“Jeanmarie, we face a choice. This habitat can be the center for the most important scientific research being conducted in the entire solar system …” He hesitated dramatically. “Or it can sink into a starving, stinking, overpopulated cesspool, like so many poor nations on Earth.”
“I see. I understand.”
“You can be a central figure in saving us from collapse. The choice is yours.”
Jeanmarie Urbain got to her feet, every line of her petite figure showing determination. “Tell me what I must do,” she said to Eberly.
He rose beside her. “Yes,” he said. “I will.”
They each felt relieved that the other didn’t mention their brief tryst of two months before.
21 March 2096: Midmorning
There it is again, Vernon Donkman said to himself. Alone in his cubbyhole office, he glared at the old-fashioned desktop computer screen.
As usual, he wore a funereal dark tunic and slacks even though his complexion was now a warm golden tan, thanks to the enzyme treatments he’d taken. But his appearance didn’t matter to him at this particular moment. His slightly bulging eyes glowered at the unbalanced figures on the display screen. For the fourth straight month the habitat’s central account would not balance. The discrepancy was still minuscule—only a few hundred new international dollars—but it irritated Donkman more than if it had been a billion.
It’s too small for someone to be embezzling the money, he thought. Besides, there have been no unauthorized accesses of the accounts. He had spent so many long, sleepless nights tracing the accounts that his wife accused him of having an affair. No, he had assured her. Her rival was the blasted accounting system that refused to balance as it should.
For a while Donkman thought the problem might be in the computer. He had gone to Eberly and requisitioned the best computer analysts in the habitat. Most of them were on Urbain’s scientific staff and not available to him. Those who did examine the accounting program found nothing wrong with the program or the hardware. Donkman had shifted to other computers and had his beloved little desktop completely overhauled. No use. The accounts still failed to balance.
Maddening. At the end of every month the master account showed this slight, picayune imbalance. Never the same amount; never more than a few hundred dollars. Every month Donkman tried to track down the source of the anomaly and, failing to find it, was forced to the humiliation of correcting the master account by hand. Sometimes he had to add money to fix the discrepancy. Sometimes he had to subtract. He tried checking out the sums he had put in or out each month, but they didn’t match or add up in any way Donkman could see.
For a while he thought that the random power outages the habitat suffered might be the cause of the computer’s misbehavior. But the computer system was backed up by triply redundant auxiliary batteries and fuel cells. They never flickered, not even when the power went out for an hour or more.
The only consistency he could find in the entire matter was that the discrepancy seemed to show up every two weeks, on average. Not the same day of the week and not the same hour of the day, but every two weeks or so the account went out of balance. Not even two weeks, exactly. Sixteen days. It wasn’t exact, but the timing of the discrepancies averaged out to around sixteen days. Every sixteen days, give or take a dozen hours or so, the account hiccupped.
To make certain of that, Donkman had spent almost twenty hours straight at his office, staring at the computer screen, sixteen days after the last discrepancy popped up. His wife had brought him lunch and then dinner. She had even stayed with him a while before becoming so bored that she left for their home.
Donkman had stayed, eyes riveted to the numbers flashing across his screen. The life of the habitat was being displayed, he told himself. Every transaction, no matter how small, no matter whether it was between a shopkeeper and a customer or between the habitat’s central bank and a bank on Earth or the Moon, every transaction was flashing before his eyes. At the bottom of the screen a display bar showed the master account’s grand total.
Donkman must have dozed momentarily. He twitched awake, blinked, and saw that the master account’s total was now out of balance by a hundred and fifty new international dollars.
He wanted to scream.
Jake Wanamaker was already in the simulations lab when Gaeta arrived there. The big ex-admiral was sitting at one of the tables in the back of the room, his shoulders hunched, head bent over the laptop.
“Buenos dias, amigo,” Gaeta said amiably. “You’re here early.”
Wanamaker turned toward Gaeta, looking grim. “I’m not cutting it, am I?”
“You’re doin’ okay,” Gaeta said, walking past the boxy black bulk of the darkened simulator chamber toward him. “Another couple of months—”
“We don’t have a couple of moths,” said Wanamaker. “We’ve got to get to the rings before Holly and Eberly have their big debate.”
“I don’t see why.”
With a vague wave of his big, beefy hand, Wanamaker said, “Pancho says that’s what Holly wants, and Holly says that’s what Wunderly wants.”
Gaeta sat heavily on the chair beside Wanamaker. “So we’re gonna bust our butts because the women want it that way?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to kill Pancho out there,” Wanamaker said, his voice hard and even.
“The pickup is pretty rough, yeah.”
“Then we’ve got to get a better man to fly the mission.”
“Tavalera?”
“That’s right.”
“He doesn’t want to do it.”
His face as somber as an executioner’s, Wanamaker said, “Let’s have lunch with the lad and pound some sense into him.”
Gaeta nodded, but he thought, Raoul has plenty of sense. He’s scared of flying the mission. He’s smart to say no.
Timoshenko was obviously uncomfortable as he sat in front of Eberly’s fastidiously clear desk.
“I’ve told you before,” the engineer said, “I’m not a boss.”
Eberly rocked slightly in his high-backed chair and tried his most charming smile. “You’re doing a fine job as chief of exterior maintenance.”
Timoshenko scowled at him. “I don’t want to be director of the whole maintenance department. You yourself said it was too big a job for one man.”
“It’s too big a job for Aaronson. I’m convinced that you could handle it.”
“I decline the honor.”
Eberly steepled his fingers. For a long moment he said nothing, his mind working furiously. There’s got to be a way to bring him around, he thought. There must be something that he wants. At last he said, “The people of this habitat deserve to have the best possible man heading their maintenance department.”
Timoshenko was unmoved. “Then find him. Or her. There are hundreds of engineers among us.”
“The computer picked your name from the list of qualified personnel,” Eberly lied.
“Run the list again and leave my name off it.”
“Aaronson has got to go,” Eberly said, feeling his patience waning. This Russian is too obstinate for his own good. “We can’t have blackouts, power outages. It’s dangerous.”
“I agree, but I’ve got my hands full with the exterior maintenance job. That’s important too, you know.”
“You can handle both the exterior and interior maintenance responsibilities. I know you can.”
“Look,” said Timoshenko, leaning forward in his chair earnestly. “I work on the outside. I really work. I go out there with my crew. I get my gloves dirty. If I took over the inside job too, I’d end up sitting at a desk, telling other people what to do. I’d become a bureaucrat, just like the drones you have sitting outside your office. I won’t do that.”