That stopped her. What could they do about it if the university administration and the faculty leaders permitted it? Probably a lot of New Morality members among them, she realized.

“You know the old Chinese advice about getting raped,” Quentin said softly, as he took off his trousers.

“You shouldn’t relax,” she said, from her side of the bed. “And you sure as hell shouldn’t enjoy it.”

Naked, he flopped onto the bed. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another, for this world has neither certitude nor peace nor help for pain,” he misquoted slightly.

Jinny sat on the bed beside him. “This world,” she replied.

DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

“Operation Bootstrap?” Greg echoed, from behind his desk. “Are you joking?”

“No,” said Doug. “It’s not a joke.”

The two of them were alone in Greg’s office: Doug in his usual spot on the couch by the door, Greg sitting upright behind his desk.

With a shake of his head, Greg said to his brother, “When Mom told me about it I thought perhaps it was some kind of prank you and Brudnoy had cooked up.”

“Greg, it’s something we have to do,” Doug said earnestly.

“Really?”

“Sooner or later.”

“It won’t be sooner.”

For all the urgency in his words, Doug looked calm and relaxed, almost insolently at ease, Greg thought His young half-brother slouched back in the couch all the way across the office. He expects me to get up from my desk and go over to him, Greg told himself. No way.

I’m the director of Moonbase. I called him here into my office; he’s not going to make me jump through his hoops.

“Look, Doug, I asked you to come here without Mom so we could talk over this crazy idea of yours—”

“It’s not a crazy idea,” Doug said.

“Come on, now—”

“I’ve worked out the numbers, Greg. We can build Clipper-ships that’ll outperform anything that’s ever flown. And that’s just the beginning. There’s aircraft, automobiles — we can transform the whole world!”

Greg frowned at his half-brother. “Pie in the sky. Nothing but pipedreams.”

“Look at the numbers!” Doug urged. “I can bring them up on your computer.”

“I’m sure you can put numbers on a screen that say anything you want them to say,” Greg replied, acidly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get as crazy as you are.”

“It’s not crazy!”

“Operation Shoelace,” Greg sneered.

Doug jolted to his feet and strode up to the curving desk. Greg had to look up at his younger half-brother, leaning both fists on the desk top menacingly.

“Operation Bootstrap will not only save Moonbase, Greg,” Doug said, as calm and implacable as a brick wall, “it’ll make Masterson Aerospace the most powerful corporation on Earth. “Sit down,” Greg snapped.

Doug pulled up the nearest webbed chair and sat in it.

“Now listen to the realities,” Greg said, tapping a fingernail on his desk top.

Doug smiled slightly. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“I’ve spent the past six months searching for a way to keep this base afloat—”

“Operation Bootstrap is the way to do it!”

“All that you’ll accomplish,” Greg countered annoyedly, “is to push Moonbase into the red deeper and faster. It’s nonsense! Absolute nonsense!”

“But it’s not—”

“For chrissake, Doug, we can’t even get the mass driver finished!”

“I know that.”

“It’s taking every bit of energy and manpower that I can spare. I’ve got to get the mass driver built and still show a profit every quarter. Do you know how tough that is? Do you have any idea of the pressures I’m under?”

“Okay,” Doug said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Forget everything I just said, then.”

“Good.”

“But we’ve got to do Operation Bootstrap if we’re going to keep Moonbase alive.”

“Moonbase is a continuing drain on the corporation’s finances.”

“Greg, this isn’t about money! It’s much more-’ ›

“Don’t be childish,” Greg snapped. “It’s always about money. There isn’t anything else.”

“But—”

“But nothing! If I don’t show a profit the board will shut us down, just like that.” Greg snapped his fingers. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” said Doug quietly. “But it’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Greg stared at him.

“You didn’t take the directorship here to save us, Greg. You came up here to kill Moonbase.”

Doug saw his brother flinch at the word ’kill.” I shouldn’t have said it, he told himself. But it’s too late now.

“Moonbase is Mom’s pet project,” Greg said slowly, his voice low and trembling. “She’s been nursing it along for more than twenty years now. But there’s no rationale to keep it going. It’s a drain on the corporation.”

With a shake of his head, Doug replied, “There’s more involved here than the quarterly profit-and-loss statement, Greg.”

“You still don’t see—”

“No, you don’t see,” Doug said, raising his voice slightly. “Moonbase has been tottering on the brink of extinction ever since it started. I know that. I also know that if we’re limited to supplying raw materials for the orbital factories we’ll always be on the ragged edge. Always!”

“What do you mean, limited?”

“We’ve got to expand our operations! We’ve got to make ourselves self-sufficient and move beyond just being a mining operation. Being self-sufficient means more than just having enough water to go around, Greg. We’ve got to be able to manufacture everything we need, right here at Moonbase, without needing imports from Earthside.”

“In your dreams,” Greg muttered.

“We can do it! I know we can! But we’ve got to start now. We’ve all got to work together on this.”

Is he really that naive, Greg wondered, or is he just trying to manipulate me?

Taking a deep breath and sitting up straighter, Greg said firmly, “When my term here is over, I’m going to recommend to the board that Moonbase be shut down.”

“But we can turn things around,” Doug urged.

Exasperated, Greg burst out, “Do you have any idea of what you’d need to mine an asteroid? This isn’t some game! Get real!”

Strangely, instead of getting angry, Doug smiled. “Greg, I’ve calculated every detail of the job. I’ve run it through our logistics and engineering programs. I can even tell you the exact date on which we’ll make rendezvous with 2015-eta.”

“With what?”

“That’s the best asteroid for our purposes. When you trade off its nearest-approach distance against the eccentricity and inclination of its orbit—”

Doug blathered on about the asteroid while Greg sat, seething. I didn’t want Mom here, he reminded himself, because she’d side with him and not me. I wanted to confront him face-to-face, all by ourselves. But now he’s pulling out all this technical garbage to show how much more he knows than I do.

“Hold it!” Greg snapped.

Doug stopped in mid-sentence.

“Now listen to this and believe it: Nothing new is getting started at this base. I’m willing to let the mass-driver job continue, but that’s just because we might be able to sell the facility to the Japanese once it’s finished.”

“Sell it?”

“Or sell the know-how. Yamagata could buy the nanobugs and build their own mass driver for themselves.”

“Maybe Yamagata will want to buy Moonbase,” Doug thought aloud. “The whole base.”

“Maybe,” Greg agreed, with a cold smile. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility. They just might be fanatic enough.”

“But otherwise you’ll shut’down Moonbase.”

“What choice do we have? The U.N.’s nanotech treaty will wipe out the base anyway.”

“So the deal with Kiribati is just a fake?” Doug asked.

“I’ll take care of the Kiribati deal. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“You’re just doing it to keep Mom happy.”

I’m doing it,” Greg said icily, “so that we’ll have a place to continue nanotech work, despite the U.N. treaty.” Before Doug could reply he added, “We don’t need Moonbase or even space stations to use nanotechnology. I can make Kiribati a very wealthy nation, using nanotechnology.”