Ben Bova: Moonrise

Paul was on the Moon when the old man died, quietly, peacefully, the way he had lived: writing a letter of recommendation for another poor kid who needed a break.

I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Lev, Paul knew. Even if I die here, I’ll still owe him for everything good that’s happened in my life.

He knew it was psychological more than physical, yet with the Sun pounding on him Paul felt as if he had stepped from an air-conditioned building onto a baking hot parking lot. Some parking lot, he told himself as he pushed on. The dusty, gray regolith looked like an unfinished blacktop job, pockmarked and uneven. Mare Nubium, he thought. Sea of Clouds. The nearest body of water is a quarter-million miles away.

Still, it did look a little like the surface of the sea, the way the ground undulated and rolled. A sea that was frozen into rock. I guess it was a sea once, a sea of red-hot lava when the meteoroid that carved out this basin slammed into the Moon.

How long ago? Three-and a half billion years? Give or take a week.

He plodded on, one booted foot after another, trying not to look at the thermometer on his forearm displays.

His mind started to drift again.

I never told her that I loved her, Paul remembered. Not then Guess, I was too surprised. Marry me and I’ll make you CEO She never said she loved me, either. It was a business deal.

He almost laughed. Marriage is one way of ending a love affair, I guess.

But Greg didn’t laugh about it. Not then, not ever. I don’ think I’ve ever seen him smile, even. Not our boy Greg.

The other board members filtered into the meeting room in twos and threes. Greg Masterson walked in alone, his suit a funereal black, the expression on his face bleak. He was a handsome man of twenty-eight, tall and slim, his face sculpted in planes and hollows like a Rodin statue. He had his father’s dark, brooding looks: thick dark hair down to his collar and eyes like twin gleaming chunks of jet.

But where his father had been a hell-raiser, Greg had always been a quiet, somber introvert. As far as Paul knew, he might still be a virgin. He had never heard a breath of gossip about this serious, cheerless young man.

Reluctantly, feeling guilty, Paul made his way across the board room to Greg.

“I’m sorry about your father,” he said, extending his hand.

“I bet you are,” Greg said, keeping his hands at his sides. He was several inches taller than Paul, though Paul was more solidly built.

Before Paul could think of anything else to say, Bradley Arnold bustled up to Greg and took him by the arm.

“This way, Greg,” said the board chairman. “I want you to sit up beside me today.”

Greg went sullenly with the chairman of the board. Arnold was the whitest man Paul had ever seen. He looked like an animated wad of dough, short, pot-bellied, wearing a ridiculous silver-gray toupe that never seemed to sit right on his head; it looked so artificial it was laughable. Eagerly bustling, he led Greg up to the head of the table and sat the younger man on his right Arnold’s face was round, flabby, with hyperthyroid bulging frog’s eyes.

Sixteen men and three women, including Joanna, sat around the long polished table. Paul took a chair across the table from Joanna, where he could see her face. The symbolism of Arnold’s seating Greg next to him was obvious. Paul waited to see how the board would react to Joanna’s less-than-symbolic nomination.

Arnold played the meeting for all the drama he could squeeze out of it. He began by asking for a moment of silence to honor the memory of their late president and CEO. As Paul bowed his head, he glanced at Melissa Han, sitting down near the bottom of the table.

Silky smooth, long-legged Melissa, with skin the color of milk chocolate and a fierce passion within her that drove her mercilessly both at work and play. Most board members thought of her as an affirmative action ‘twofer:’ black and female. Or a’threefer,” since she represented the unions among the corporation’s work force. Paul knew her as a fiery bed partner who was furious with him for dropping her in favor of Joanna.

She had been sleeping with Gregory Masterson before Paul, everyone knew. That was how she got on the board of directors, they thought. Now, as Paul glanced her way, she did not look terribly grieved. Instead, she glared angrily at him.

Arnold next asked for a vote to accept the minutes of the last meeting, then called for reports from the division heads while the board members fidgeted impatiently in their chairs.

When it came to Paul’s turn, he gave a perfunctory review of the Clippership’s profits and the firm orders from airlines around the world. Paul referred to them as aerospace lines, even the ones that were not doing any true business in orbit, because the Clipperships spent most of their brief flight times far above the atmosphere. “The way to make money,” Paul had told every airline executive he had ever wined and dined, “is to keep your Clipperships in space more than they’re on the ground.”

Ordinarily, at least a few of the board members would ask nit-picking questions, but everyone wanted to move ahead to the election of the new CEO.

Almost everyone.

“What’s this I hear about your people making giant TV screens up there in the space station?” asked Alan Johansen.

He was one of the newest board members, a handsomely vapid young protege of Arnold’s with slicked-back blond hair and the chiselled profile of a professional model.

Surprised, Paul said, “It’s still in the developmental stage.”

“Giant TV screens?” asked one of the women.

“Under the weightless conditions in orbit,” Paul explained, “we can make large-crystal flat screens ten, fifteen feet across, but only a couple of inches thick.”

“Why, you could hang them on a wall like a painting, couldn’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Paul. “It might make a very profitable product line for us.”

“Wall screens,” said Johansen.

“One of our bright young technicians came up with the name Windowall.”

“That’s good!” said Johansen. “We should copyright that name.”

Bradley Arnold turned, slightly sour-faced, to the corporate legal counsel. “See that we register that as a trade name.”

“Windowall, right,” said the lawyer. “How do you spell it?”

Paul told him.

“Now before we get to the highlight of this meeting,” Arnold said in his rumbling bullfrog voice, “we have to consider filling the seat left vacant by the sudden demise of our lamented late president and CEO.” Far from showing grief, Arnold’s bulging brown eyes seemed to be sparkling with pleasure.

“I nominate Joanna Masterson,” said Greg immediately.

“Second,” came a voice from farther down the table.

Then silence.

Arnold looked up and down the table. “Any other nominations?”

Melissa looked as if she wanted to speak, but before she could make up her mind Arnold said, “All right then, the nominations are closed. All in favour”

“Don’t the rules call for a secret ballot?” one of the board members asked.

A brief flicker of annoyance ticked across Arnold’s fleshy face. “If the board wants it,” he said testily. “In this instance I think a simple show of hands will do. All in favor?”

It was unanimous, Paul saw, although Melissa’s was the last hand raised.

“Congratulations, Joanna,” Arnold said warmly, “and welcome aboard.” He pushed himself to his feet and started clapping his hands. The entire board rose and applauded. Joanna remained seated, smiling politely and mouthing ‘Thank you’ to them all.

“Now then,” Arnold said once they were all seated again, “to the major business of this meeting: electing the new president and chief operating officer of Masterson Aerospace Corporation.”