Gates came in, sleepy-eyed, sullen. He ignored them both.
"Going to turn in," Crane winked at Bonwitt. "Sleepy. Bye."
"Me, too," grinned the engineer.
But he went up to the dome and mulled things over for hours.
Bonwitt couldn't connect the moon's eccentric behavior with Peterson's. But something was up. If personal, okay; if against Atomic Power, something else again. Looking out first over the moon's broken desolate surface, then up at the bright orb of Earth, the engineer tried to rationalize things.
It couldn't be against Atomic. Mercury is something you just can't steal. It's heavy. Atomic is the only big market for it. You can't make big-time power on Earth without mercury, and Atomic has the monopoly. You have to have a fleet of space ships to transport it—and a market.
No; something bigger was involved; something simpler.
Peterson. What was he up to? He had long been a trusted man in various departments of Atomic. Where did Gates fit? The engineer began thinking over his own ten years with the Company.
Three years on Luna. Rotten. But you have to mine mercury for the terrestrial power plants. The moon was the only place. Lucky for Earth, in 2012, when mercury deposits petered out in Rhodesia, the first rocket to the moon found that Luna's rays were mostly of purest hydrargyrum. Pure metallic mercury, frozen solid in the long Lunar night, liquid in the equally long day.