big as ours, but big. They had rocks. The hydrogen recycles if itÆs air you want, If you want water, the hydrogen has to stay in the water.
    We figured they could hang on for five years.
    Our problem was different. If Moonbase put all its effort into survival, they wouldnÆt have the resources to keep sending us rocks and metal and hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; but itÆs rare an the Moon. Without hydrogen you donÆt have water. Without water you donÆt have life.
    I had to admit things were close. We were down to a shuttle load a month from Earth; but we needed those. They brought hydrogen, vitamins. high-protein foods. We could grow crops; but that took water, and our recycling systems were nowhere near 100% efficient.
    Now the hydrogen shipments had stopped. At a cost of fifty million dollars a flight before the dollar collapsed, the USA would soon stop sending us ships!
    Another thing about those ships. They had stopped bringing us-replacement crew long ago. Jack was the last. Now they were taking -people home. If they stopped coining, weÆd be marooned.
    A few more years and we could be self-sufficient. A few more years and we could have colonists, people who never intended to go home, They were aboard now, some of them. Jill and Ty, before Ty was killed. Dot Hoffman was permanent. So was McLeve, of course. Of the seventy-five still aboard weÆd lost a few to the shuttlesùtwenty-five or so, including all the married couples, thought of themselves as colonists.
    The rest of us wanted to go home.
    Canaveral gave us fifty days to wind up oUr affairs. The shuttles would come up empty but for the pilots, with a kind of sardine-can-with-seats fitted in the hold.
    I could understand why McLeve kept working on The Plan. Earth would kill him. And Jill: TyÆs death had no meaning if the Shack wasnÆt finished. Dot? Sure. She was valuable, here. But Would you believe that I worked myself stupid mounting mirrors and solar panel motors? It wasnÆt just for something to do before the shuttle arrived, either. I had a nightmare living in my mind.
    McLeve was counting on about twenty crew: the Big Four, and six of the eight married couples, and up to half a dozen additional men, all held by their faith in The Plan.
    The history books have one thing right. The Plan was Jack HalfeyÆs. Sure, Jill and McLeve and Dot worked on it, but without him it couldnÆt be brought off. Half of The Plan was no more than a series of contingency operations, half-finished schemes that relied on HalfeyÆs ingenuity to work. McLeve and Halfey were the only people aboard who really knew the Shackùknew all its parts and vulnerabilities, what might go wrong and how to fix it; and McLeve couldnÆt do much physical work. He wouldnÆt be outside working when something buckled under the stress.
    And there would be stress. A hundredth of a gravity doesnÆt sound heavy, but much of our solar panel area and all our mirrors were flimsy as tissue paper.
    Without Halfey it wouldnÆt, couldnÆt work. When Halfey announced that he was going home on that final shuttle, the rest would quit too. TheyÆd beg the downers for one more shuttle, and theyÆd get it, of course, and theyÆd hold the Shack until it came.
    But McLeve couldnÆt quit, and Dot wouldnÆt, and I just couldnÆt be sure about Jill. If Halfey told her be wasnÆt really going, would she see reason? The son of a bitch was trading her life for a Couple of hours sleep. When Skylark broke from orbit, would she be aboard? She and Dot and the Admiral, all alone in that vast landscaped bubble with a growing horde of chickens, going out to the asteroids to die. The life support system might last a long time with only three humans to support: they might live for years.

    He nodded. ôWithout Halfey it is a mad scheme. I wouldnÆt sacrifice the others for my heart condition. But Halfey isnÆt leaving. Corky. HeÆs with us all the way. I wish youÆd give it a try too. We need you.ö
    ôNot me.ö
    So I worked, When they finally died, it wouldnÆt be because Cornelius Riggs bobbled a weld.
    The first shuttle came and picked up all nonessential personnel. TheyÆd land at Moonbase, which was the final staging area for taking everyone home. If The Plan went off as McLeve expected, many of them would be staying on the Moon, but they didnÆt have to decide that yet.
    I was classed as essential, though IÆd made my intentions clear. ThePlan needed me: not so much on the trip out, but when they reached the Belt. TheyÆd have to do a lot of mining and refining, assuming they could find the right rock to mine and refine.
    I let them talk me into waiting for the last shuttle. I wouldnÆt have stayed if I hadn~t known HalfeyÆs intentions, and I confess to a squinny feeling in my guts when I watched that shuttle go off without me.
    The next one would be for keeps.

    When you have a moral dilemma, get drunk. ItÆs not the worldÆs best rule, but it is an old one; the Persians used the technique in classical times. I tried it.
    Presently I found myself at MeLeveÆs home. He was alone.I invited myself in.
    ôMurdering bastard,ö I said.
    ôHow?ö
    ôJill. That crazy plan wonÆt work. Halfey isnÆt even going. You know it and I know it. HeÆs putting Jill on so she wonÆt cut him off. And without him thereÆs not even a prayer.ö
    ôYour second partÆs true,ö McLeve said. ôBut not the first. Halfey is going.ö
    ôWhy would he?ö
    McLeve smirked. ôHeÆs going.ö
    ôWhat happens if he doesnÆt?ö I demanded. ôWhat then?ö
    ôI stay,ö McLeve said. ôIÆd rather die here than in a ship.ö
    ôAlone?ö

    How was Halfey convincing them? Not Jill: she wanted to believe in him, But McLeve, and DotùDot had to know. She had to calculate the shuttle flight plan, and for that she had to know the masses, and the total payload mass for that shuttle had to equal all the personnel except McLeve but including the others.
    Something didnÆt make any sense.
    I waited until I saw eagle wings and blue wool stockings fly away from the administration area, and went into her computer room. It took a while to bring up the system, but the files
directory was self-explanatory. I tried to find the shuttle flight plan, but I couldnÆt. What I got, through sheer fumbling, was the updated flight plan for the Skylark.
    Even with my hangover I could see what sheÆd done: it was figured for thirty-one people, plus a mass that had to be the shuttle. Skylark would be carrying a captainÆs gig...
    The shuttle was coming in five days.
    Halfey had to know that shuttle wouldnÆt be taking anyone back. If he wasnÆt doing anything about it, there was only one conclusion. He was going to the Belt. A mad scheme. It doomed all of us. Jill, myself, Halfey, myselfù But if Halfey didnÆt go, no one would. WeÆd all go home in that shuttle. Jill would be saved. So would I. There was only one conclusion to that. I had to kill Jack Halfey

    How? I couldnÆt just shoot him. There wasnÆt anything to shoot him with. I thought of ways. Put a projectile into a reaction pistol. But what then? Space murder would delight the lawyers, and I might even get off; but IÆd lose Jill forever, and without Halfey..
    Gimmick his suit. He went outside regularly. Accidents happen. Ty wasnÆt the only one whose ashes weÆd scattered into the soil of the colony.
    Stethoscope and wrench: stethoscope to listen outside the walls of HalfeyÆs bed chamber, a thoroughly frustrating and demeaning experience; but presently I knew theyÆd both be asleep for an hour or more.
    It took ten minutes to disassemble JackÆs hose connector and substitute a new one IÆd made up. My replacement looked just like the old one, but it wouldnÆt hold much pressure.
Defective part. Metal fatigue. IÆd be the one theyÆd have examine the connector if there was any inquiry at all, And I had no obvious motive -for killing Jack; just the opposite, except for Jill and McLeve I was regarded as JackÆs only friend.
    Once that was done I had only to wait.


    The shuttle arrived empty. Halfey went outside, all right, but in a sealed cherry picker; he wasnÆt exposed to vacuum for more than a few moments, and apparently IÆd made my substitute just strong enough to hold.
    They docked the shuttle, but not in the usual place, and they braced it in,
    It was time for a mutiny. I wasnÆt the only one being Shanghaied on this trip. I went looking for Halfey. First, though, IÆd need a reaction pistol. And a projectile. A ball-point pen ought to do nicely. Any court in the world would call it self defense.
    ôIÆm a public benefactor, I am,ö I muttered to myself.
    JillÆs quarters were near the store room. When I came with the pistol, she saw me: ôHi,ö she said.
    ôHi.ö I started to go on:
    "You never talk to me any more.ö
    ôLetÆs say I got your message.ö
    ôThat was a long time ago. I was upset. So were you. ItÆs different now..."
    ôDifferent. Sure.ö I was bitter and I sounded it. ôDifferent. YouÆve got that lying bastard Halfey to console you, thatÆs how itÆs different.ö That hurt her, and I was glad of it.
    ôWe need him, Corky. We all need him, and we always did. We wouldnÆt have got much done without him.ö
    ôTrue enough-ö
    ôAnd he was driving all of you nuts, wasnÆt he? Until I helped him sleep.ö
    ôI thought you were in love with him.ö
    She looked sad. ôI like him, but no, IÆm not in love with him.ö She was standing in the doorway of her quarters. ôThis isnÆt going to work, is it? The Plan. Not enough of you will come. We canÆt do it, can we.ö
    ôNo.ö Might as well tell her the truth. ôIt never would have worked, and it wonÆt work now even if all of us aboard come along. MarginÆs too thin, Jill. I wish it would, but no.Æ
    ôI suppose youÆre right. but IÆm going to try anyway.ö
    ôYouÆll kill yourself.ö
    She shrugged. ôWhy not? WhatÆs left anyway?ö She Went back into her room,
    I followed. ôYouÆve got a lot to live for. Think of the baby fur seals you could save. And thereÆs always me.ö
    ôYou?ö
    ôIÆve been in love with you since the first time I saw you.ö
    She shook her head sadly. ôPoor Corky. And I treated you just like all the others, back then whenù. I wish youÆd stay with us.ö
    ôI wish youÆd come back to Earth with me, Or even Moonbase. We might make a go of Moonbase. Hang on until things change down there. New administration. Maybe theyÆll want a space program, and Moonbase would be a good start. IÆll stay at Moonbase if youÆll come.ö
    ôWill you?ö She looked puzzled, and scared, and I wanted take and hold her. ôLetÆs talk about it. Want a drink?ö
    ôNo, thank youö
    ôI do.ö She poured herself something. ôSure you wonÆt join me?ö
    ôAll right.ö
    She handed me something cold, full of shaved ice. It tasted like Tang. We began to talk, about life on Earthùor even on Moonbase. She mixed us more thinks, Tang powder and water from a pitcher and vodka and shaved ice. Presently I felt good. Damned good.
    One thing led to another, and I was holding her, kissing her, whispering to herù She broke free and went over to close and lock her door. As she came back toward me she was unbuttoning the top of her blouse.
    And I passed out.


    When I woke I didnÆt know. Now, ninety years later, I still donÆt. For ninety years it has driven me nuts, and now IÆll never know.
    All thatÆs certain is that I woke half dressed, alone in her bed, and her clothes were scattered on the deck. I had athundering hangover - and an urgent thirst. I drank from the water pitcher on her table.
    It wasnÆt water. It must have been my own 100 proof vodka. Next to it was a jar of Tang and a bowl that had held shaved iceùand a bottle holding more vodka. SheÆd been feeding me vodka and Tang and shaved ice.
    No wonder I had a hangover worthy of being bronzed as a record.
    I went outside. There was something wrong.
    The streams werenÆt running correctly. They stood at an angle. At first I thought it was me. Then they sloshed.
    The Shack was under acceleration.

    There were a dozen others screaming for blood outside the operations building. One was a strangerùthe shuttle pilot. The door was locked, and Halfey was talking through a loudspeaker.
    ôToo late,ö he was saying. ôWe donÆt have enough thrust to get back to the L-4 point. WeÆre headed for the Belt. and you might as well get used to the idea. WeÆre going.ö
    There was a cheer. Not everyone hated the idea. Eventually those who did understood: Halfey had drained the shuttle fuel and stored it somewhere. No escape that way.
    No other shuttles in lunar orbit. Nothing closer than Canaveral, which was daysaway even if there were anything ready to launch. Nothing was going to match orbits with us.
    We were headed for the Moon, and weÆd whip around and go for the Belt, and that was as inevitable as the tides.
    When we understood all that they unlocked the doors.

An hour later the alarms sounded. ôOutside. Suit up. Emergency outside!ö McLeveÆs voice announced. Those already in their suits went for the airlocks. I began half-heartedly putting on mine, in no hurry. I was sure IÆd never get my swollen, pulsing head inside the helmet.
Jack Halfey dashed past, suited and ready. He dove for the airlock.
    Halfey. The indispensible man. With a defective connector for an air intake.
    I fumbled with the fasteners. One of the construction people was nearby and I got his help. He couldnÆtÆ understand my frantic haste.
    ôBastards kidnapped us,ö he muttered. ôLet them do the frigging work. Not me.ö
    I didnÆt want to argue with him, I just wanted him to hurry.
    A strut had given way, and a section of the solar panel was off center. It had to be straightened, and we couldnÆt turn off the thrust while we did it. True, our total thrust was tiny, a quarter of a percent of a gravity, hardly enough, to notice, but we needed it all.
    Because otherwise weÆd go out toward the Belt but we wouldnÆt get there, and by the time the Shack-Skylark, now- returned inevitably to Earth orbit thereÆd be no one alive aboard her.
    I noticed all the work, but I didnÆt help. Someone cursed me, but I went on, looking for Halfey.
    I saw him.  I dove for him, neglecting safety lines, forgetting everything. I had to get to him before that connector went.
    His suit blew open across the middle. As if the fabric had been weakened with, say, acid. Jack screamed and tried to hold himself together.
    He had no safety line either. When he let go he came loose from the spiderweb. Skylark pulled away from him, slowly, two and a half centimeters per second; slow but inexorable.
    I lit where heÆd been, turned, and dove for him. I got him and used my reaction pistol to drive us toward the airlock.
    I left it on too long. We were headed fast for the airlock entrance, too fast, weÆd hit too hard. I tumbled about to get Jack across my back so that IÆd be between him and the impact. IÆd probably break a leg, but without Halfey I might as well have a broken neck and get it over with.
    Leon Briscoe, our chemist, had the same idea. He got under us and braced, reaction, pistol flaring behind us. We hit in a menage a trois, with me as Lucky Pierre.
    Leon cracked an ankle. I ignored him as I threw Halfey into the airlock and slammed it shut, hit the recycle switch. Air hissed in.
    Jack had a nosebleed, and his cough sounded bad; but he was breathing. HeÆd been in vacuum about forty seconds. Fortunately the decompression hadnÆt been totally explosive. The intake line to his suit had fractured a half second before the fabric blew..


    The Moon grew in the scopes. Grew and kept growing, until it wasnÆt a sphere but a circle, and still it grew. There were mountains dead ahead.
    "How close?", I demanded.
    Dot had her eyes glued to a radar scope. ôNot too close. About a kilometerö
    ôA kilometer!ö One thousand meters. ôYou said two, before."
    ôSo I forgot the shuttle pilot.ö She continued to stare at the scope, then her fingers bashed at the console keyboard. ôMake that 800 meters,ö she said absently
    I was past saying anything. I watched the Moon grow and grow. Terror banished the last of my hangover, amazing what adrenalin in massive doses can do. Jill looked worse than I did. And I didnÆt know. Were we lovers?
    ôThirty seconds to periastron,ö Dot said.
    ôHow close?ö McLeve asked.
    ôFive hundred meters. Make that four-fiftyö
    ôGood,ö McLeve muttered. ôCloser the better.ö
    He was right; the nearer we came to the Moon. the more slingshot velocity weÆd pick up, and the faster weÆd get Co the Belt.
    ôPeriastron,ö Dot announced. ôClosest approach, four twenty-three and a fraction.ö She looked up in satisfaction. Potato eyes smiled. ôWeÆre on our wayö


    On Earth we were heroes. WeÆd captured the downersÆ imaginations. Intrepid explorers. Before we were out of range, we got a number of offers for book rights, should we happen to survive.
    There were even noises about hydrogen shipments to the Moon. Of course there was nothing they could do for us. There werenÆt any ships designed for a three-year trek.
    Certainly Skylark wasnÆt. But we were trying it.
    There were solar flares. We all huddled around McLeveÆs house, with as much of our livestock as we could catch stuffed into his bedroom. It took weeks to clean it out properly afterward.. We had to re-seed blighted areas and weed out mutated plants after each flare. More of our recycled air was coming from the algae tanks now.
    In a time of the quiet sun we swarmed outside and moved all of the mirrors. The sun was too far away now, and the grass was turning brown, until we doubled the sunlight flooding through the windows.
    But it seemed weÆd reach Ceres. Already our telescopes showed five boulders in orbit around that largest of the asteroids. WeÆd look at them all, but we wanted the smallest one we could find: the least dauntifig challenge. If it didnÆt have ice somewhere in irs makeup, the next one would, or the next.
    And then weÆd all be working like sled dogs, for our lives.

    I was circling round the outside of Skylark, not working, just observing: looking for points with some stnictural strength. places where I could put stress when the real work began. Win or lose, with or without a cargo, we would have to get home a tot faster than we came. The life support system wouldnÆt hold up forever. Something would give out. Vitamins, water, something in the soil or the algae tanks. Something.
    Our idea was to build a mass driver, a miniature of the machine that had been throwing rocks at us from the Moon. If we found copper in that rock abeadùa pinpoint to the naked eye now, near the tiny battered disk of Ceresùwe could make the kilometers of copper wire weÆd need. If not, iron would do. We had power from the sun, and dust from the rocks around Ceres, and weÆd send that dust down the mass driver at rocket exhaust speeds. Home in ten months if we found copper.
    I went back inside.
    The air had an odd smell when I took off my helmet. We were used to it; we never noticed now unless weÆd been breathing tanked air. I made a mental note: mention it to Jill. It was
getting stronger.
    I had only the helmet off when Jean and Kathy Gaynor came to drag me out. I was clumsy in my pressure suit, and they thought that was hilarious. They-danced me around and around, pulled me out into the grass, and began undressing me with the help of a dozen others.
    It looked like I had missed half of a great party. What the hell, Ceres was still a week away. They took my pressure suit off and scattered the components, and I didnÆt fight. I was
dizzy and had the giggles. They kept going. Presently I was stark naked and grabbing for Kathy, who took to the air before I realised she had wings. I came down in a stream and surfaced
still giggling.
    Jack and Jill were on their backs in the grass, watching the fleecy white hens - and turning occasionally to avoid chicken splat. I liked seeing Jill so relaxed for once. She waved, and I bounced over and somersaulted onto my back next to them.
    A pair of winged people were way up near the axis, flapping among the chickens, scaring them into panic. It was like looking into Heaven, as you find it painted on the ceilings of some of the European churches. I couldnÆt tell who they were.
    ôWealth comes in spirals too,ö Jill was saying in a dreamy voice. I donÆt think sheÆd noticed I wasnÆt wearing clothes. ôWeÆll build bigger ships with the metal we bring home. Next trip weÆll bring back the whole asteroid. One day the downers will be getting all their metal from us. And their whisker compotes, and drugs, and magnets, and, and free-fall alloys. Dare I say it? WeÆll own the world!ö
    I said, ôYeah.ö There were puffball chickens drifting down the sky, as if theyÆd forgotten how to fly
    ôThere wonÆt be anything we canÆt do. Corky, can you see a mass driver wrapped all around the Moon? For launching starships. The ships will go round and round. Well put the magùmag, netic levitation plates overhead, to-hold the ships down after theyÆre going too fast to stay down.ö
    Halfey said, ôWhat about a hotel on Titan? Excursions into SaturnÆs rings. No downers allowed.ö
    ôWeÆll spend our second honeymoon there,ö said Jill.
    ôYeah,ö I said, before I caught myself.
    Halley laughed like hell. ôNo, no, I want to build it!ö
    I was feeling drunk and I hadnÆt had a drink. Contact high, they call it. I watched those two at the axis as they came together in a tangle of wings, clung together. Objects floated around them, and presently began to spiral outward, fluttering and tumbling. I recognized a pair of manÆs pants.
    It made me feel as horny as hell. Two hundred million miles away there was a planet with three billion adult women. Out of that number there must be millions whoÆd take an astronaut hero to their beds. Especially after I published my best-selling memoirs. IÆd never be able to have them all, but it was certainly worth a try. All I had to do was go home.
    Hah. And Thomas Wolfe thought he couldnÆt go home again!
    A shoe smacked into a nearby roof, and the whole house bonged. We laughed hysterically. Something else hit almost beside my head: a hen lay on her back in the wheat, stunned and puzzled. The spiral of clothing was dropping away from what now seemed a single creature with four wings. A skinny blue snake wriggled out of the sky and touched down. I held it up, a tangle of blue wool. ôMy God!ö I cried, ôitÆs Dot!ö
    Jill rolled over and stared. Jack was kicking his heels in the grass, helpless with laughter. I shook my head; I was still dizzy. ôWhat have you all been drinking? Not that Tang mixture again!ö
    Jill said, ôDrinking?ö
    ôSure, the whole colonyÆs drunk as lords,ö I said. ôHey. . . black wings. .. is that MeLeve up there?ö
    Jill leapt to her feet. ôOh my God,ö she screamed. ôThe air!ö
    Jack bounded up and grabbed her arm. ôWhatÆs happened?ö
    She tried to pull away. ôLet me go! ItÆs the air system. ItÆs putting out alcohols. Not just ethanol, either. WeÆre all drunk and hypoxic. Let me go!ö
    ôOne moment.ö Jack was fighting it and losing. In a niomerit heÆd collapse in silliness again. ôYou knew it was going to happen,ö be said. His voice was fuil of accusation.
    ôYes,ö Jill shouted. ôNow will you let me go?ö
    ôHow did you know?ö
    ôI knew before we started,ö Jill said. ôRecycling isnÆt efficient enough. We need fresh water. Tons of fresh water.ö
    "If thereÆs no ice on that rock aheadùö
    ôThen we probably wonÆt get to another rock,ö Jill said, ôNow- will you let me go work on the system?ö
    ôGet out of here, you bitch,ö Jack yelled. He pushed her away and fell on his face.
    It was scary. But there was also the alcohol. Fear and anger and ethanol and higher ketones and God knows what else fought it out in my brain. Fear lost. ôSheÆs kept it going with Kleenex and bubble gum,ö I shouted. ôAnd you believed her. When she told you itÆd last
three years. You believed.ö I whooped at the joke. ôOh, shut up,ö Jack shouted.
    ôWeÆve had it, right?Æ I asked. ôSo tell me something. Why did you do it? I was sure you were putting Jill on. I know you intended to go with the shuttle. So why?ö ôChandeliers,ö Jack said.
    ôChandeliers?ö
    ôYou were there. Firestone Gems will sell you flawless blue-whites. A chandelier of them for the price of half a yearÆs salary.ö
    ôAndùö
    ôWhat the fuck do you think I did with my stash?ö Jack screamed.
    Stash. His ill gotten gains from the Mafia. Stashed as blue-white diamonds
    Funny. Fun-nee. So why wasnÆt I laughing?
    Because the bastard had kidnapped me, thatÆs why. When he found his stash was worthless and he wasnÆt rich, and heÆd probably face a jail term he couldnÆt bribe his way out of, heÆd run as far away as a man could go. And taken me with him.
    I craw led over to my doorway. My suit lay there in a sprawl. I fumbled through it to the equipment belt.
    ôWhat are you doing?ö Halfey yelled.
    ôYouÆll see.ö I found the reaction pistol. I went through my pockets, carefully, until 1 found a ballpoint pen.
    ôHey! No!ö Jack yelled.
    ôIÆm a public benefactor, I am,ö I told him. I took aim and fired. He tumbled backwards.
    There are always people who want to revise history. No hero is so great that someone wonÆt take a shot at hint. Not even Jack Halfey.
    Fortunately I missed.