The Diamond Moon by Paul Preuss Read Free Book Online

paraded what seemed like miniature control towers, pressurized storage sheds, communications masts and dishes, spherical fuel tanks, gantries for the shut-tles that plied between the surface and the interplanetary ships that parked in orbit—the practical clutter that any working port required, not much different from Cayley or Farside on Earth’s moon.
She let out a disconsolate sigh. “It looks like New Jer-sey.”
     
“Beg pardon?” Bill Hawkins had lifted a bottle of cham-pagne and two glasses from a circulating waiter and, having detached himself from the knot of partygoers, was finally moving toward her.
     
“Talking to myself,” said Marianne. “Can’t believe my luck, finding you alone.”
     
“Well, now I’m not alone.” Her cheer seemed forced. What was there to say to him? Aside from the obligatory exchange of life stories, they hadn’t had much success conversing.
     
“Whoops. Shall I go away again?”
     
“No. And before you ask,” she said, eyeing the cham-pagne, “I’d be delighted.”
     
Hawkins poured it—the real thing, from France, a fine Roederer brut —and handed her a glass.
     
“À votre santé,” she said, and drank off half the glass.
     
Sipping his own, Hawkins raised a questioning eyebrow.
     
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It’s consola-tion. Six weeks on this tub and we might as well be back at Newark shuttleport.”
     
“Couldn’t disagree more. For my money it’s quite a sight. The largest moon in the solar system. Surface area bigger than Africa.”
     
“I thought it was supposed to be exotic ,” Marianne com-plained. “Everybody said so.”
     
Hawkins smiled. “Wait and see. Not long now.”
     
“Be mysterious, then.”
    Indeed, Ganymede did have a romantic reputation. Not because of all the major settlements in the solar system it was the most distant from Earth. Not for the weird land-scapes of its ancient, oft-battered, oftrefrozen crust. Not for its spectacular views of Jupiter and its sister moons. Gan-ymede was exotic because of what humans had done to it.
“When are they letting us off?” Marianne demanded, gulping more champagne.
     
“Formalities always take a few hours. I imagine we’ll be down below by morning.”
     
“Morning, whenever that is. Ugh.”
     
Hawkins cleared his throat. “Ganymede can be a bit confusing to the first-time visitor,” he said. “I’d be glad to show you around.”
     
“Thanks, Bill.” She favored him with a heavy-lidded glance. “But no thanks. Somebody’s meeting me.”
     
“Oh.”
    His face must have revealed more disappointment than he realized, for Marianne was almost apologetic. “I don’t know anything about him. Except my mother is very eager to impress his mother.” Marianne, twenty-two years old, had left the surface of Earth for the first time only six weeks earlier; like other children of wealth—including most of her fellow passengers—she was supposed to be making a traditional year-long Grand Tour of the solar system.
“Does this fellow have a name?” Hawkins asked.
     
“Blake Redfield.”
     
“Blake!” Hawkins smiled—partly with relief, for Redfield was rather famously involved with the notorious Ellen Troy. “As it happens, he’s a member of Professor Forster’s expe-dition. As am I.”
     
“Well, lucky for both of you.” When he made no reply, she gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re looking at me again.”
    “Oh, I was just wondering if you’re really going to stick out this whole Grand Tour. You spend two weeks here—which is not enough to see anything, really. Next stop, San Pablo base in the Mainbelt— and anything more than a day there is too much. Then Mars Station and Labyrinth City and the sights of Mars. Then on to Port Hesperus. Then on to . . .”
“Please stop.” He’d made his point. For all that the ship would make many ports of call, she would be spending most of the coming nine months en route, in space. “I