“Doesn’t necessarily involve the corporation?” Quintana’s voice was filled with questions.

“Carlos, I’m his mother. I think I know Greg’s limitations and his capabilities. I think he can handle the Moonbase job. But I might be too emotionally close to be seeing clearly.”

“I understand,” Quintana replied. “I think I am too emotionally close to you to render an unbiased judgment.”

“But if you can’t help me, who can I turn to?”

He sighed again. “Joanna, I have always considered your intelligence to be of the highest order. Do what you think is best. I will certainly back you on the board, whatever you decide.”

“Thank you, Carlos,” Joanna said. But she was thinking that unqualified support was no real help at all.

MT. WASSER

“There it is! Look!” Doug cried out.

Turning awkwardly in her spacesuit to follow his pointing hand, Bianca Rhee saw a tall, wide pinnacle of rock jutting up into sunlight from the rugged shadowed mountain range below their ballistic lobber.

“That’s Mt. Wasser?” she asked,

“Got to be,” Doug said, nodding inside his helmet. He studied the sunlit jut of rock carefully. Slightly taller than Everest, Mt. Wasser just happened to be situated so close to the south pole that its uppermost reaches were always in sunlight.

And down below, in those shadows, there’re fields of ice, Doug knew. Areas that are always in shadow, where the temperature is always at least a hundred below zero. Water, covered with dust from the infalling meteoroids, kept frozen in the cryogenic dark.

Water and sunlight. The two most important resources of the Moon. Water for life. Sunlight for electrical power. Brennart is right, Doug told himself. That’s the most valuable real estate on the Moon, down there. He felt the excitement building in him all over again.

In the Jobber’s cockpit, Brennart was scanning the readouts on his panel displays.

“What are the others doing?” he asked Killifer.

“Right on track. Following us like nice little puppies.”

“Superb.” Brennart’s gloved fingers flicked along the control panel. “Okay. We’re going in.”

The lobber tilted back to its original vertical orientation.

Killifer punched up the camera view of the ground on the main display screen.

“Awful dark down there,” he muttered.

“Infrared,” Brennart snapped.

The image on the display screen did not change much: still dark, with vague suggestions of shapes looming in the shadows.

“Braking in ten seconds,” Killifer read from the flight plan display.

“I know.”

“Altitude twenty.”

“I know!”

Killifer realized that Brennart was jumpy. They both peered hard at the camera display.

“Lights,” Brennart ordered.

Too high to do much good,” Killifer muttered, but he turned on the powerful lamps that had been installed on the underside of the lobber’s main platform.

Brennart’s gloved thumb hovered over the keypad that would override the rockets’ firing. The shadowy ground was rushing up toward them. Killifer could see a jumble of shapes glittering in the reflected light of the landing lamps.

“Boulders!” he yelped. “Big ones.”

Smoothly Brennart ignited the main rocket thrusters. Killifer felt a sudden surge of weight, but before he could even take a breath it disappeared and they were falling again.

“Goldman!” Brennart called into his helmet microphone. “Jump the boulder field. Follow me!”

“Following,” came Goldman’s voice in their earphones, professionally unperturbed.

“Reset the braking program,” Brennart commanded.

Killifer tapped the keyboard. “Reset.”

The camera view showed a smoother stretch of ground beneath them. Still a great deal of rocks strewn across the area, but they were smaller, less dangerous.

The hard stony ground rushed up at them, stopped momentarily, then came at them again. The image on the display screen blurred; rocket exhaust, Killifer knew. Then he felt a thump and the familiar sensation of weight returned.

“We’re down’ he said to Brennart And realized he was sweating inside his suit . “Number two?” Brennait called into his helmet mike.

“Hundred-twenty… seventy… touchdown. We’re about fifty meters off your left rear. About seven o’clock in relation to your cockpit.”

Both men turned in their seats but could not see the second spacecraft from their position.

“The drones,” Brennart said.

The two unmanned vehicles were programmed to follow Brennart’s craft at a preset distance, and to land a hundred meters on either side of it.

Killifer glanced at the radar display. “Coming in now,” he said, pointing to the blips their beacons made.

They could see one of the robot craft descending, its braking rockets winking on and off against the dark shadows of the mountains.

“Override!” Brennart snapped. “It’s coming down in the boulder field.”

But it was too late. The unmanned lobber touched one of its outstretched legs on a boulder almost as big as the vehicle itself. The other three landing pads were still a good ten meters above the ground. The attitude-control thrusters tried to keep the vehicle from tipping over for several wobbling, twitching seconds, but they gave out and the spacecraft tilted, tilted and finally struck the ground with a soundless crash. Killifer saw the landing legs crumple and the cargo pods split open; an oxygen tank blew apart in a silent burst of frost-glittering chunks.

From the passenger module, Doug saw the crash. His first reaction was, My God, that could’ve been us! Then he wondered how much equipment they had lost.

“Well, we’re down safely, at least,” he said to the others in the bubble.

They muttered replies, voices hushed, subdued.

“I think my telescope was in the pod that broke open,”

Bianca said worriedly. I’ll have to go over and see if it survived the crash.”

By the time the six of them unstrapped from their seats and wormed through the hatch to stand on the ground, Brennart was already striding toward the crashed craft. Everybody’s spacesuit was basically white, although some of them had been used so hard they were gray with imbedded lunar dust. But Brennart was easy to spot, even in a suit. His was sparkling new, gleaming white, and had red stripes down the arms and legs. For recognition, he had said.

Doug followed Brennait and his second-in-command, Killifer. He caught up with them as they reached the edge of the wreckage. It was impossible to see their faces, behind their heavily-tinted visors, but Brennart clearly radiated disgust, fists clenched on his hips.

“See whose equipment’s on this ship and get them to check out this mess,” Brennart commanded. “Determine if any of it’s still usable.”

“Right,” said Killifer.

“Is there anything I can to help?” Doug asked.

Brennart wheeled and leaned down slightly to read the name tag printed on the breast of Doug’s suit.

“Oh. Doug. I suppose you’re going to remind me that you wanted to land farther out aren’t you?”

Surprised at the sarcasm in the older man’s voice, Doug said, “No sir, it hadn’t entered my mind.”

“No,” Brennart said. “Of course not”

“Were any of our life-support supplies on this ship?” Doug asked.

Brennart huffed. “Of course there were! The only question is how much of it have we lost. Jack, check it out”

“Right,” said Killifer.

“What can I do to help?” Doug asked again.

“Just keep out of the way,” Brennart snapped. “Like the man said, leave the real work to the professionals.” Then he started walking back toward the first spacecraft, leaving Doug puzzled and feeling more than a little hurt.

The base that Yamagata Industries established at the beautiful and prominent crater Copernicus, on the Sea of Rains, was called Nippon One. Admittedly, this was an unimaginative name of no intrinsic grace, and would be changed to something more poetic in time. For now, however, its utilitarian nature mirrored the character of the base itself. Nippon One was small, crowded, and unlovely: little more than a collection of huts buried beneath protective regolith rubble, much as Moonbase had been nearly twenty years earlier.