swallowed up in the gulfs of space. For years it would haunt his dreams; he would wake in the night,
convinced that he had heard it again through the rock that protected Oasis from the hostile wilderness above.
And when he at last fell back into sleep, he would always dream of Earth.
2
Dynasty
Malcolm Makenzie had been the right man, at the right time. Others before him had looked
covetously at Titan, but he was the first to work out all the engineering details and to conceive the total system or orbiting scoops, compressors, and cheap, extendable tanks that could hold their liquid hydrogen with minimum loss as they dropped leisurely sunward.
Back in the 2180's, Malcolm had been a promising young aerospace designer at Port Lowell, trying to
make aircraft that could carry useful payloads in the tenuous Martian atmosphere. In those days he had been Malcolm Mackenzie, for the computer mishap that had irrevocably changed the family name did not
occur until he emigrated to Titan. After wasting five years in futile attempts at correction, Malcolm had finally co-operated with the inevitable. It was one of the few battles in which the Makenzies had ever admitted defeat, but now they were quite proud of their unique name.
When he had finished his calculations and stolen enough drafting-computer time to prepare a
beautiful set of drawings, young Malcolm had approached the Planning Office of the Martian Department
of Transportation. He did not anticipate serious criticism, because he knew that his facts and his logic were impeccable.
A large fusion-powered spaceliner could use ten thousand tons of hydrogen on a single flight, merely
as inert working fluid. Ninety-nine percent of it took no part in the nuclear reaction, but was hurled from the jets unchanged, at scores of kilometers per second, imparting momentum to the ships it drove between the planets.
There was plenty of hydrogen on Earth, easily available in the oceans; but the cost of lifting megatons a year into space was horrendous. And the other inhabited worlds — Mars, Mercury, Ganymede, and the
Moon — could not help. The had no surplus hydrogen at all.
Of course, Jupiter and the other Gas Giants possessed unlimited quantities of the vital element, but
their gravitational fields guarded it more effectively than any unsleeping dragon, coiled round some
mythical treasure of the Gods. In all the Solar System, Titan was the only place where Nature had
contrived the paradox of low gravity and an atmosphere remarkably rich in hydrogen and its compounds.
Malcolm was right in guessing that no one would challenge his figures, or deny the feasibility of the
scheme, but a kindhearted senior administrator took it upon himself to lecture young Makenzie on the
political and economic facts of life. He learned, with remarkable speed, about growth curves and forward discounting and interplanetary debts and rates of depreciation and technological obsolescence, and
understood for the first time why the solar was backed, not by gold, but by kilowatt-hours.
"It's an old problem," his mentor had explained patiently. "In fact, it goes back to the very beginnings of astronautics, in the twentieth century. We couldn't have commercial space flight until there were
flourishing extraterrestrial colonies — and we couldn't have colonies until there was commercial space transportation. In this sort of bootstrap situation, you have a very slow growth rate until you reach the takeoff point. Then, quite suddenly, the curves start shooting upward, and you're in business.
"It could be the same with your Titan refueling scheme — but have you any idea of the initial
investment required? Only the World Bank could possibly underwrite it..."
"What about the Bank of Selene? Isn't it supposed to be more adventurous?"
"Don't believe all you've read about the Gnomes of Aristarchus; they're as careful as anyone else.
They have to be. Bankers on Earth can still go on breathing if they make a bad investment..."
But it was the Bank of Selene, three years later, that put up the five megasols for the initial feasibility study Then Mercury became interested — and finally Mars. By this time, of course, Malcolm was no
longer an aerospace engineer. He had become, not necessarily in this order, a financial expert, a public-relations adviser, a media manipulator, and a shrewd politician. In the incredibly short time of twenty years, the first hydrogen shipments were falling sunward from Titan.
Malcolm's achievement had been an extraordinary one, now well documented in dozens of scholarly
studies, all respectful, though some of them far from flattering. What made it so remarkable — even
unique — was the way in which he had converted his hard-won expertise from technology to
administration. The process had been so imperceptible that no one realized what was happening.