Boundary 2: Threshold

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 13:  978-1-4391-3360-6
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
Interior Illustrations by Keith Morrison
First printing, June 2010
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flint, Eric.
  Threshold / Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor.
       p. cm.
  "A Baen Books Original."
  ISBN 978-1-4391-3360-6 (hardcover)
  1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Women paleontologists—Fiction.  
I. Spoor, Ryk E. II. Title.
  PS3556.L548T47 2010
  813'.54—dc22
                       2010009368
Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America

——————

We'd also like to thank several people for their help:
The real Hank Dufresne, and his real financial wizardry. Dr. Robert Sheldon, who took the time to explain the operation of a dusty-plasma vessel. And James Nicoll, for Enceladus (and for inspiration in the saga of Joe Buckley).
Liberties are often taken with physics to permit the story to move forward. Don't blame our scientific consultants for deliberate, or accidental, mangling of reality or practicality that may have resulted from theory contacting story.
Finally, Ryk would like to thank his beta-reading group, especially his Loyal Lieutenant Shana, who poked holes in the rough draft before other people got the chance.

Grand Central Arena
Digital Knight
Boundary
with Eric Flint
Threshold
with Eric Flint
Mountain Magic
with Henry Kuttner, David Drake & Eric Flint

1632
by Eric Flint
1633
with David Weber
1634: The Baltic War
with David Weber
1634: The Galileo Affair
with Andrew Dennis
1634: The Ram Rebellion
with Virginia DeMarce et al.
1634: The Bavarian Crisis
with Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Cannon Law
with Andrew Dennis
1635: The Dreeson Incident
with Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Tangled Web
by Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Eastern Front
(forthcoming)
Ring of Fire
ed. by Eric Flint
Ring of Fire II
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette II
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette III
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette IV
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette V
ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette VI
ed. by Eric Flint
For a complete list of Baen Books by Eric Flint,
please go to www.baen.com

Ares Project

Baker, A.J.: Sensor-system specialist for the Ares Project, with a specialty in micro/nano technologies, especially in the area of independent networked sensor nodes called "smart dust"; married to Helen Sutter.
Buckley, Joe: Electromechanical engineer for the Ares Project; married to Madeline Fathom.
Conley, Larry: Astronomer/astrophysicist for the Ares Project; formerly with NASA; discoverer of Bemmie Ceres base.

United Nations, Interplanetary Research Institute

Fathom, Madeline: Chief of security, Interplanetary Research Institute (IRI); formerly an agent for the United States Homeland Investigation Authority; married to Joe Buckley.
Glendale, Nicholas: Paleontologist; director of the IRI.
Irwin, Bruce: Captain of the IRI vessel
Nobel.
Sutter, Helen: Paleontologist; discover of
Bemmius secordii;
chief xenobiological researcher for the IRI; married to A.J. Baker.
Secord, Jackie: Chief engineer of the IRI vessel
Nobel.

European Union

Bitteschell, Helmut: Vice-president of European Union's European Commission and Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry; the effective head of the E.U.'s space program.
Eberhart, Horst: Chief engine and control systems programmer for the E.U. vessel
Odin.
Fitzgerald, Richard: Chief of security for the
Odin.
Hohenheim, Alberich: General in E.U. space program; captain of the
Odin.
LaPointe, Anthony: Astronomer/astrophysicist; part of the
Odin
's scientific contingent.
Modofori, Leo: One of Fitzgerald's security team for the
Odin.
Osterhoudt, Goswin: Chief operations officer, European Space Development Company.
Svendsen, Mia: Chief engineer of the
Odin.

United States

Hathaway, Ken: Captain of the U.S. vessel
Nike.
Hughes, Andy: Director of the Homeland Investigation Authority.
Jensen, George: National Security Advisor of the United States.

Other

Gupta, Satya: Scientist in American space program; U.S. citizen of Indian descent; scientific advisor to the Indian space program.

Political Compromise, n: an arrangement to solve some complex problem which is satisfactory to no one except the politicians who arranged it.

"I'll sue all of your asses, you little bastard! I didn't invest my money in your pie-in-the-sky operation to—"

"—get only a two hundred percent gain in ten years? Well, tough, that's what you're getting." A.J. rose, mirrored-VRD gaze two inches higher than Anton Margulis' angry brown eyes. "Take it or leave it. But let me guarantee you that if you sue us, even if you win, you'll wish you'd lost. Please, though, go ahead, try it. You've been such a prick ever since you invested, acting as though you thought your money made you a goddamn expert, I'd almost think it was worth it. And I'll enjoy every minute of making you look like the class-A jackass you are." He saw Margulis' fists tightening. "Or you could take a swing at me, and I could hand you your ass in a sling. Any way you want it. So, do you want your money, or do you want a fight?"

Margulis glared up at him for a moment. A.J. kept the sneer carefully fixed on his face. He knew the advantage his blank mirrored stare had in this situation, and liked it that way. Finally the speculator's gaze dropped, he snarled something that A.J. deliberately did not let his sensors enhance to comprehensibility, and he grabbed up the settlement form and scrawled a barely legible signature across it. The smart-paper form recorded Margulis' retinal for verification.

"Thank you, Mr. Margulis." Hank Dufresne took the form. "And if you will check your designated account, you will find I have just authorized the transfer."

Margulis grunted something that might, charitably, have been described as a version of "thank you" and left the office with considerably more noise than was necessary.

A.J. collapsed back into his chair, feeling the weight of Earth's gravity crushing him down. He'd worked hard to keep in shape back on Mars, and overall he thought he'd done fairly well, but there was a big difference between keeping in shape and
living
in a 1-g environment after being on Mars and similar low-gravity settings for two years. "For a minute I thought he was going to call my bluff."

"So did I, and not the part involving a fistfight, either." Hank shook his head. "Can't you find a more diplomatic way to do this?"

"Look, you want diplomatic, you get Joe here. Better yet, Glenn."

Hank favored him with a sour look. "I would have, if it wouldn't take another six months." He relented slightly. "Actually, I guess it was a piece of luck that any of you three were here when it came to a head. Some of these guys—like him—won't take anything that isn't said face-to-face seriously."

"He
was
the last, wasn't he? Because that was one hell of a chunk of change we had to hand him."

"The last one of any note. And I did get one piece of good news: Your TV-host girlfriend—"

"My wha—Oh, you mean Myranda." Myranda Sevins, one of the daytime talk mavens, had allowed A.J. to basically use her show as a publicity platform in the days after the big accident that had nearly cost A.J. his life. To their surprise, she'd actually become something of a convert, investing a moderate (for her) amount in Ares. "What about her?"

"She sent us another check instead of asking for her money back. Said she figured we'd find a way to make money out of the deal somehow, so if we'd just give her stock she'd back off on the county-sized Mars homestead."

A.J. gave a tired grin. "Thank all the gods for that. I know my limits, and I couldn't outfight
her
on the publicity front, even with Helen and Maddie helping."

"So . . . you're not broke, are you?"

A.J. tried to look nonchalant, then shrugged, looking down. "Not exactly. Liquid assets are pretty much tapped out, though. I've got a bunch of options and locked-in investments of other sorts at Dust-Storm that I could liquidate at a terrible loss, but I'd also lose out on my position there. Which was really what I came here to solidify."

Hank nodded. He knew A.J. had made the trip back from Mars specifically to work on major advances to the "Faerie Dust" sensor motes and use his unique talents and access to the alien-technology discoveries made by NASA and Ares to finish acquiring a major stake in Dust-Storm Technology. It just so happened that a week before A.J. landed, the U.N. finished its acrimonious arguing over how the entire "Mars situation" would be handled. That had set off an awful lot of political and business landmines, including the current crisis at Ares.

A.J. brushed back his unruly blond hair. "Anyway, that puts Ares back in the black, or at least enough in the gray that we can operate on for a while, right?" He felt his gut tighten as he saw the older man's normally cheerful face go carefully neutral in expression.

"Well, A.J., yes and no. That takes off the immediate financial pinch, but we have a major issue that's only partly to do with money and investors. If we actually had been granted title—or, let's be accurate, since there wasn't any way we'd actually be granted
ownership
of a planet—right to exploit for some reasonable time on all of Mars, we'd have kept our investors. Or even if we got a really big chunk of it."

"Hey, we
did!
" A.J. said. "Joe's stunt made it so that we didn't lose out!"

Hank shook his head. "We got lucky, yeah. The Buckley Addendum was rammed through, but even though the administration claimed that was to ensure 'fair treatment' of Ares, it was just taking advantage of the situation to make sure that there was some mechanism to allow
other
government and corporate agencies to claim rights on extraterrestrial territory by allowing the first person to set foot on an extraterrestrial body to have a ninety-nine-year no-holds-barred lease on some portion of that body. The wording, of course, allows them to decide how much you can claim. Anyway, the problem is we've got a lot of good territory, by Martian standards, but only about nine percent of what we hoped to get—which is not 'a really big chunk' to the investors. What would your reaction be to someone who got you to invest in new sensors, and the sensors only did about one-tenth of what they claimed when you invested?"

"But . . ." A.J. shut up. He knew that
he
could clearly differentiate between the scenarios, but what Hank was telling him was, basically, that many other people couldn't, and to them Ares was already a failure.

"Let's get to the point, Hank."

A.J. jumped. He'd forgotten Anne Calabrio was present. She was the only other Ares board member currently on Earth.