PELICAN BAR

“So here’s my plan,” Dan said, with a grin. He and Pancho were hunched over one of the postage-stamp-sized tables in the farthest corner of the Pelican bar, away from the buzzing conversations and bursts of laughter from the crowd standing at the bar itself. Their heads were almost touching, leaning together like a pair of conspirators.

Which they were. Inwardly, Dan marveled at how good he felt. Free. Happy, almost. The double-damned bureaucrats have tried to tie me up in knots. Humphries is behind it all, playing along with the IAA and those New Morality bigots. Those uptight psalm-singers don’t want us to reach the asteroids. They like the Earth just the way it is: miserable, hungry, desperate for the kind of order and control that the New Morality offers. This greenhouse warming is a blessing for them, the wrath of God smiting the unbelievers. Anything we do to try to help alleviate it, they see as a threat to their power.

Vaguely, Dan recalled from his childhood history lessons something about a group called the Nazis, back in the twentieth century. They came to power because there was an economic depression and people needed jobs and food. If he remembered his history lessons correctly.

So the New Morality has its tentacles into the IAA now, Dan thought. And the GEC too, I’ll bet. And Humphries is playing them all like a symphony orchestra, using them to stymie me long enough so he can grab Astro from me. Well, it’s not going to be that easy, partner. “What’s so funny?” Pancho asked, looking puzzled. “Funny?”

“You say, ‘Here’s my plan,’ and then you start grinnin’ like a cat in a canary’s cage.”

Dan took a sip of his brandy and dry, then said, “Pancho, I’ve always said that when the going gets tough, the tough get going — to where the going’s easier.”

“I’ve heard that one before.”

“So I’m going with you.”

“You?”

“Yep.”

“To the Belt.”

“You need a flight engineer. I know the ship’s systems as well as anybody.”

“Lordy-lord,” Pancho muttered.

“I’m still a qualified astronaut. I’m going with you.”

“But not until we do the uncrewed test flight,” she said, reaching for her beer. Leaning across the table even closer to her, Dan said in a hoarse whisper, “Screw the test flight. We’re going to the Belt. You, Amanda, Fuchs and me.” Pancho nearly choked on her mouthful of beer. She sputtered, coughed, then finally asked, “What’re you drinkin’, boss?”

Happy as a pirate on the open sea, Dan said, “We’ll let ’em think we’re doing exactly what they’ve told us to do, except that the four of us will happen to be aboard the bird when she breaks orbit.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. We’ll calculate a new flight plan once we’re underway. Instead of accelerating at one-sixth g, as we’ve planned, we’ll goose her up to one-third g and cut the flight time by more than half.”

Pancho looked unconvinced. “You better bring an astrogator aboard.”

“Nope.” Pointing a finger at her, Dan said, “You’re it, kid. You and Amanda. I’m not bringing anybody into this that we don’t absolutely need.”

“I’m not so sure about this,” Pancho said warily.

“Don’t go chicken on me, kid,” Dan said. “You two have been studying this pointand-shoot technique for a lot of weeks. If you can’t do it, I’ve been wasting money on you.”

“I can do it,” Pancho said immediately.

“Okay, then.”

“I’d just feel better if you had a real expert on board.”

“No experts. Nobody else except the four of us. I don’t want anybody tipped off about this. And that includes Humphries.”

Pancho waved a hand nonchalantly. “He hasn’t said a word to me since we moved Sis.”

“I don’t think he knows were we stashed her,” Dan said, reaching for his drink.

“He knows about ever’thing.”

“Not this flight,” Dan said firmly. “Nobody is going to know about this. Understand me? Don’t even tell Amanda or Fuchs. This is just between you and me, kid.”

“And the flight controllers,” Pancho muttered.

“What?”

“How’re you goin’ to get the flight controllers to go along with this? You can’t just waltz aboard the Starpower and light her up without them knowin’ it. Hell’s bells, Dan, you won’t even be able to hop up to the ship if they don’t let you have a jumper and give you clearance for takeoff.”

Sipping at his brandy-laced ginger beer, Dan admitted, “That’s a problem I haven’t worked out yet.”

“It’s a toughie.”

“Yep, it is,” Dan said, unable to suppress a grin.

Pancho shook her head disapprovingly. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Why not?” Dan replied. “The world’s going to hell in a handbasket, the New Morality is taking over the government, Humphries is trying to screw me out of my own company — what could be more fun than hijacking my own spacecraft and riding it out to the Belt?”

“That’s weird,” Pancho murmured.

Dan saw that his glass was empty. He pressed the button set into the table’s edge to summon one of the squat little robots trundling through the crowd. “Don’t worry about the flight controllers,” he said casually. “We’ll figure out a way around them.”

“We?”

“You and me.”

“Hey, boss, I’m a pilot, not a woman of intrigue.”

“You made a pretty good spy.”

“I was lousy at it and we both know it.”

“You hacked into Humphries’s files.”

“And he found out about it in half a minute, just about.”

“We’ll think of something,” Dan said.

Pancho nodded, then realized that she had already thought of something.

“I’ll fix the flight controllers,” she said.

“Really?” Dan’s brows rose. “How?”

“Better that you don’t know boss. Just let me do it my way.”

Dan looked skeptical, but he shrugged and said nothing.

MISSION CONTROL CENTER

The timing had to be just right.

Nervous despite being invisible, Pancho edged cautiously into the Armstrong spaceport’s mission control center. It was nearly two a. m. The center was quiet, only two controllers on duty and both of them were relaxed, one leaning back in his chair while the other poured coffee at the little hotplate off by the door to the lav. Pancho hadn’t told anyone about this caper. She thought it best to borrow the stealth suit and get the job done without bringing anyone else into the picture, not even Dan Randolph. The fewer people who knew about the stealth suit, the better. No landings or takeoffs were scheduled at this hour; the skeleton crew was in the control center strictly because prudent regulations required that the center always be manned, in case an emergency cropped up.

How could there be an emergency? Pancho asked herself as she slowly tiptoed to the console farthest from those being used by the pair of controllers. Spacecraft don’t just zoom in on the spur of the moment; even a max-thrust flight from one of the space stations orbiting Earth takes six hours to reach the Moon. Plenty time to rouse the whole crew of controllers if they were needed. The only possible emergency would be if one of the teams at a remote outpost on the lunar surface ran into a jam. Maybe if an astronomer at the Farside Observatory suddenly developed a case of appendicitis and their radio was out so they sent the poor boob on a ballistic lob to Selene without being able to alert anybody first. That was just about the only emergency Pancho could think of.

Or if an invisible woman sneaked in and jiggered the flight schedule for tomorrow’s launches. No, Pancho thought, not tomorrow’s. It’s already past two in the morning. Today’s schedule.

She sat at one of the unattended consoles, as far from the human controllers as possible, and waited for the woman at the coffee urn to return to her post. The overweight guy sitting at his console looked half asleep, feet up on the consoles, eyes closed, a pair of earphones clamped over his head. They weren’t the regulation earphones, either. The guy was listening to music; Pancho could see the rhythmic bobbing of his head.