The Next Continent (29 page)

A computer graphic representation of the reentry process. The spacecraft's path is a sine wave over a Mercator projection of the earth. After a descent burn over southern China, and after jettisoning the habitat modules, the capsule descends on a northeast trajectory toward Japan.

Capsule interior. Lots of camera shake from the shock of reentry. The passenger grits his teeth but still manages a wave for the camera.

The view from a ground-based camera. A speck against the twilight sky grows larger: a red and white trapezoid with a capsule slung beneath. The pilot skillfully trims the parafoil slider, banks gracefully, and softly touches down on the landing cushion laid along three hundred meters of runway. The underside of the capsule is charred black. The landing crew rushes up and hoses it down. They open the hatch.

After a tense pause, the man's head appears. He climbs unassisted down onto the runway, pumps his fists in the air, lit by a storm of camera flashes, and roars in triumph. Reporters with microphones rush toward him. Face still flush with excitement, he gleefully answers their questions. The camera pans upward. A full moon is rising into the glow of twilight.

The video ends.

“That was the five-minute version of the promotion video,” said Reika, standing next to the monitor. “We have a thirty-second version for prime time that went to terrestrial broadcasters worldwide. We're streaming this digest and an uncut three-hour version on the net—unedited, except for the assistance from NASA.”

“The Americans haven't said anything about that, fortunately,” said Takumichi Gotoba. “They're probably confident they're ahead of us. Still, we're not obliged to mention it. I don't see a problem leaving it out.”

The rest of the people in the conference room at Gotoba Engineering's Tokyo headquarters nodded. The party to celebrate Ryuichi's safe return had taken place two weeks ago. Today's meeting had been called to discuss next steps. Gotoba's brain trust was assembled in the same conference room where the project first saw the light of day.

“After the prime-time spot aired, we received more than thirty-five hundred applications from individuals wanting to go into space. There were over fifteen hundred inquiries from national and local governments, universities, research institutions, travel agencies, broadcasters, web dailies, and news agencies. Everyone knows the fare per person is two hundred million yen.”

Gotoba nodded with satisfaction. “It must be frustrating that you can't service all that demand. You'd be halfway to covering your costs already.”

“Yes,” said Reika. “But we're in no position to take applications yet.”

“That's true. Gotoba Engineering staff will be the only passengers for a few years. But I have to say, Yaenami has guts. I could never have done that.” Gotoba shrugged. This was the difference between him and Ryuichi; otherwise they seemed to resemble each other. Besides the fact that Gotoba was sixty-one and Ryuichi forty-one, the older man could leave the work to his people and derive satisfaction from their success.

“NASA hasn't come out with a plan for space tourism yet. We're still ahead, and the ball's in our court.” He looked around the table. “Can we push harder? Move the timeline up?”

Takasumi Iwaki, head of Gotoba's Mobile Engineering Division, spoke. “This is not the time to panic. The project's on track, but we still face a huge number of challenges. Without people on the surface, we can't put the solar furnace into service and start producing cement. And we can't put people on the surface till TGT successfully sends
Apple
to the moon and back.”

“Hmm.” Gotoba looked at Tetsuo Sando. “What do you think NASA's planning?”

“They haven't released much in the way of specifics. Lunar Generator 1 is near Eden Crater. That will give them electric power, but all they did was attach a landing module to a unit developed for the Mars program. We have next to no information about other engineering equipment they might be developing. But we do know that six years from now—which parallels our timeline—they plan to have a lunar base with a hundred people. They're probably working round the clock on development.”

“If they're cobbling something together, they won't be much of a threat.” Gotoba chuckled, but Sando just gazed back at him like an aging philosopher with an ominous presentiment. He shook his head. “The Americans thought through every element of Sixth Continent more than thirty years ago.”

The room buzzed with exclamations of disbelief. Sando continued drily, “Since we began this project, I've been reviewing the history of space exploration. Take lunar concrete. The Universities of Arizona and Illinois were working on this problem in the eighties. In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers held a major conference on construction in space. NASA has support from hundreds of external organizations in the U.S. They've been in existence since 1958, and their base of technology and experience is very, very broad. If necessary, they can use their accumulated expertise and call on many outside organizations to create heavy machinery and production facilities in a very short period of time.” Sando paused, then said, “To be frank, I would not want to make an enemy of NASA.”

“You're too pessimistic, Sando.” Gotoba grinned. “We have a trump card: TROPHY.”

“A trump card? No.” Sando shook his head. “NASA has thirty Titan X heavy launch vehicles on order from Lockheed Martin for the Mars missions. With that capacity alone they could put 250 tons of payload into lunar orbit.”

“Interesting,” said Gotoba. “But we have
Apple
, which is better than anything NASA can offer. Their shuttle has a history of failure. They've lost three of them.”

“Yes, three of the original shuttles. The supershuttle has a spotless record, and NASA has eight of them. If they wanted to, they could use that space fleet to put seventy people in low earth orbit in little more than two weeks. And their experience with the Apollo program means that putting people into lunar orbit would pose no challenge. Establishing a temporary presence on the surface would also be easy. Mars Ambassador 1 is on its way back to Earth as we speak. It could just as well be rerouted to the moon.” Sando removed his glasses and began polishing them. “This reminds me of my grandfather's stories of the Great Pacific War.”

“You mean it gets worse?” growled Iwaki.

“NASA has a sponsor with unlimited financial resources: the U.S. government.”

“Enough of this pessimism!” Gotoba pounded the table. He looked at Reika. “We have a powerful sponsor of our own. Right?”

“Yes,” answered Reika. “We are prepared to fully fund the project.” Reika began tapping out figures on her wearcom. “So far, investment includes three billion yen for the evaluation of Kunlun Base. Forty-three billion yen for fifty-two Eve launch vehicles. Thirty-three billion for twenty Adam launch vehicles. Eighteen billion in development costs for both vehicles. Fifteen billion to develop
Apple
. Roughly twenty billion for the engineering equipment and other project elements. Adding promotion and personnel expenses, the total comes to 130 billion.”

“And the budget is 150,” said Gotoba.

“Correct. So far we've recouped around three billion from broadcasting and publishing rights and reservation deposits. But this figure will grow substantially. And we are negotiating for additional bank financing.”

“You see?” Gotoba turned to the room. “We're going to be fine. From here on out we'll be in our element. The Americans may be multiarmed and hydra-headed, but they've never built a base in the Himalayas or at the bottom of the ocean. Let's give them a run for their money!”

Iwaki and Sando nodded. Gotoba didn't need to prove anything by going into space. He could lead by force of personality alone.

OVER THE NEXT
six months, while the construction of Sixth Continent continued on schedule, NASA showed the world what it could do. The Americans launched fifteen heavy-lift rockets in rapid succession, inserting large payloads into lunar orbit. They established a power-generation capability and landed twenty-five rovers and five scrapers on the surface. The rovers acted purely as transport vehicles, and the scrapers simply removed regolith and permafrost from the surface. NASA's engineering equipment lacked the sophisticated capabilities of Gotoba's multidozers. But their conservative design was robust. Lack of time to develop anything better was doubtless a factor, but NASA had apparently decided that for construction on the scale they were planning, using many machines with basic functionality was the optimum approach. America's boundless industrial strength had enabled it to surpass Japan and Korea, Germany and France, its mother country England, and the mighty Soviet Union. At this rate, it seemed NASA would quickly catch up to and surpass the progress on Sixth Continent.

Eden Entertainment's response to these developments was muted, especially compared to their earlier splashy promotion campaign. They did not issue any particular comment. The media looked to Tae Toenji, whose guiding role in the project had been an open secret for some time, but she had withdrawn to her home in Nagoya and not been seen since. Some of the tabloids speculated that, having overreached herself, this mere teenager had taken flight at the decision by NASA, the world's preeminent space agency, to compete with ELE. But there was another and just as widely held opinion: Tae had another trump card up her sleeve and was waiting for the right time to reveal it.

In point of fact, there was some truth to this speculation—but only some. In the summer of 2030, more of that truth would come to light.

THE NEWLY RISEN
full moon cast a yellowish glow over the dark bulk of the Makino-ga-ike Forest. The Toenji mansion was surrounded by trees that reduced the noise of traffic from the nearby highway to a distant murmur. On the south-facing thirdfloor terrace, a figure in robe and slippers was hunched over a tube of about equal height, watching the night sky.

“Grandfather?”

Sennosuke Toenji turned to see his granddaughter open the sliding glass door and step out onto the terrace, clad in pajamas.

“Did you finish your phone call?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk a little longer, but I didn't want to take too much of Josh's time. He told me to go to bed.”

“He sounds like a considerate friend.”

“He's probably just worried the phone is tapped. If the media finds out he's my friend, they'll be pounding on his door.”

Sennosuke said nothing for a moment. “Come take a look.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

Sennosuke stepped away from the telescope. Tae sat down next to it. It was a Newtonian reflector. Its tube, twelve centimeters in diameter, topped an equatorial mount on a wooden tripod. The telescope was rustic in design and manufacture, without a tracking drive, cold CCDs, or other electronic devices. Other than the tube and tripod legs, all the fittings were bronze. It had the appearance of a well-loved object.

Tae looked into the eyepiece. A circle of silvery white light struck her retina. Once she had blinked and allowed her eyes to adjust, the bright semicircular moon came into view. The telescope's secondary mirror cast a faint shadow over the center of the image, but the lunar surface was in sharp focus—an intricate mixture of faintly yellow-tinged mountains and dark basins. Tycho's white rays spread starlike from the crater. The surface was a profusion of overlapping craters of all sizes. It was the lunar southern hemisphere.

“I wonder if we can see the multidozers,” said Tae.

“I doubt that.”

“Maybe we should put beacons on them?”

“I doubt you could see them even then. They'd be lost in the light reflected from the surface. If they had lasers, you might be able to see them.”

“Then let's be sure to fit them with lasers.”

“Can you make out the crater?” asked Sennosuke.