Sitting across the table from Dan, Humphries clasped his hands together atop its gleaming surface. “To tell you the truth, Dan, I get the feeling you’re trying to screw me out of this fusion operation.”

Laughing, Dan said, “I wouldn’t do that, Marty, even if I could.”

Humphries laughed back at him. It seemed more than a little forced to Dan. “Tell me something,” Dan said. “You didn’t stumble across Duncan by accident, did you?”

Humphries smiled more genuinely. “Not entirely. When I started Humphries Space Systems I went out and backed more than a dozen small, long-shot research groups. I figured that one of them was bound to come through with something. You ought to see some of the kooks I had to deal with!”

“I can imagine,” Dan said, grinning. He’d had his share of earnest zanies trying to convince him of one wild scheme or another over the years. “I got lucky with Duncan and this fusion rocket,” Humphries went on, looking pleased with himself.

“It was more than luck,” Dan said. “You were damned smart.”

“Maybe,” Humphries agreed. “It only takes one swing to hit a home run.”

“And it doesn’t cost much, either, at the laboratory stage.” Nodding, Humphries said, “If more people backed basic research we’d get ahead a lot faster.”

“I should’ve done it myself,” Dan admitted.

“Yes, you should have.”

“My mistake.”

“Okay then, where do we stand?” Humphries asked.

“Well… you financed Duncan’s original work.”

“Including the flight tests that you saw,” Humphries pointed out. Dan nodded. “I’ve been trying to put together the financing for building a fullscale spacecraft and sending a team out to the Belt.”

“I can finance that. I told you I’d put up the money.”

“Yep. But it’d cost me a good chunk of Astro Corporation, wouldn’t it?”

“We can negotiate a reasonable price. It won’t cost you a cent out of pocket.”

“But you’d wind up owning Astro,” Dan said flatly.

Something flashed in Humphries’s eyes for a moment. But he quickly put on a synthetic smile. “How could I take over Astro Manufacturing, Dan? I know you wouldn’t part with more than fifteen-twenty percent of your company.”

“More like five or ten percent,” Dan said.

“Even worse, for me. I’d be a minority stockholder. I wouldn’t even be able to put anybody on the board — except myself, I imagine.”

Dan said, “H’mm.”

Hunching closer, Humphries said, “I hear you’re going the nanotech route.”

“You hear right,” Dan replied. “Dr. Cardenas is returning to Selene to head up the job.”

“I hadn’t thought about using nanomachines. Makes sense.”

“Brings the cost down.”

“Makes my investment smaller,” Humphries said, straight-faced. Tired of the fencing, Dan said, “Look, here’s the way I see this. We bring Selene in as a third partner. They provide the facilities and nanotech personnel.”

“I thought you were recruiting retirees,” Humphries said.

“Some,” Dan admitted, “but we’ll still need Selene’s active help.”

“So we’ve got a third partner,” Humphries said sullenly. “I want to form a separate corporation, separate and apart from Astro. We’ll each be one-third owners: you, me, and Selene.”

Humphries sat up straighter. “What’s the matter, Dan, don’t you trust me?”

“Not as far as I can throw the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Another man might have laughed grudgingly. Humphries glared at Dan for a moment, his face reddening. But then he got himself under control and shrugged nonchalantly.

“You don’t want to let me have any Astro stock, do you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Dan said pleasantly.

“But then what are you bringing into this deal? I’ve got the money, Selene’s got the personnel and facilities. What do you offer?”

Dan smiled his widest. “My management skills. After all, I’m the one who came up with the nanotech idea.”

“I thought it was Stavenger’s idea.”

Dan felt his brows hike up. And his respect for Humphries’s sources of information. He didn’t get that from Pancho; I didn’t tell her. Does he have Stavenger’s office bugged? Or infiltrated?

“Tell you what,” said Dan. “Just to show you that I’m not such a suspicious sonofabitch, I’ll chip in five percent of Astro’s stock. Out of my personal holdings.”

“Ten,” Humphries immediately shot back.

“Five”

“Come on, Dan. You can’t get out of\this so cheaply.” Dan looked up at the paneled ceiling, took a deep breath, looked back into Humphries’s icy gray eyes. Finally he said, “Seven.”

“Eight.”

Dan cocked his head slightly, then murmured, “Deal.” Humphries smiled, genuinely this time, and echoed, “Deal.” Each man extended his hand across the table. As they shook hands, Dan said to himself, Count your fingers after he lets go.

Dan was watching intently as Kris Cardenas manipulated the roller dial with one manicured finger, her eyes riveted on the scanning microscope’s display screen. The image took shape on the screen, blurred, then came into crisp focus. The picture was grainy, gray on gray, with a slightly greenish cast. Dan could make out a pair of fuel tanks with piping that led to a spherical chamber. On the other side of the sphere was a narrow straight channel that ended in the flared bell of a rocket nozzle.

“It’s the whole assembly!” he blurted.

Cardenas turned toward him with a bright California smile. “Not bad for a month’s work, is it?”

Dan grinned back at her. “Kinda small, though, don’t you think?” They were alone in the nanotech lab this late at night. The other workstations were empty, all the cubicles dark, the ceiling lights turned down to their dim nighttime setting. Only in the corner where Dan and Cardenas sat on a pair of swivel stools were the overhead lights at their full brightness. The massive gray tubing of the scanning microscope loomed above them both like a hulking robot. Dan marveled inwardly that the big, bulky machine was capable of revealing individual atoms. Cardenas said, “Size isn’t important right now. It’s the pattern that counts.”

“Swell,” said Dan. “If I want to send a team of bacteria to the Belt, you’ve got the fusion drive all set for them.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Dan.”

“I was trying to be funny.”

Cardenas did not appreciate his humor. Tapping a bright blue-polished fingernail against the microscope’s display screen, she said, “We’ve programmed this set of nanos to understand the pattern of your fusion system: the tankage, the reactor chamber, the MHD channel, and the rocket nozzle.”

“Plus all the plumbing.”

“And the plumbing, yes. Now that they’ve learned the pattern, it’s just a matter of programming them to build the same thing at full scale.” Dan scratched his chin, then said, “And the full-scale job will be able to handle the necessary pressures and temperatures?”

“Most of it’s built of diamond.”

That wasn’t an answer to his question, Dan realized. Okay, so the virus-sized nanomachines could take individual atoms of carbon from a pile of soot and put them together one by one to build structures with the strength and thermal properties of pure diamond.

“But will that do the job?” he asked Cardenas.

Her lips became a tight line. She was obviously unhappy about something.

“Problem?” Dan asked.

“Not really,” Cardenas said, “But…”

“But what? I’ve got to know, Kris. I’m hanging my cojones out in the breeze on this.”

Raising both hands in a don’t-blame-me gesture, she said, “It’s Dun-can. He refuses to come up here. None of his team will leave Earth.” Dan had known that Duncan, Vertientes, and the rest of the team had opted to remain Earthside and communicate with Cardenas and her nanotech people electronically.

“You talk to him every day, don’t you?”

“Sure we do. We even have interactive VR sessions, if you can call them interactive.”