Tour 08 - The Precipice (Asteroid Wars 1) by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-10T01:32:28+00:00

STARPOWER, LTD.

Dan had offered space in Astro Corporation's office complex for the headquarters

of the fledgling Starpower, Ltd. Humphries had countered with an offer of a suite in his

own Humphries Space Systems offices. Stavenger suggested a compromise, and Star-

power's meager offices opened in the other tower on the Grand Plaza, where Selene's

governmental departments were housed. Yet Stavenger had not been invited to this

working meeting. Dan sat on one side of the small conference table, Martin Humphries

on the other. The room's windowless walls were bare, the furniture strictly functional.

_I hear you've been having some problems with hackers,_ Dan said. For just a flash

of a second Martin Humphries looked startled. He quickly regained his composure.

_Whoever told you that?_ he asked calmly.

Dan smiled knowingly. _Not much happens around here without the grapevine

getting wind of it._

Humphries leaned back in his chair. Dan noticed that it was a personally fitted

recliner, unlike the other chairs around the table, which were inexpensive padded plastic.

_The leak's been fixed,_ Humphries said. _No damage done._

_That's good,_ said Dan.

_Speaking of the grapevine,_ Humphries said lightly, _I heard a funny one just this

morning._

_Oh?_

_There's a story going around that you and a couple of your employees stole a

dewar from the catacombs last night._

_Really?_

_Sounds like something out of an old horror flick._

_Imagine that,_ Dan said.

_Curious. Why would you do something like that?_

Trying to find a comfortable position on his chair, Dan replied, _Let_s not spend the

morning chasing rumors. We're here to set our budget requirements._

Humphries nodded. _I_ll get one of my people to track it down._

Or one of my people, Dan grumbled to himself. But it'll be okay as long as he can't

find Pancho's sister. Only she and George and I know where we stashed her.

He said to Humphries, _Okay, you do that. Now about the budget..._

They spent the next hour going over every item in the budget that Humphries's staff

had prepared for Starpower, Ltd. Dan saw that there were no frills: no allocations for

publicity or travel or anything except building the fusion drive, testing it enough to meet

the IAA's requirements for human rating, and then flying it with a crew of four to the

Asteroid Belt.

_I've been thinking that it makes more sense to up the crew to six,_ Dan said.

Humphries's brows rose. _Six? Why do we need two extra people?_

_We've got two pilots, a propulsion engineer, and a geologist. Two geologists

would be better... or a geologist and some other specialist, maybe a geochemist._

_That makes five,_ Humphries said warily.

_I want to keep an extra slot open. Design the mission for six. As we get closer to

the launch, we'll probably find out we need another hand._

Suspicion showed clearly in Humphries's face. _Adding two more people means

extra supplies, extra mass._

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.