“That is correct,” said Rashid.

“Then why have we started up this dummy corporation in Kiribati?” asked Johansen.

Rashid’s voice answered from the screen, “The Kiribati Corporation exists specifically to allow Moonbase to continue using nanotechnology in spite of the U.N. treaty.”

“In other words, we’re sinking all this money into those islanders just to keep Moonbase poking along?”

Rashid’s voice replied, “Without nanotechnology, Moonbase could not exist.”

Joanna’s face, in the screen at the far end of the room, hardened as soon as she heard the question. “We’re keeping Moonbase poking along’ she said, with steel in her voice, “because we will soon be able to manufacture spacecraft out of pure diamond, using nanotechnology.”

“Who needs a diamond Clippership?” asked one of the women. IThe Clipperships we have now work just fine, don’t they?”

Johansen twiddled his fingers impatiently until Joanna’s response came from the Moon:

“Diamond ships will be lighter, yet far stronger, than anything made of metals. Therefore they will be safer yet more economical to operate. They will be cheaper to manufacture, yet the market will pay more for them than they do for today’s Clipperships. Our profits will be double, or even greater.”

“You mean Moonbase will actually start showing real profit, after all these years?”

Again that agonizing wait.

Then Joanna replied, “I mean that diamond Clipperships, built by Moonbase, will make this corporation more profitable than it’s ever been.”

“Then why do we need this fusion thing?” Johansen asked, almost surprising himself that he spoke his thoughts out loud.

The Windowall view of the fusion reactor vanished and Rashid’s trimly bearded face loomed over them. “Because, with fusion generators Masterson Corporation can become bigger than the old petroleum companies were!”

“We can’t sink risk money into both these new ideas,” said the comptroller, sitting at Johansen’s right hand. “It’s just too chancy.”

“Suppose the World Court decides that our Kiribati Corporation is nothing but a subterfuge to get around the U.N. treaty?” Rashid threatened.

But before anyone on the board could respond to that, Joanna countered, “How long will it take to make this fusion process practical? And profitable?”

Rashid hesitated. “Well, the power conversion system needs to be developed.”

“Power conversion?”

“Magneto-’ Rashid cut his words short. “MHD is what its called.”

“How long will that take?” asked the comptroller. “And how many bucks?”

Before Rashid could reply, Joanna said firmly, “We’re not asking for a penny of corporate risk funding on our new Clippership development.”

All heads turned to her image.

“Moonbase will build a prototype diamond Clippership on our own. It won’t cost the corporation a cent.”

The board broke into a dozen conversations at once.

Joanna’s voice stilled them all. “But once that prototype ship is demonstrated and the aerospace lines start placing their orders, I’ll expect every Moonbase employee who worked on the program to get a share of the profits.”

Johansen wished for the hundredth time that Quintana were still there. He’d know what to say. As it was, the board sat in stunned silence for what seemed like half a lifetime.

Finally the comptroller spoke up. “Mrs. Stavenger, if your people up there can build a diamond Clippership without additional funding from the corporation and sell the concept to the aerospace lines, I’m sure we can work out an equitable profit-sharing plan.”

Rashid, in an agonized voice, asked, “But what about the fusion program?”

Johansen spoke up. “Let’s wait before we make a decision about that. Let’s see what Moonbase can actually do for us, first”

Sitting in his bare little office in the concrete building on Tarawa, Rashid sank back in his chair. The board of directors nodded their heads — white haired, bald, silvery gray — and agreed with Johansen’s idiotic decision.

Angrily, Rashid punched his desktop keyboard and blanked the display screen on the office’s wall.

Melissa Hart got up from her chair at the side of the desk and stepped behind Rashid. Gently she massaged his shoulders as she whispered, “Let me go to Moonbase. Let me use the sword of vengeance against them.”

Rashid closed his eyes as her deft fingers kneaded the tension out of him.

“Yes,” he said. “You go to Moonbase on the next available ship.”

ROCKET PORT

This one was different. Doug could hardly contain his excitement as he stood in the rocket port’s observation bubble and watched the LTV come down. The LTV. The one they were going to modify for the asteroid mission.

He spotted the puffs of rocket exhaust against the dark sky as the controllers made their final adjustments, then the LTV took shape, big and lumpy with tanks and pods, and then the main engine fired its final braking burst and the ungainly vehicle settled down on its rickety-looking legs in a dirty white cloud of gaseous aluminum oxide and blowing lunar dust.

Doug just stood there, practically on tip-toes, his hair brushing the curved plastiglass of the bubble, and admired the spacecraft. This wasn’t a wom-out cripple, ready for the scrap heap. This LTV was practically new; his mother had insisted on getting quality for her money.

To his surprise, the personnel access tube was worming its way toward the hatch in the passenger pod. Were there passengers aboard the ship?

Doug slid languidly down the ladder into the flight control center and asked the two controllers on duty.

“One passenger. VIP from Tarawa,” said the chief controller.

Surprised, Doug said, “Well, I might as well go down and greet him.”

“Her,” the controller corrected. “Personal representative from the chief operating officer of the Kiribati Corporation.”

“Oh,” said Doug. “The new owners.”

He ducked out of the flight control center and slid down the ladder into The Pit. He walked briskly to the airlock hatch and waited for the indicator light to turn green. As soon as the hatch cracked open, Doug grabbed it and helped to swing it all the way.

“Welcome to Moonbase,” he said. The words almost stuck in his throat. The LTV’s pilot and co-pilot both were holding the arms of a very beautiful dark-skinned woman who looked as if she were dying.

It had been a miserable flight for Melissa. Worse than hell, forty-eight hours of weightlessness. She had never been in space before, and the nausea of free-fall simply overwhelmed her, despite all the medication. She puked her guts out during the first few hours of the flight and had the dry heaves the rest of the way.

The only thing that kept her going was the mantra she repeated to herself all the long, exhausting way to the Moon. It was a mantra of hate. She filled her mind with a vision of Greg Masterson. The man who had betrayed her so brutally. All men were betrayers, of course, but Greg had been the worst. She had loved him, once. She had conceived his baby. Now for nearly twenty years she had survived by hating him. His betrayal had driven her into self-loathing and a life so foul it had nearly killed her, just as she had killed the unborn child within her, but Melissa fought for her life with one burning goal set before her pain-filled eyes: to make Greg pay. To make him feel the agony she had felt. To make him suffer as she had suffered.

It was not a worthy goal, she knew. General O’Conner and the others would be horrified if they could see into her soul. But it was the goal that had kept Melissa sane all these years. And now she was close to achieving it.

Hate can move mountains, she said to herself. Faith, hope and hate. And the greatest of these is hate.

Now her long journey was over. With at least some sense of weight to anchor her stomach, she looked with watery eyes at a bright-faced young man beaming a ridiculous greeting to her.