Anson's expression went from curiosity to alarm. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Mrs. Stavenger."

Surprised, irritated, Joanna snapped, "Why not?"

For three infernally long seconds she waited for the answer. "I'm getting married. All the arrangements are made."

"Is that all?" Joanna eased back in her chair. "The arrangements can be changed. I'll personally pay for whatever it costs you. I want you at Moonbase until the expedition safely returns."

I can't have Greg up there while Doug's out in the wilderness, she told herself. It's a chance I won't take.

But Anson replied firmly, "Mrs. Stavenger, it's not my fault that the expedition departed nearly three weeks late. I'm going to get married in San Antonio two weeks from tomorrow. I am leaving Moonbase on the first of the month, eight days from now, as planned. I'm afraid I can't change those plans."

Her temper flaring, Joanna replied, "As long as you're an employee of Masterson Aerospace you will follow the directives of your superiors. I want you at Moonbase until that expedition comes back!"

The two women stared at each other from a quarter-million-mile distance until Anson's image on the wall screen stiffened noticeably.

She took a visible breath before replying. Then, with deliberate calm, she answered, "Mrs. Stavenger, if I have to resign from Masterson Aerospace, I will. I'm getting married on the seventh of next month in San Antonio, in the Alamo, and nothing is going to stop my wedding."

Joanna's immediate instinct was to tell the ungrateful little snot that if she thought she was going to travel back to Earth for her stupid wedding on a Masterson spacecraft she had another think coming. But Joanna stifled that response. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, she told herself.

"I would appreciate it very much," she said to the image on the wall screen, "if you would reconsider your position. I will be happy to get you the Alamo for a future date. Or the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal, if you prefer. And I will of course want to give you and your husband a substantial wedding gift, since you are such a loyal and valued employee of this corporation. Please think it over."

Before Anson's stubborn-faced image could reply, Joanna clicked off the connection. I'll give her a wedding gift, she said to herself grimly. And then I'll send her to our African division and let her play with the tse-tse flies for the rest of her career.

She didn't have to call up the list of waiting messages to know that Greg was impatient to talk with her. He had flown in from Kiribati, fully expecting his mother to name him the new director of Moonbase. Greg has his own sources inside the board of directors, Joanna realized. He knows I've been planting the seeds for him.

Over the years, the space operations division had become the tail that wagged the corporate dog. Sales of new Clippership models were the mainstay of the corporation's profits. When Clippership sales were strong, the stockholders received dividends. When Clippership sales sagged, workers were laid off. But the orbital manufacturing end of the space division had never broken clearly into the black. Even with raw materials supplied by Moonbase, the metal alloys and Pharmaceuticals produced in the space stations were still too expensive to compete in the marketplace, except for the Windowalls, and even their profits were declining as the market for them saturated.

Joanna and the board of directors had looked into several reorganization plans that would separate the Clippership production from the orbital manufacturing work. A dozen bright young executives wanted to be named head of the Clippership program; nobody wanted to be stuck with orbital manufacturing.

Well, Joanna told herself, if Greg can actually find the strength to shut down Moonbase, all our orbital manufacturing will go down the drain with it, except for the Windowalls, and their costs will jump. Paul's dream will be dead. But maybe it will be for the best. I've given it nearly twenty years; how long can I keep on hoping for a miracle?

And there was even more trouble with the nanotechnology division, which was also tottering on the brink of collapse. Nanomachines were used on the Moon to produce water and build solar cells, but their uses on Earth had been slowed to a crawl by government regulations and a massive public relations campaign of demonstrations and protests, based on ignorance and hysterical fear, in Joanna's view. Medical applications of nanomachines had been brought to a standstill by so-called safety regulations, although those who were rich enough went to nations such as Switzerland; the Swiss government's regulations did not apply to foreigners, especially very rich foreigners, who quietly bought their nanotherapies there.

Joanna herself had been toying with the idea of accepting nanomachines to keep her arteries clear of plaque. And there was always the temptation to use the bugs to tighten up sagging muscles, renew wrinkled skin, even break up fatty deposits and harmlessly flush them out of the body.

Kris Cardenas had gotten herself into legal hot water by using nanobugs on herself to restore her failing eyesight. No glasses, no contact lenses, no surgery. The bugs restored her natural lenses to their youthful flexibility and strengthened the muscles that controlled them. Twenty-twenty vision, from only a few injections over a three-week period. Followed by three years of hounding by government lawyers and endless hearings in courts and the Canadian parliament. And Cardenas had all the prestige and authority of a Nobel Prize backing her.

Joanna shook all that out of her thoughts as she phoned the chief of the Space Operations division and asked him to come to her office.

"Why not use the virtual reality system?" Ibriham Rashid asked playfully.

Joanna was not amused. "Omar, you're no more than fifty yards down the hall from me. Get your butt over here. In person."

"Now?" he teased.

"At your earliest convenience," Joanna answered, with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

"Harkening and obedience," said Rashid.

Ibriham Muhammed al-Rashid had been born in Baltimore, third son of second-generation Palestinian-Americans. For all of his forty-two years he had balanced a firm belief in Islam with a firm belief that science and technology were gifts of Allah to help men in their struggle for existence. From his earliest childhood it was apparent that he was extremely intelligent and even more extremely motivated to rise high in the world. Johns Hopkins and MIT honed his intelligence. And his diplomatic skills. At school he was quickly dubbed 'Omar the Tentmaker." Instead of becoming angry at the derogatory nickname, Rashid turned it into a badge of honor.

His career with Masterson Aerospace had been little short of meteoric. As head of the space operations division, he knew that the corporate knives were being sharpened behind his back. Space operations was the corporation's largest division, thanks to the Clipperships, a profitable cash cow that various reorganization plans sought to carve up into smaller sections and remove from Rashid's control. He resisted those attempts with a mixture of deft corporate maneuvering and unfailing loyalty from his division staff. He also used his urbane charm wherever it would do the most good-especially with the chairwoman of the board.

Joanna enjoyed his attentions, as she did those of Carlos Quintana and several others. It amused her to watch the male ego at work, and to manipulate their testosterone-driven ambitions toward goals of her own choosing.

Rashid stepped into Joanna's office and looked around appreciatively. He was short and compact in build, rather like Paul, thought Joanna, although slimmer. A trim black beard framing his oval face, Rashid had movie-star looks: huge soulful dark brown eyes and a smile to die for. He was smiling now as he sat in the delicate little loveseat, facing Joanna's personal chair.

"Desert golds and tans," he said, noticing the decor. "And a scent of jasmine. Are you trying to make me homesick?"

Joanna laughed, "for Baltimore?"

"Racial memory," Rashid bantered. "Jung claimed that we all have primitive memories stored in our subconscious minds."

"Maybe my ancestry goes back to the desert," Joanna said. "I like this color scheme. And I love the Southwest."

"Arabs prefer cities. My people are great architects."

Joanna decided they had chatted enough. Time to get down to business. "Omar, how would you feel if I suggested that my son Greg be the next director of Moonbase?"

Rashid did not seem surprised. He eased one arm across the back of the loveseat and crossed his legs. "O'Rourke is slated for that position."

"I know, but...' She let the sentence dangle.

"O'Rourke is very competent. Unimaginative, true, but very competent."

"I asked Jinny if she'd stay on until the polar expedition came back and she refused," Joanna said.

The slightest of tics twitched at the comer of Rashid's mouth. "You should have spoken to me first. I would have told you she'd refuse. She's going to be married." His voice was soft, yet Joanna heard his disapproval. She had gone over his head to speak directly to Anson.

"My other son's out there at the south pole with Brennart."

"Yes, I am aware of that."

"I don't like the idea of changing base directors while the expedition's out there."

Rashid shrugged elaborately. "It really makes almost no difference whatsoever. The base director is in no position to help or harm the expedition."

"Really?"

"The expedition is rather self-sufficient. Brennart knows what he's doing."

"Even with one of the cargo ships crashed?"

Again the shrug. "They'll resupply earlier than scheduled. It's not a major problem."

"So you don't think Anson's leaving will be a problem?"

"Of course not. If I did, she wouldn't be leaving, believe me."

Joanna studied his handsome face. Rashid seemed completely at ease, totally confident.

"Then allowing Greg to take over...?"

Hespread his hands. "It shouldn't be a problem. O'Rourke has more experience, but your son has shown quite remarkable leadership qualities."

Almost, Joanna blurted her fear that Greg still hated his younger half-brother. You're being irrational, Joanna told herself sternly. Yet the fear was still there, gnawing inside her.

"This must be a very difficult decision for you," Rashid said softly, smiling at her from an arm's length away.

Joanna's thoughts snapped back to the here-and-now.

"No," she said. "No, it isn't difficult at all. Unless you are actively opposed, Greg Masterson will replace Jinny Anson as the director of Moonbase."

"Effective on the first of the month?" Rashid asked.

"Yes. But I want Greg to get up there right away and spend Jinny's final days at Moonbase getting oriented."

"How soon...?"

"Today," Joanna snapped.

Rashid dipped his head slightly. "Harkening and obedience."

MOONBASE.

Jinny Anson felt her teeth grinding together as she looked over the graph on her desktop screen.

"Solar flare," she said, almost accusingly.

The technician who had been monitoring the astronomical instruments in Bianca Rhee's absence nodded unhappily.

"And it's going to be a big mother, is it?"

"Class Four flare. Maybe a Five."

Anson leaned back in her creaking plastic chair and glared at the young tech. "How soon?" she snapped.

The technician was barely into his twenties, still an undergraduate student who had taken a year off to make money by working at Moonbase. Standing in front of Anson's desk in his baggy, frayed coveralls, he shuffled his feet uncertainly.

"Hard to say," he replied. "I've checked with Tucson. Next twenty-four hours, for sure. Could be a lot sooner, though."

"Great. I'll have to alert the surface crews."

"And, uh-Brennart's people?"

"Yes, them too. They should have their shelters dug in by now. Will the radiation hit them?"

The young man looked miserably unsure of himself. "Hard to say," he repeated. "Oh, they'll get the first pulse sure enough: the ultraviolet and x-rays. But the heavy stuff -that depends on how the interplanetary magnetic field's twisted up."

Rankled, Anson said, "So you don't know when the particle cloud will hit or how heavy it'll be."

"Nobody could tell you that," the kid said defensively. "Not this far in advance."

"Okay," Anson squinted at his nametag, "Albertson. Thanks for the bad news."

The kid fled her office as if afraid for his life.

A Class Four solar flare, she thought Maybe a Five. Just what we need. Angrily she punched her keyboard to call up the communications center. Got to get all the surface workers inside. And warn Brennart's people.

As she spoke to the comm center, Anson pictured in her mind what they were going to be facing. The most violent event the solar system can produce, an explosion on the Sun with the force of a hundred billion megatons of TNT. More energy than the whole world consumes in fifty thousand years. Hardly a quarter-second's worth of the Sun's total energy output, but enough to kill anyone caught in its lethal plasma cloud. Enough to wreck unprotected equipment.

"What about cislunar traffic?" the comm technician asked.

"What's it look like?" Anson asked back.

The tech's face disappeared from her desktop screen and a visual display of the Earth-Moon traffic showed four green arrows representing unmanned freighters heading for the factories in Earth orbit and a single violet arrow of a passenger vehicle on its way to the Euro-Russian base at Grimaldi. There were three yellow arrows, as well: Yamagata spacecraft, two inbound, one heading Earthward.

As she watched, Anson saw a new red arrow appear on the screen. A passenger-carrying craft was leaving Earth orbit, heading for Moonbase.

"What's that new blip?" she asked. "I don't recall anything scheduled today."

The technician's voice answered, "Message just came in; it's in your voice mail. Your replacement is on his way.

"O'Rourke's coming now?" Anson felt puzzled, annoyed.

"It's not O'Rourke," the tech's voice replied. "It's Gregory Masterson III." The technician pronounced the three-part name with appropriate awe in her voice.

"Shit on a shingle!" Anson exploded. "Get that poor dumb boob on the horn and tell him to abort his flight and get his butt back home where it's safe. That's all I need, having the boss's son fried!"

"It's ice, all right, but I'm afraid it's pretty thin," said Roger Deems.

He, Brennart, Killifer and Doug Stavenger were jammed into the analysis lab of the expedition's main shelter. Deems was still in his cumbersome spacesuit, minus only its helmet, which made the little cubicle even more crowded. The only light came from one of the computer screens.

Doug could hear the grating patter of regolith rubble being piled on the shelter's curving roof. Outside, the expedition's minitractors were struggling to dig up enough surface dirt to provide the necessary coverage for radiation protection and thermal insulation. The regolith here in the south polar highlands was thin and hard, its normally powder-like texture vacuum welded into the consistency of concrete. The remotely-operated little tractors were having a hard time digging up enough of it to cover the expedition's four shelters. Brennart had to send people out to jury-rig some of their aluminum and oxygen rocket propellants to burn into the hard rock and break it into manageable chunks.

"We should've brought a couple tons of plastic explosives," one of the tractor operators grumbled.

Deems's job, immediately upon landing, had been to lead a team to the ice field that the unmanned probes had identified and take samples.

Peering at the computer screen where the spectrograph's analysis of the ice was displayed, Brennart said heartily, "Looks good enough to drink!"

"A lot of dissolved minerals," Doug said, tracing a calcium line with his outstretched finger.

"You could say the same about Perrier!" Brennart snapped.

Killifer said nothing, standing between Brennart and Doug, his face in shadow.

Turning to Deems, Brennart asked, "Did you get a chance to map any of the ice field?"