Limits by Larry Niven (tohfa e dulha read online TXT) 📗

of the few men she could see as harmless, she could open up to him. He had told me sometime before we lost Ty, “Dot tried sex once and didn’t like it.” I think he regretted saying even that much. Secrets were sacred to him. But for whatever reason, Dot couldn’t relate to people; and that left all her energy for work.

Dot didn’t talk to women either, through fear or envy or some other reason I never knew. But she did talk to Jill. They were fanatical in the same way. It wasn’t hard to understand Dot’s enthusiasm for The Plan.

McLeve had no choices at all. Without the Shack he was a dead man.

Jack was in the Big Four because he was needed. Without his skills there would be no chance at all. So he was dragged into it, and we watched it happen.

The day McLeve suggested going to the asteroids, Jack Halfey was thoroughly amused, and showed his mirth to all. For the next week he was not amused by anything whatever. He was a walking temper tantrum. So was Jill. I expect he tried to convince her that with sufficient wealth, exile on Earth could be tolerable. Now he wasn’t sleeping, and we all suffered.

Of course our miseries, including Jack’s, were only temporary. We were all going home. All of us.

Thus we followed the downer news closely, and thus was there a long line at the communications room. Everyone was trying to find an Earthside job. It hardly mattered. There was plenty of power for communications. It doesn’t take much juice to close down a colony.

We had no paper, so the news was flashed onto a TV for the edification of those waiting to use the transmitter. I was waiting for word from Inco: they had jobs at their new smelter in Guatemala. Not the world’s best location, but I was told it was a tropical paradise, and the quetzal was worth at least as much as the dollar.

I don’t know who Jack was expecting to hear from. He looked like a man with a permanent hangover, except that he wasn’t so cheerful.

The news, for a change, wasn’t all bad. Something for everyone. The United States had issued a new currency, called “marks” (it turns out there were marks in the US during revolutionary times); they were backed by miniscule amounts of gold.

Not everyone was poor. Technology proceeded apace. Texas Instruments announced a new pocket computer, a million bits of memory and fully programmable, for twice what a calculator cost. Firestone Diamonds—which had been manufacturing flawless blue-white diamonds in a laboratory for the past year, and which actually was owned by a man named Firestone—had apparently swamped the engagement ring market, and was now making chandeliers. A diamond chandelier would cost half a year’s salary, of course, but that was expected to go down.

The “alleged Mafia chieftains” now held without bail awaiting trial numbered in the thousands. I was surprised: I hadn’t thought it would go that far. When the dollar went worthless, apparently Mafia bribe money went worthless too. Maybe I’m too cynical. Maybe there was an epidemic of righteous wrath in government.

Evidently someone thought so, because a bond issue was approved in California, and people were beginning to pay their taxes again.

Something for everyone. I thought the Mafia item would cheer Jack up, but he was sitting there staring at the screen as if he hadn’t seen a thing and didn’t give a damn anyway. My call was announced and I went in to talk to Inco. When I came out Jack had left, not even waiting for his own call. Lack of sleep can do terrible things to a man.

I wasn’t surprised when Jack had a long talk with McLeve, nor when Jill moved back in with him. Jack would promise anything, and Jill would believe anything favorable to her mad scheme.

The next day Jack’s smile was back, and if I thought it was a bit cynical, what could I do? Tell Jill? She wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

They unveiled The Plan a week later. I was invited to McLeve’s house to hear all about it.

Jack was there spouting enthusiasm. “Two problems,” he told us. “First, keeping us alive during the trip. That’s more Jill’s department, but what’s the problem? The Shack was designed to last centuries. Second problem is getting out there. We’ve got that figured out.”

I said, “The hell you do. This isn’t a spaceship, it’s just a habitat. Even if you had a big rocket motor to mount on the axis, you wouldn’t have fuel for it, and if you did, the Shack would break up under the thrust.” I hated him for what he was doing to Jill, and I wondered why McLeve wasn’t aware of it. Maybe he was. The Admiral never let anyone know what he thought.

“So we don’t mount a big rocket motor,” Jack said. “What we’ve got is just what we need: a lot of little motors on the solar panels. We use those and everything else we have. Scooters and tugs, the spare panel engines, and, last but not least, the Moon. We’re going to use the Moon for a gravity sling.”

He had it all diagrammed out in four colors. “We shove the Shack toward the Moon. If we aim just right, we’ll skim close to the lunar surface with everything firing. We’ll leave the Moon with that velocity plus the Moon’s orbital velocity, and out we go.”

“How close?”

He looked to Dot. She pursed her lips. “We’ll clear the peaks by two kilometers.”

“That’s close.”

“More than a mile,” Jack said. “The closer we come the faster we leave.”

“But you just don’t have the thrust!”

“Almost enough,” Jack said. “Now look. We keep the panel thrusters on full blast. That gives us about a quarter percent of a gravity, not nearly enough to break up the Shack, Corky. And we use the mirrors.” He poked buttons and another diagram swam onto McLeve’s drafting table. “See.”

It showed the Shack with