Hidden Variables by Charles Sheffield Read Free Book Online

maybe. Me? Never."
    Garry's plump face flushed and his mouth gaped open. "You're the top of the whole thing? That was why you walked out of Macintosh's hearings!"
    "Not the only reason. Here, you need this." He passed across a tumbler of scotch and soda. "I had an even better reason—not just my own skin. Look, Garry, how's the NASA program doing now? Budget and projects."
    "You've read the papers. Since you got Lungfish and the Lunar Base operating, we've started a big joint program with ESA and the Russians. I can't quote you all the details yet, but I'm sure my area—Tracking and Data Analysis—will double."
    "And the year after that I'll bet it will double again—as soon as Congress finds that our group is going to build a Farside Base and start lunar mining. They'll be so keen to stop us that money won't count." Len lifted his own glass. "Let's drink to crime. Don't you see, people only seem willing to pour money into something when they act out of fear—that's why Defense can get fifty times the budget of the peaceful programs. Well, now everybody has somebody they can mistrust: me."
    The light was dawning in Garry's eye. He took a huge gulp of scotch, choked on it, and spluttered, "But that won't do you any good, Len. You'll be rotting in jail."
    Len Martello stood up and walked over to the telescope setting. He switched on the control for the big refractor and opened the opaque cover on the penthouse roof.
    "I'll rot in jail—but they'll have to catch me first. Garry, it's bad news but I've been expecting it for a long time. Look at this, tell me what you see."
    "Mm. Serenitatis? Let me get the focus right." Garry bent over the eypiece for a long second. "Yeah. That's Taurus-Littrow there. Long time since I looked at that."
    The familiar sight somehow had calmed his excitement. He grinned up at Len, then bent again to look at the lunar image. "You've put your base there, right? No chance of seeing it with this, though."
    "Not yet. Just wait a few years. We began with the Casino, now we're into low-pressure agriculture, power generation, medical plants. It's beginning to grow. But I'm not just telling you that to show off, you know. How long do you think it will be before there's a U.N. team sent up to try and close down that operation?"
    "Couple of years, not much more. You know that they relaxed the ban on nuclear rockets, just in the hopes that we'd come up with something that would make sure you were under control?"
    Len operated the switch to close the covers on the telescope. "Think you'll be on that close-out team?"
    "Well . . ." Garry shrugged. "I'm a pretty high muck-amuck these days. If it's an official inspection team, chances are pretty good that I can work my way onto it." He grinned. "You can be sure I'll try like hell to go, but so will a lot of others."
    "Know what they'll find there?" Len went back to his seat. "It's a one hundred percent legitimate business venture—no sign of crime. The only reason we needed the crime in the first place was for muscle—to get some of those damn-fool regulations pushed out of the way, and to give the financial base."
    "But it's too late for you, Len." Garry's expression was serious again. "It may be clean now, but it wasn't clean when you started. I know that. We'll be up there, and you'll be in some damned jail down here."
    Len Martello leaned back in his chair. He looked tired, ten years older than his forty years, but his eyes were still bright. "I deserve to go to jail, Garry. I can't deny it." He raised his hand to still the other's protest. "Sure, I went into the game with good intentions. But I found out one thing very quickly. You can't work up to your elbows in dirt and expect your hands to stay clean. Not just the tax evasion. I had to get into the drug sales, and the enforcement, and the strong-arm tactics. I wouldn't have lasted a month otherwise. But good ends don't justify means."
    He shrugged his thin shoulders, watching the shock spread across