Joanna was following him on this afternoon’s inspection tour, seeking a way to tell him of what Doug wanted to do without causing an explosion.

“So what did you and Doug talk about out there on the mountaintop?” Greg asked, making it sound so casual that she knew he was blazing with curiosity. Or more.

“Operation Bootstrap,” she replied honestly.

“Is he still harping on that nonsense?” Greg complained as he strolled slowly along the row of consoles. “I wish he’d grow up.”

“I think Doug—”

“Do you know what he’s doing?” Greg interrupted, a sly smile on his lips. “He and Brudnoy want to get their hands on one of our old LTVs and convert it for this idiotic asteroid mission he’s dreamed up. He’s behaving like a sneaky little kid.”

“Do you think Brudnoy’s behaving childishly, too?” Joanna asked mildly.

Instead of answering, Greg stopped and bent over one of the technicians’ shoulders to look closely at the monitor display. Joanna wondered if he actually were interested in the display or just doing it for effect.

When Greg straightened up and resumed pacing behind the seated technicians, Joanna said, “I think Doug has a good idea — it’s too good to throw away.”

“Not you too!”

She stopped, forcing him to stop too and turn to face her.

“Greg, we’ve got to move on this while we still can. If we wait, the U.N. or the New Morality or somebody might try to stop us.”

With exaggerated patience, Greg said, “Mom, look: I’ve lined up Kiribati for us. We’ll be able to continue developing nanotechnology there in the islands. You ought to be making certain that the board is solidly behind us on this maneuver.”

“Don’t worry about the board.”

“Then we can forget about this Bootstrap business, can’t we? We can forget about Moonbase altogether. We won’t need it as long as Kiribati is cooperative.”

“And how long will that be?”

“Long enough for me to build the first diamond ship,” Greg said.

Shocked, Joanna blurted, “What?”

Smiling icily, Greg said, “We have plenty of carbon on Earth, Mother. We don’t have to build Doug’s dream ships up here. We can do it in Kiribati; much more cheaply, too. And once I demonstrate the prototype to the major aerospace lines, they’ll clamor to buy them, treaty or no treaty.”

“But what about your brother? What about Moonbase?”

“Doug will have to return to Earth when I shut this base down.”

Joanna took a breath. “But Doug can’t return to Earth! They’ll kill him just like they killed Carlos!”

“He can live in the islands. We can protect him there.”

Glancing at the men and women attending the consoles, Joanna said, “Greg, we shouldn’t be discussing this here.”

But he planted his fists on his hips and demanded, “Why not? I’m going to recommend to the board that we shut down Moonbase for good. There’s nothing we’re doing up here that we can’t do in Kiribati and you know it!”

My god, Joanna thought, his mind’s made up and he won’t listen to any alternatives. He doesn’t care what happens to Doug. He doesn’t care about anything at all.

She heard herself reply, “Very well, then, Greg. I’ll fight you every inch of the way on this. And in the meantime I’m going to buy an LTV and pay for adapting it for the asteroid rendezvous.”

The blood seemed to drain from Greg’s face. “You’re going … to buy…’ He couldn’t choke out the rest of the words.

“With my own money,” Joanna said. “It’ll be a private venture.”

“You can’t…”

“Yes I can,” said Joanna, trying to keep her voice down, hating having to say this within earshot of so many strangers.

“And I can rent space from Moonbase for doing the necessary refurbishing work on the LTV.”

Greg visibly struggled to regain control of himself. Some color returned to his cheeks. His eyes seemed to calm down somewhat.

“It’s your money,” he said. Then he pushed past his mother and strode back toward the door to the control center, leaving Joanna standing there.

Spend Christmas on Christmas Island, Ibriham al-Rashid grumbled to himself. Only an advertising executive who’s never left Manhattan could come up with such an idiotic idea.

It had been three months since Rashid had been named chief operations officer of the new Kiribati Manufacturing and Entertainment Corporation, a weirdly structured company that included luxury vacation centers alongside all of Masterson Corporation’s former space operations division, including Moonbase.

Just like that, with little more than a few strokes on a keyboard, he had been removed from his directorship of Masterson’s space division and made chief operating officer of this ridiculous new corporation. His work with the fusion energy system was put on hold. “No need for that if we can still use nanotech in space, or out there on the islands,” the corporate president told him. “Don’t look so grim! This is a promotion for you.”

A promotion, Rashid thought bitterly. They’re throwing away the fusion development and sticking me here on this miserable little island. I’ve been destroyed by corporate politics.

As part of their deal with Kiribati, Masterson Corporation was setting up the new company with seats on the board of directors for each of the council chiefs. In addition to transferring Moonbase and the entire space operations division to the new corporation, Masterson was funding construction of two major tourist complexes, with hotels and casinos and all the amenities, one on Tarawa and another on Kiritimati — the atoll that Westerners still called Christmas Island. “Spend your holidays on Christmas Island,” was going to be their advertising slogan.

Rashid stood on the atoll’s highest point, Joe’s Hill, all of twelve meters high, and stared at the devastation that last week’s typhoon had left. The sandy islands had been scrubbed clean by the ferocious winds and a storm-driven tide that had surged completely across them, leaving nothing standing but a few battered palm trees.

The islanders had been moved to safety days before the storm struck, of course, and now were trickling back from the shelters to which they had scattered, most of them thousands of miles away, across the broad Pacific.

There were more construction workers than natives on the atoll now, and Rashid’s ears rang with the grating whine of power saws and the incessant thumping of electric staple-drivers. Huge trucks groaned and rumbled all over the tiny island.

They were building a luxury casino hotel, an amusement center, and an airfield that could handle Clippership rockets as well as supersonic jets. International relief crews would be arriving soon to start helping the returning natives to rebuild their homes, but the corporate task of turning this smashed atoll into a vacation paradise was moving ahead without delay. Every gram of building materials had to be flown in. Four thousand palm trees were due to arrive today, Rashid knew. Tomorrow’s Clippership cargo would include enough sod to grass over the ’championship eighteen-hole golf course’ that the advertising brochures promised.

It would almost be as easy to build a resort complex at Moonbase, Rashid thought sourly.

Construction had been behind schedule when the typhoon struck. Now it was seriously lagging. Rashid, who hated to leave Savannah, and actually preferred New York, had rocketed out to Tarawa once the storm had spun away, and then flown on a corporate jet to what was left of Christmas Island.

Not this Christmas, he knew. There’d be no tourists visiting this atoll for many months to come.

His only consolation on this trip was the new assistant he had hired, a tall, sleek dark woman named Melissa Hart who had gladly accompanied him on this depressing journey to this miserable little lonely island.

Rashid had been impressed with her good looks and smooth self-confidence when she had first appeared at his office seeking a job on his staff. Her personnel file said that she had been a faithful Masterson employee for more than ten years, with an excellent record.