“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.”

“We can accommodate it. The fusion system’s got plenty of power.”

“Extra cost, too.”

“A slight increment,” Dan said easily. “Down in the noise.” Humphries looked unconvinced, but instead of arguing he asked, “Have you picked a specific asteroid yet?”

Dan tapped at his handheld computer, and the wall screen that covered one entire side of the conference room displayed a chart of the Belt. Thousands of thin ellipsoidal lines representing orbital paths filled the screen. “It looks like the scrawling that a bunch of kindergarten brats would make,” Humphries muttered.

“Sort of,” said Dan. “There’s a lot of rocks moving around out there.” He tapped at the handheld again and the lines winked out, leaving the screen deep black with tiny pinpoints of lights glittering here and there. “This is what it really looks like,” Dan said. “A whole lot of emptiness with a few pebbles floating around here and there.”

“Some of those pebbles are kilometers across,” Humphries said.

“Yep,” Dan replied. “The biggest one is—”

“Ceres. Discovered by a priest on New Year’s Day, 1801.”

“You’ve been doing your homework,” Dan said.

Humphries smiled, pleased. “It’s a little over a thousand kilometers across.”

“If that one ever hit the Earth…”

“Goodbye to everything. Like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.”

“That’s just what they need down there,” Dan muttered, “an extinction-level impact.”

“Let’s get back to work,” Humphries said crisply. “There’s no big rock heading Earth’s way.”

“None has been found,” Dan corrected. “Yet.”

“You know,” Humphries said, musing, “If we were really smart we’d run a demo flight to Mars and do a little prospecting on those two little moons. They’re captured asteroids, after all.”

“The IAA has ruled the whole Mars system off-limits for commercial development. That includes Deimos and Phobos.”

Hunching closer to the conference table, Humphries said, “But we could just do it as a scientific mission. You know, send a couple geologists to chip off some rock samples, analyze what they’re really made of.”

“They already have pretty good data on that,” Dan pointed out. “But it could show potential investors that the fusion drive works and there’s plenty of natural resources in the asteroids.”

Frowning, Dan said, “Even if we could get the IAA to allow us to do it—”

“I can,” Humphries said confidently.

“Even so, people have been going to Mars for years now. Decades. Investors won’t be impressed by a Mars flight.”

“Even if our fusion buggy gets there over a weekend?”

Firmly, Dan said, “We’ve got to get to the Belt. That’s what will impress investors.

Show them that the fusion drive changes the economic picture.”

“I suppose,” Humphries said reluctantly.

“And we’ve got to lay our hands on a metallic asteroid, one of the nickel-iron type. That’s where the heavy metals are, the stuff you can’t get from the Moon or even the NEAs.”

“Gold,” Humphries said, brightening. “Silver and platinum. Do you have any idea of what this is going to do to the precious metals market?” Dan blinked at him. I’m trying to move the Earth’s industrial base into space and he’s playing games with the prices for gold. We just don’t think the same way; we don’t have the same goals or the same values, even.

Grinning slyly, Humphries said, “We could get a lot of capital from people who’d be willing to pay us not to bring those metals to Earth.”

“Maybe,” Dan admitted.

“I know at least three heads of governments who would personally buy into Starpower just to keep us from dumping precious metals onto the market.”

“And I’ll bet,” Dan growled, “that those governments rule nations where the people are poor, starving, and sinking lower every year.” Humphries shrugged. “We’re not going to solve all the world’s problems, Dan.”

“We ought to at least try.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Humphries said, jabbing a finger in Dan’s direction. “You want to be a savior. All I want is to make a little money.” Dan looked at him for a long, silent moment. He’s right, Dan thought. Once upon a time all I was interested in was making money. And now I don’t give a damn. Not anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. Since Jane died — god, I’ve turned into a do-gooder!

Leaning forward again, toward Dan, his expression suddenly intense, earnest, Humphries said, “Listen to me, Dan. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. You can’t save the world. Nobody can. The best thing we can do is to feather our own nests and—”

“I’ve got to try,” Dan interrupted. “I can’t sit here and just let them drown or starve or sink into another dark age.”

“Okay, okay.” Humphries raised both hands placatingly. “You go right ahead and beat your head against that wall, if you want to. Maybe the asteroids are the answer. Maybe you’ll save the world, one way or the other. In the meantime, we can clean up a tidy little profit doing it.”

“Yep.”

“If we don’t make a profit, Dan, we can’t do anybody any good. We’ve got to make money out of this or go out of business. You know that. We can’t do this mission at cost. We’ve got to show a profit.”

“Or at least,” Dan countered, “a profit potential.”

Humphries considered the idea for a moment, then agreed, “A profit potential. Okay, I’ll settle for that. We need to show the financial community—”

“What’s left of it.”

Humphries actually laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about the financial community. Men like my father will always be all right, no matter what happens. Even if the whole world drowns, they’ll sit on a mountaintop somewhere, fat and happy, and wait for the waters to go down.”

Dan could barely hide his disgust. “Come on, let’s get back to work. We’ve had enough philosophy for one morning.”

Humphries agreed with a smile and a nod.

Hours later, after Dan had left the conference room, Humphries went back to his own office and sank into his high-backed swivel chair. As he leaned back and gazed up at the paneled ceiling, the chair adjusted its contours to accommodate his body. Humphries relaxed, smiling broadly. He missed it, he said to himself. The numbers are right there in the budget and Randolph went past them as if they were written in invisible ink.

It was so easy to distract Randolph’s attention. Just get him started on his idiotic crusade. He blanks out to everything else. He wants to go to the Belt to save the world. Sounds like Columbus wanting to reach China by sailing in the wrong direction.

Humphries laughed out loud. It’s right there in the budget and he paid no attention to it at all. Or maybe he thinks it’s just a backup, a redundancy measure. After all, it’s not a terribly large sum. Once the nanos have built one fusion system, it only costs peanuts to have them build another one. The real expense is in the design and programming, and that’s all amortized on the first model. All the backup costs is the raw materials and the time of a few people to monitor the process. The nanos work for nothing.

He laughed again. Randolph thinks he’s so fricking smart, sneaking Pancho’s sister out of the catacombs. Afraid I’ll terminate her? Or does he want to keep Pancho under his thumb? I won’t be able to use her anymore, but so what, who needs her now? I’ll be building a second fusion drive and he doesn’t even know it!