It certainly was dark out there. With the Earth behind him, the airless sky looked black as infinity, specked here and there by a few stars bright enough to see through the heavy tinting of his helmet visor.

Dark and empty, Doug thought.

But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Doug realized that there was a faint glow rising above the tired old mountain that poked its head up in the middle of the giant crater. Out beyond the brutally close horizon, the sky was slowly brightening.

They’re wrong! Doug told himself. They’re all wrong! It’s not darkest just before the dawn. Not on the Moon, at least.

For out in the star-flecked blackness beyond the weary mountains, a pale hazy glow was beginning to light the predawn hours. The zodiacal light, Doug knew. Sunlight reflected off dust particles floating in space, the leftovers from the creation of the solar system. Here in the airless sky of Moonbase they light up the heavens long before the Sun comes into view.

Doug raised his arms to the ancient motes of dust that brightened the predawn hours. They’re like friendly little fireflies out there in space, he told himself. They bring us the message, the promise that the light is on its way, the Sun will rise, a new day will dawn. Have hope. The darkness will end. It’s a good omen.

Feeling excited again, energized, he said to himself, I’ve got to talk with Brudnoy again. And Bianca. Maybe they can get me together with a few people who can get Operation Bootstrap started.

And Mom? Doug wondered about that as he started trudging back toward the main airlock. No, Mom will side with Greg. She’s a businesswoman, and Greg can make a stronger case for the bottom line than I can.

Still, Doug broke into a broad grin as he hurried back toward Moonbase. Greg’s got profit-and-loss statements and projections of inventories and all that puke. All I’ve got is a broken-down former cosmonaut and maybe a few other people who might want to help me with Operation Bootstrap.

And a vision for the future.

He began to leap across the barren dusty ground, soaring in twenty-yard strides across the crater floor.

“Hey, where you goin’ in such a hurry?” a construction worker’s voice called in his earphones.

“Into the future!” Doug sang back.

BIANCA’S QUARTERS

“All right, quiet down!” Bianca Rhee shouted.

They all stopped talking and looked at her expectantly. Doug counted fourteen people crammed into Bianca’s quarters, five of them squeezed on the bunk, the others crowded on the floor. Most of them were long-termers, men and women on year-long work contracts. Several had been working at Moonbase for many years, shuttling back and forth to Earth.

Lev Brudnoy had appropriated the desk chair and placed one of the female student-workers on his lap. He sat there with a satisfied smile on his grizzled face, one long arm around the young woman’s waist, his other hand grasping an insulated flask of rocket juice. The others clutched a motley assortment of cups, glasses, bottles, even zero-gee squeeze bulbs. It was a BYOB party.

The ostensible reason for the party was to show off the new wallscreen that Doug had bought for Bianca. It almost filled the wall opposite her bunk, turning the blank stone into a window that could look out on the world, wherever vidcams could go. For the first hour of the party they had hooted and catcalled through a production of a Masterson Corporation-sponsored drama set on a corporate space station where romance and intrigue flourished in zero gravity.

Now the video was finished and the Windowall showed a satellite view of the great rift valley of Mars. Bianca perched herself on the desktop, her legs too short to reach the floor. She asked Doug to come up and sit beside her. They all wore workers’ coveralls, color-coded to show their departments. Doug saw mostly the pumpkin orange of the research department and the olive green of mining, although there were a couple of medical whites in the crowd; one of the women medics wore hers unbuttoned almost to the waist, showing plenty of cleavage. He wore the only management blue.

Seeing that she had their attention, Bianca said more softly, “Doug’s got something important to tell you.” And with that, she turned to him, grinning.

“Thanks for the glowing introduction,” Doug joked weakly. A few chuckles from the people looking up at him. He knew most of them, at least the long-termers. Of course, each coverall carried a nametag.

“I need your help,” Doug began. “I want to start moving Moonbase along the road to self-sufficiency as rapidly as we can manage it.”

As he began to outline his plans for Operation Bootstrap, Doug studied their faces. At first they looked amused, as if they expected this to be an elaborate joke of some kind. But then they started getting interested, and began asking questions.

“You really expect us to modify an LTV in our spare time?”

Doug answered, “A couple of extra hours a day from five technicians who know what they’re doing can get the job done in ten weeks, from what the computer estimates tell me.”

“But we won’t get paid for the extra work.”

“No, it’ll be strictly voluntary. Your pay will come as a share of the profit we make from the asteroid ore.”

“Work first, pay later. Huh!”

Bianca said, “Hey, you’re always complaining there’s nothing to do up here except drink and screw around.”

“What’s wrong with that?” one of the guys piped up.

Everyone laughed.

But Doug went on seriously, “I know it’s a lot to ask, and you might put in a lot of work for nothing if the mission isn’t successful. But if we do succeed…”

“How much money we talking about?”

“The calculations work out to about five times your hourly wage, if we get the amount of ore we’re hoping for.”

“And the corporation’ll give us this money as a bonus?”

“Right.”

“But the corporation doesn’t even know we’re doing this… this Bootstrap thing? How does that work?”

Doug replied, “We’re all taking a chance. You’re risking your time. Once we’ve got the ore from the asteroid, though, the corporation will pay you a bonus along the lines I’ve calculated.”

“How can we be sure of that?”

“You have my word on it,” Doug said.

“No offense, pal, but how much weight does your word have with the management?”

Doug smiled. “Good question. Let me put it this way: If the corporation won’t come up with the money, then I will. Personally.”

“Or we can sell the ore to Yamagata,” one of the women said.

No one laughed.

Lev Brudnoy said, “I hate to be the bearer of evil tidings, but there is a rumor that the base will be shut down at the end of this director’s term.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that buzz.”

Several others nodded.

Doug had to admit it. “That’s the director’s current plan. I’m hoping we can make him change his mind.”

“He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

“My half-brother.”

“Does that mean he’s only half as heavy?” asked one of the women. “You know, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

Doug made a rueful grin for her. “He’s twice as heavy, believe me.”

“So you want us to stick our necks out when the base director’s ready to shut down the whole humpin’ operation?”

“I want to save Moonbase,” Doug replied.

“Wait a minute. Where are you going to get an LTV to modify?”

I’ll handle that,” said Doug. “None of you has to do a thing or commit yourselves to a minute of extra work unless and until I get an LTV for us.”

They glanced at each other, muttering.

“Whatever happens,” Biaьca said, without waiting for them to come to a group decision, “this little meeting here ought to be kept secret for the time being.”

“Secret? From who?”

“Whom,” corrected one of the students.

“From management,” said Doug. “I want to present this as a fait accompli before my brother knows what we’re doing.”