At last it was finished. She wanted to leap out of the narrow bunk and run to the lagoon for a cleansing swim in the warm enfolding waters. Instead she lay at Rashid’s side, breathing softly.

He turned toward her and propped himself on his elbow. Looking down at her in the darkened tent, he asked, “Was that enjoyable for you?”

Melissa made a sigh. “The best I’ve had in years and years,” she said languidly. Truthfully.”

He laughed gently. “How many years?”

“Ever since…’, Melissa let her voice fade away into the shadows.

“Since when?”

“I shouldn’t tell you,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t let anyone know.”

“Know what?”

For long moments she remained silent, waiting for his curiosity to grow unbearable, knowing that the best lies were always based on truth.

He leaned over her, grasped her by the shoulders almost menacingly. “What is this great secret? Tell me.”

Melissa let the breath sigh out of her. “It was so long ago, so many years have passed—”

“You can confide in me,” he said more gently. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Years ago — a lifetime ago-’ She hesitated.

“You must have been only a girl,” he said.

“Yes,” Melissa replied. “I was very young. And I fell in love.”

“Ahh.”

“With Greg Masterson.”

Even in the darkness of the tent she could see his eyes go wide. “Greg Masterson?”

“I was his lover,” said Melissa, in a little girl’s voice. “But he cast me aside. He nearly destroyed me.”

Rashid dropped onto his back and lay beside her. “Greg Masterson,” he muttered.

“Greg Masterson,” she repeated.

“And you want to go to the Moon to be with him again.”

“I want to go to the Moon,” whispered Melissa, “to repay him for the way he treated me.”

“You no longer love him?”

“I’ve hated him for nearly twenty years.”

Rashid was silent for a long time. At last he asked, “And what can you do to him on the Moon that you can’t do from here on Earth?”

“I can confront him. And his mother. His mother is at Moonbase. She’s protected him all these years.”

“Protected him? From what?”

“From-’ Melissa stopped herself. She had no intention of telling Rashid everything. “From me,” she said. “I was carrying Greg’s baby when he sent me away. I had an abortion. All my life I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I murdered my own child.”

It was a clever variation of the truth. But it was enough to convince Rashid.

“So you want to go to Moonbase to confront Greg and Mrs. Stavenger.”

“Yes. I want them to know that if they don’t shut down Moonbase I’ll tell the whole world about him, how he abandoned me, how he made me commit murder.”

Rashid thought it over for a few moments. “But that all happened almost twenty years ago, you say.”

Melissa pulled her trump card. “There is no statute of limitations on murder. The law says abortion is murder. I’m willing to stand trial for what I did. I deserve to be punished. But Greg will have to stand trial beside me, as an accomplice to murder.”

“My god!”

“That’s the law now in America,” she said.

“It would ruin him,” said Rashid.

“It would force him to return to Earth to face trial,” Melissa said.

“His mother would never allow that.”

“Do you think she would shut down Moonbase instead?”

“Yes,” said Rashid. “I think she would. The old tigress would blow up Moonbase and all the people in it before she’d let her son be humiliated and destroyed like that.”

Melissa nodded in the darkness. What would Mrs. Stavenger do once she knew that her precious son would have to stand trial for the murder of his stepfather?

“Then you’ll send me to Moonbase?” Melissa asked.

He hesitated. “There’s a board of directors meeting coming up next week. I’ve asked to be put on the agenda, to make a presentation about the fusion program to them. Let’s see how that goes. It might not be necessary to… go to all that trouble.”

Melissa knew that she should not press him too far. “You’re thinking of me, aren’t you? Trying to save me the pain, the suffering of confronting them.”

“If the board allows me to push the fusion development, then why go to all that trouble?”

“But if the board decides against you…?”

“Then,” Rashid said, his voice cold and hard, “yes, I will send you to Moonbase like a guided missile.”

“Good,” said Melissa.

“You want to go?”

“I want to help you,” she said quickly. “I want to see you gain the power and recognition that you deserve.”

“But you must return to me,” he said, excited by the future parading before his eyes. “I will become the most powerful man in the corporation, once Moonbase is closed.”

“And I will be one of your loving slaves,” Melissa lied.

It aroused Rashid just as if it were the truth.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Good things always happened to Alan Johansen. Never a deep intellect, he had at least been clever enough to pick extremely wealthy parents. He also inherited their good looks: Johansen had the chiseled blond features of a Nordic warrior of old, although his slim, almost delicate build was more like that of a dancer than a Viking: With his slicked-back hair and thin-lipped smile he looked like a chorus boy from the Roaring Twenties.

He was, in fact, chairman of the board of Masterson Aerospace Corporation. And very confused and troubled.

It was bad enough that Joanna Stavenger insisted on attending Board meetings electronically, instead of in person. Her image appeared on the wallscreen at the end of the conference table, floating above their heads like the magic mirror in Snow White. At least Carlos Quintana was able to keep things running smoothly, even with that infernal delay whenever she wanted to say something.

Now Quintana was gone, and half the board members were scheming and trying to make alliances against the other half, and to top it off they had set up this dummy corporation on some tropical islands out in the South Seas to take over all their space operations. It sounded awfully tricky to Alan, maybe even illegal.

And on top of everything else, the man they had sent out to those islands was pestering him with some crack-brained idea about nuclear energy, of all things. Why, nuclear energy was as dead as the horse-and-buggy. People hated nuclear! It was full of dangerous radiation.

“Alan sat at the head of the-polished board room table, watching Rashid’s video. In the Windowall that stretched almost the length of the entire room, a smallish metal sphere stood, humming slightly, doing nothing.

“As you can see from the power gauges,” Rashid’s voice was saying, “this one small generator can produce enough electrical energy to power an entire city the size of Savannah.”

“And this is nuclear fusion?” asked one of the white-haired men sitting halfway down the table.

“Yes,” Rashid’s voice replied. “Fusion, not fission. No uranium or plutonium is involved. The fuel basically comes from water and the waste product is helium: inert and safe. You can use it to blow up balloons for your grandchildren.”

A few snickers of laughter went down the conference table.

“I thought you said we needed fuel from the Moon to make this work,” said one of the women directors.

“One shipload per year will fuel as many fusion generators as we can profitably build,” Rashid answered.

“So we wouldn’t need to keep Moonbase open?”

“No. We could even process the helium-three without nanomachines, if we must.”

“Now wait a minute,” Johansen interrupted. “I thought you said the helium was a waste product. Now you’re saying it’s the fuel? I don’t understand.”

Patiently, Rashid tried to explain, but Johansen felt more confused than ever.

“But the point is,” said the comptroller, “that we could get the fuel we need from the Moon without keeping Moonbase open.”