SAVANNAH

“There’s ice down there at the pole!” Doug said, brimming with enthusiasm. “Water ice! Mr. Brennart wants to lead an expedition there and claim it for us.”

“I’ve seen his proposals,” Joanna said, feeling weary at her son’s insistence. She leaned back in her reclining chair. ” Brennart’s deluged me, , with video presentations, reports, survey data.”

“I want to go with him,” Doug said.

Joanna had known he would. Of course he would. That was why she had hesitated, ever since her son had returned from his brief visit to Moonbase, bubbling with excitement about joining Brennart and trekking off to the south lunar pole. Now he sat in her office, facing her, burning with enthusiasm, hardly able to sit still as they waited for Brennart to show up. She saw Paul’s features in her son’s face, Paul’s boundless energy and drive. And she remembered that Paul had died on the Moon.

Brennart’s proposed expedition to the lunar south pole had worked its way up through the corporate chain of command and now sat on Joanna’s desk. She could approve it or kill it. She knew that if she approved it, her son would stop at nothing to be included in the mission.

Misunderstanding her silence, Doug said, “Mom, all my life I’ve heard about my father and Moonbase. I want to carry on in his footsteps. I’ve got to!”

“Your freshman classes start in September.”

“We’ll be back by then. It’s my legacy, Mom! All my life I’ve wanted to get to Moonbase and continue what he started.”

All his life Joanna, thought: All eighteen years of his life.

“It’s the frontier,” he told her Excitedly. “That’s where the action is.”

Joanna countered, “Moonbase is a dreary little cave that’s only barely paying its own way. I’ve come close to shutting it down a dozen times.”

“Shutting it down? You can’t shut it down, Mom! It’s the frontier! It’s the future!”

“It’s a drain on this corporation’s resources.”

Doug started to reply, then hesitated. With a slow smile he said, “Mom, if you won’t allow me to go to Moonbase, I’ll get a job with Yamagata Industries. They—”

“Yamagata!”

“They’re looking for construction workers,” Doug said evenly. “I’ll get to the Japanese base at Copernicus.”

That was when Joanna realized how utterly serious her son was. Behind the boyish enthusiasm was an iron-hard will. Despite his pleasant smiling way, he was just as intent as his father had been.

“Douglas,” she said, “there’s much more at stake here than you understand.”

He jumped to his feet, startling her. Pacing across the office, Doug replied, “Mom, if we can get water from the ice fields down at the south pole we can make Moonbase profitable. We can even sell water to Yamagata and the Europeans.”

“No one’s ever gone to the south pole. It’s mountainous, very dangerous—”

Doug grinned at her. “Come on, Mom. Foster Brennart’s going to head the expedition. Foster Brennart! He’s a living legend. He’s like Daniel Boone and Charles Lindbergh and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins all wrapped up in one!”

Joanna knew Foster Brennart quite well. On the Moon Brennart had distinguished himself as a pioneer trailblazer: he had been there from Moonbase’s earliest beginnings, side by side with Paul. On Earth, especially here at corporate headquarters, Brennart was a constant aggravation. He always had some wild scheme to promote, some adventure that he swore was crucial to the survival of Moonbase and the profitability of Masterson Aerospace Corporation. More often than not, his treks into the unknown cost far more than they could ever return. And he was getting wilder, more adventurous with the years. Reckless, Joanna thought. Brennart took chances that seemed outright foolish to her.

Now he was pushing for an expedition to the lunar south pole. He had been at it for nearly two years, wheedling and cajoling every time he visited Savannah. And now he had enlisted Doug in his campaign. Joanna felt simmering anger at that. Brennart had taken advantage of the eighteen-year-old’s natural enthusiasm and now Doug was as frenzied as a religious convert. Brennart had made the Moon’s south pole into a holy grail, in Doug’s young eyes.

The trouble was, this time Brennart seemed to be right. The more Joanna studied the possibilities, the more inevitable the idea looked to her. Still, it was chancy — even dangerous.

I can’t keep Doug on a leash, Joanna told herself. But it all sounds so damnably dangerous.

Doug couldn’t sit still. He paced between the two little Sheraton loveseats to the window, glanced out at the cloudy afternoon, then turned expectantly toward the door.

“He ought to be here any minute,” he said.

“Relax. Foster’s never been late for a meeting,” said Joanna. “I’m sure he’ll be on time for this one.”

Her intercom chimed. “Mr. Brennart here to see you,” said her private secretary.

“Send him right in,” Joanna said, leaning back in her chair. Doug was practically quivering as he stood by the window.

Foster G. Brennart was accustomed to dominating any room he entered. Tall, athletically lean, he had a thick mane of curly golden hair that he allowed to flow to his shoulders. His eyes were pale blue, and although they often seemed to be gazing at a distant horizon that only he could see, when they focused on an individual, that person felt the full intensity of Brennart’s powerful Character.

He wore a simple sky blue velour pullover shirt and pale blue slacks. Joanna noticed that he was shod only in leather sandals; no socks.

“Foster,” she said with a gesture toward Doug, “You’ve already met my son—”

“Hello, Doug,” said Brennart, extending a long arm. “Good to see you again.”

Doug was surprised by Brennart’s sweet high tenor all over again. He somehow expected the lanky six-footer to sound deeper, more manly. Still, Doug smiled with pleasure as he shook Brennart’s hand. The older man sat in the loveseat facing Joanna.

“I presume the subject of this meeting is the south polar expedition,” he said.

“Of course,” said Joanna.

“The Aitken Basin down there is most valuable real estate on the Moon,” Brennart said.

“I’ve watched your proposal disks several times,” Joanna said. “And read all the tons of material you’ve sent”

Turning toward Doug, still standing by the window, Brennart touted, “There’s a mountain down there — Mt. Wasser — that’s in daylight all the time. We can generate electrical power on its summit constantly, twenty-four hours a day. And use the power to melt the ice down in the valleys and pump the water back to Moonbase.”

“We’re producing enough water for Moonbase with the nanomachines,” Joanna said.

“Barely,” said Doug.

Brennart smiled at the lad. “At Moonbase you have to build twice the solar power capacity that you really need, because the area’s in night for two weeks at a time. At Mt. Wasser we can provide electrical power constantly.”

“Once you put up the solar panels,” said Joanna.

“We can use nanomachines to build a power tower on the mountaintop.”

“And transmit the energy back to Moonbase by bouncing a microwave power beam off a relay satellite,” Doug added eagerly.

Shaking her head slightly, Joanna said, “Moonbase is only marginally profitable. This expedition—”

“Can put Moonbase solidly into the black,” said Brennart.

“There’s enough power and enough water at the south pole to allow Moonbase to grow and prosper.”

“But the cost.”

“Mom,” Doug said, “if we don’t claim the polar region somebody else will.”

Joanna started to reply, then hesitated.

“He’s right,” said Brennart. “Yamagata’s planning an expedition, we’re pretty certain. And the Euro-Russians aren’t fools, they know the value of that territory.”

No corporation could claim it owned any part of the Moon. No nation could claim sovereignty over lunar territory. Treaties signed almost a century earlier prevented that But, after people had actually begun building bases on the Moon and digging up lunar resources, the earthbound lawyers had to find some legal method of assuring some form of property rights. They cloaked their decisions in clouds of legalistic verbiage, but what it boiled down to was that any ’entity’ (which was defined as an individual or a combination of individuals) which could establish that it was utilizing the natural resources of a specific part of the Moon’s surface or subsurface was entitled to exclusive use of that territory. It was not first-come-first-served, exactly; it was the first to show utilization of a chunk of lunar real estate who could expect legal protection against others who wanted to use the same area.