"But what?"
Waterman spread his hands. "You've already got a big-enough capacity to take care of more people than we have on the American side of Selene. Doubling it means we could provide water for the Russians, too."
"Is that so terrible?" Kinsman asked.
Waterman said nothing, but his face darkened.
"I didn't design this place," Kinsman said. "Selene got put together when the Russians were cooperating with us on the space program. We've got to live with them next door. All right, so far we've gotten along fine, much better than Earthside. But if the shoe starts to pinch, don't you think ifd be better if we have control of enough water to take care of both sides? Then, if something should happen to their water supply, they'd have to ask us pretty please, wouldn't they?"
The cloud over the engineer's face vanished. He laughed. "I get it. Okay, you want double the capacity for the factory, you'll get double. Only stop breathing down my neck every day, will ya?"
Relieved, Kinsman said, "How about every other day?"
They laughed together as the engineer leaned on his canes and pulled himself erect.
Kinsman stood up beside him. "You know, Ernie, when I found out that you were an engineer and interested in the water factory, I almost got religion. Waterman: just the omen we needed for the factory."
"Religion," the engineer said, his voice suddenly low and serious. "That's what you get when you find you can walk again, when you can get out of your wheelchair and do something useful and be a man again." He tapped the metal braces beneath his trouser legs with a cane.
"Low gravity is one of our greatest assets. A real tourist attraction," Kinsman said as he slowly ushered Waterman toward the door.
The engineer waved one of his canes. "It's not just the gravity. It's the whole attitude around here. The way people do things here. None of the red tape and horse manure like 276 they have Earthside. No standing in lines or spending your days filling out forms. People have faith in each other up here."
And their faith has made them whole, Kinsman quoted to himself. He answered Waterman, "They're free, Ernie. We've got enough room up here to be free."
Waterman shrugged again. "Whatever it is, it's like a miracle."
"You don't miss Earth at all?" Kinsman asked, stopping at the door.
"The Bronx I should miss? Hell no! My two daughters, yes. Them I miss. But the rest of it—it's just a crummy slum, from sea to polluted sea. It's going to hell so fast there's no way to stop it."
Kinsman thought about his last days on Earth, more than five years earlier. His sudden yearning to see Diane one last time. The madhouse battling with the airlines to wrest a seat on a plane to San Francisco. The shock of seeing a city he had loved turned into a vast concrete jungle: the once-gleaming towers rotting with decay, their elevators useless without electricity; the bridges rusting with neglect; the Bay dotted with houseboats and black with scum. And Diane never showed up; her concert had been canceled.
"And what about you?" Waterman was asking. "Do you miss it? You've been here longer than almost anybody."
Kinsman avoided the question. "I can go back when I really want to. I'm not physically restricted."
"I thought you had a heart problem. I heard . . ."
Shaking his head, "Don't believe all the rumors you hear, Ernie. Selene's like any small town: ten parts gossip to every one part of fact. A little high blood pressure can turn into open-heart surgery on the rumor mill."
The phone buzzed.
"Duty calls," Kinsman said.
The engineer left the office and closed the door behind him as Kinsman went back to the couch. Leaning across it he touched the phone's ON button. One of the wall screens glowed, but no picture came up on it. Instead, the computer's honey-warm feminine voice said, "Colonel Kinsman, you asked to be reminded that the shuttle bringing new arrivals is scheduled to touch down at oh-nine-thirty hours. Traffic 277 control confirms that the shuttle is on schedule,"
"Right," he said, and punched the phone off.
