Dan saw where he was heading. “Fusion fuels.”

“Jupiter’s atmosphere is rich in hydrogen and helium isotopes.”

“Kris Cardenas mentioned that to me,” Dan remembered. “She and I have been talking about it. Fusion fuels could be a major trade commodity for Selene. And very profitable for Starpower, Ltd.”

“Mining asteroids is a lot easier than scooping gases from Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

“Yes,” Stavenger admitted, “but your idea of moving large segments of Earth’s industry off the planet is only part of the solution to the greenhouse warming, Dan.”

“I know, but it’s a big part.”

“The other half is to wean them off fossil fuel burning. They’ve got to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if they’re going to have any chance of stopping the global warming.”

“And fusion is a way to do that,” Dan muttered.

“It’s the only way,” Stavenger said firmly. “Your solar power satellites can provide only a small fraction of the energy that Earth needs. Fusion can take over the entire load.”

“If we can bring in enough helium-three.”

“There are other fusion processes that could be even more efficient than burning deuterium with helium-three. But they all depend on isotopes that are vanishingly rare on Earth.”

“But plentiful on Jupiter,” Dan said.

“That’s right.”

Dan nodded, thinking, He’s right. Fusion could be the answer. If we could replace all the fossil-fueled electricity-generating plants on Earth with fusion plants we could cut down the greenhouse emissions to almost nothing. Fusion power plants could generate the electricity for electric cars. That’d eliminate another big greenhouse source.

He looked at Stavenger with new respect. Here’s a man who’s exiled from Earth, yet he wants to help them. And he sees farther than I do. “Okay,” he said. “After the flight to the Belt, we make a run out to Jupiter. I’ll start the planning process right away.”

“Good,” said Stavenger. Then he added, “Will this be a Starpower project or will you keep it for Astro Corporation?”

For a moment Dan was dumbstruck. When he found his voice, it was a shocked whisper. “You want to cut out Humphries?”

“He’s maneuvering to get a stranglehold on asteroidal resources,” Stavenger said, as cold as steel. “I don’t think it would be wise to let him control fusion fuels as well.”

By all the gods that ever were, Dan thought, this guy is ready to go to war with Humphries.

The filters in his nostrils were giving Dan a headache; they felt as big as shotgun shells. He had come back to Earth reluctantly for this quarterly meeting of his board of directors. Dan always felt he could run Astro Manufacturing just fine if the double-damned board would simply stay out of his way. But they always had to poke their noses into the corporation’s operations, complaining about this, asking about that, insisting that he follow every crack-brained suggestion they came up with.

It was all so unnecessary. Dan held a controlling interest of the corporation’s outstanding stock; not an absolute majority of the shares, but enough to outvote the other board members if he had to. The board could not throw him out of his seat as corporate president and chief executive officer. All they could do was nibble away, waste his time, drive up his blood pressure. To top it off, now Martin Humphries had joined the board, smiling, making friends, chatting up the other members as they milled around the sideboard scarfing up drinks and tea sandwiches before sitting in their places at the long conference table. Humphries was out to get an absolute majority, that was as clear to Dan as a gun aimed at his head.

Through the sweeping window that ran the length of the board room Dan could see the surging waters of the Caribbean sparkling in the morning sun. The sea looked calm, yet Dan knew it was inching ever higher, encroaching on the land, patiently, inexorably. Humphries kept his back to the window, deep in intense discussion with a trio of elderly directors. Dan had flown back to La Guaira specifically for this meeting. He could have stayed in Selene and chaired the meeting electronically, but that three-second lag would have driven him crazy. He appreciated how Kris Cardenas felt, dealing from the Moon every day with Duncan and his team in Scotland.

Dan stood at one end of the sideboard, beneath the big framed photograph of Astro’s first solar-power satellite, glinting in the harsh sunlight of space against the deep black background of infinity. He sipped on his usual aperitif glass of Amontillado, speaking as pleasantly as he could manage with the people closest to him. Fourteen men and women, most of the men either gray or bald, most of the women looking youthful, thanks to rejuvenation treatments. Funny, he thought: the women are taking rejuve therapy but the men are holding back from it. I am myself, he realized. The ultimate machismo stupidity. What’s wrong with delaying your physical deterioration? It’s not like a face-lift; you actually reverse the aging of your body’s cells.

“Dan, could I speak to you for a moment?” asked Harriett O’Banian. She’d been on the board for more than ten years, ever since Dan had bought out her small solarcell production company.

“Sure, Hartie,” he said, walking her slowly to the far corner of the big conference room. “What’s on your mind?”

Hattie O’Banian was a trim-looking redhead who had consummated her buyout by Astro Manufacturing with a month-long affair with Dan. It had been fun for them both, and she’d been adult enough to walk away from it once she realized that no matter who shared his bed, Dan Randolph was in love with former President Jane Scanwell.

Glancing over her shoulder to make certain no one was within eavesdropping range, O’Banian half-whispered, “I’ve been offered a damned good price for my Astro shares. So have half a dozen other board members.” Dan’s eyes flicked to Humphries, at the other end of the room, still chatting with the directors gathered around him.

“Who made the offer?” he asked.

“A straw man. Humphries is the real buyer.”

“I figured.”

“The trouble is, Dan, that’s it’s a damned good offer. Five points above the market price.”

“He’s gone up to five, has he?” Dan muttered.

“With the stock in free-fall the way it is, the offer is awfully tempting.”

“Yep, I can see that.”

She looked up at him and Dan realized that her emerald green eyes, which could be so full of delight and mischief, were dead serious now. “He can buy up enough stock to outvote you,” O’Banian said.

“That’s what he’s trying to do, all right.”

“Dan, unless you’re going to pull some rabbit out of your hat at the meeting today, half your board is going to cash out.”

Dan tried to grin. It came out more as a grimace. “Thanks for the warning, Hattie.

I’ll see what kind of rabbits I’ve got for you.”

“Good luck, Dan.”

He went to the head of the conference table, tapped the computer stylus against the stainless steel water tumbler there, and called the meeting to order. The directors took their seats; before he sat down, Humphries complained of the glare from the window and asked that the curtains be closed.

The agenda was brief. The treasurer’s report was gloomy. Income from the company’s final solar-power satellite construction project was tailing off as the project neared completion.

“What about the bonus for finishing the job ahead of schedule?” asked a floridfaced graybeard. Dan thought of him as Santa Claus with hypertension. “That won’t be paid until the sunsat is beaming power to the ground,” said the treasurer.

“Still, it’s a sizeable amount of money.”

“It’ll keep us afloat for several months,” Dan said, waving the treasurer to silence.