Moonrise Read Free

But eventually … If only I can keep Moonbase going long enough to get it into the black.
    It’s going to be tough once Greg’s in command. Impossible, maybe. He spent the entire flight to New York desperately wondering how he could convince Greg to give Moonbase a few more years, time to get established well enough to start showing at least the chance of a profit downstream.
    It’s the corporation’s future, he told himself. The future for all of us. The Moon is the key to all the things we want to do in space: orbital manufacturing, scientific research, even tourism. It all hinges on using the Moon as a resource base.
    But it takes time to bring an operation like Moonbase into the black. Time and an awful lot of money. And faith. Greg just doesn’t have the faith. He never has, and he probably never will.
    Paul did. It takes a special kind of madman to push out across a new frontier. Absolute fanatics like von Braun, who was willing to work for Hitler or anyone else, as long as he got the chance to send his rockets to the Moon. It takes faith, absolute blind trusting faith that what you are doing is worth any price, any risk, worth your future and your fortune and your life.
    I’ve got that faith, God help me. I’ve got to make Greg see the light the way I do. Somehow. Get him to listen to me. Get him to believe.
    JFK was busy as always, the traffic pattern for landing stacked twelve planes deep. Once he had taxied his twin jet to the corporate hangar and climbed down the ladder to the concrete ramp, the howl and roar of hundreds of engines around the busy airport made Paul’s ears hurt.
    As he walked toward the waiting limousine, suit jacket slung over one arm, the ground suddenly shook with a growling thunder that drowned out all the other sounds. Turning, Paul saw a Clippership rising majestically on its eight bellowing rocket engines, lifting up into the sky, a tapered smooth cone of plastic and metal that looked like the most beautiful work of art Paul had ever seen.
    He knew every line of the Clippership, every detail of its simple, elegant design, every component that fit inside it. A simple conical shape with rockets at the flat bottom end, theClippership rose vertically and would land vertically, settling down softly on those same rocket exhaust plumes. Between takeoff and landing, it could cross intercontinental distances in forty-five minutes or less. Or make the leap into orbit in a single bound.
    Everything seemed to stop at the airport, all other sounds and movement suspended as the Clippership rose, thundering, slowly at first and then faster and faster, dwindling now as the mighty bellow of its rockets washed over Paul like a physical force, wave after wave of undulating awesome noise that blanketed every frequency the human ear could detect and much more. Paul grinned and suppressed the urge to fling a salute at the departing ship. The overpowering sound of those rockets hit most people with the force of a religious experience. Paul had converted four members of the board of directors to supporting the Clippership project by the simple tactic of bringing them out to watch a test launch. And hear it. And feel it.
    Laughing to himself, Paul ducked into the limousine door that the chauffeur was holding open. He wondered where the Clippership was heading. There were daily flights out of New York to Tokyo, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Hong Kong, he knew. Soon they would be adding more cities. Anywhere on Earth in forty-five minutes or less.
    The Clipperships had pulled Masterson Aerospace out of impending bankruptcy. But Paul knew that he had pushed for them, fought for them, was willing to kill for them not merely because they made Masterson the leader in the new era of commercial transport. He went to the brink of the cliff and beyond for the Clipperships because they could fly into orbit in one hop, and do it more cheaply than any other rocket vehicle. The Clipperships would help to make Moonbase