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."Douglas's voice rose slightly."But take a good, unbiased look at the settlement.You're still operating with the machinery that was there before the flare, right? No one's built new reactors, new processing plants, new solar panels, new shuttles, eh? No one's even tried to rectify the processing plants so they can run on the voltages that the solar arrays produce, have they? No! Instead you keep coming back to Earth to grab fissionables for the reactors.""So?""So what happens when you've used up all the fissionable fuel you can find? What then?"Douglas demanded."That won't happen for centuries!""Centuries, millennia.what difference? The point is," Douglas insisted, "that it's going to happen one day, and unless you people have the knowledge and the guts to work out new devices — like fusion generators, for example—then you're going to die.All of you."Alec said, "But that's so far in the future.""Then what about medicines?""We synthesize all the medicines we need.""Oh sure you do.Certainly," Douglas sneered."But how many people in the settlement are too brittle-boned to make the trip to Earth? How many of your own men are going to suffer sunstroke because they don't have enough melanin pigmentation in their skin? That's a beautiful burn you've got on the back of your neck, by the way."Alec was starting to feel confused."But those are hereditary traits.Medicine can't.""Exactly!" Douglas pounced."What about the four or five people each year who die of cancer in the settlement? Huh?"Bewildered, Alec replied, "Cancer's unavoidable.everybody knows that.""Oh it is, is it?" Douglas glanced over at Will, then turned back to Alec."It happens that cancer arresting drugs were being manufactured on Earth before the sky burned.""They were?"Douglas nodded."And the incidence of cancer in the settlement is rising at a rate of five percent a year.In another generation or two.pfft!" He snapped his fingers."No!""I calculated it out myself.Cancer, birth defects, other genetic diseases—they're all on the rise in the settlement.Because of inbreeding.Before the sky burned, the inbreeding effect was masked because there was a constant flow of people coming and going from Earthside.But among the people who had lived on the Moon for years and intermarried, the hereditary effects were already starting to show up.Now that you've cut yourselves off from Earth, the genetic pool of the lunar community just isn't big enough to be viable.""That can't be true.""Can't it be? Do you think the computers tell lies? They don't.They have no pity.They don't care what you want the answer to be, they simply chug away at the problem and tell you what the answer is.""I can't believe that," Alec said."The answer you get depends on the data you put in."Douglas shrugged ponderously."The data I put in was the medical records of the long-term lunar residents.The settlement is dying.It's too small and inbred to survive.Oh sure, maybe you'll get along for another generation or so.say, about fifty years.But I doubt it.There were already a lot of visible strains when I left.I'll bet there's a lot more tension in the air now.Nobody knows how to build new equipment; you've got some smart engineers and technicians, but no scientists to speak of.A few astronomers.And the genetic diseases are being quietly brushed under the rug because nobody knows how to handle them or what to do to get rid of them.""He's right," Will said gently."I was a physician up there, you know.What Douglas is saying is absolutely right."Alec glared at the two of them."So you decided to let the settlement die.You left with no intention of coming back.""That's just about one hundred percent wrong,"Douglas said."The settlement will certainly die — if it stays alone.I'm trying to save it by forcing you people to reconnect with the rest of the human race, with Mother Earth.And to do that, I've got to build a viable civilization here On Earth.Right?"A boiling tide of rage was rising in Alec's guts."That's a fancy way of saying that you're carving out a nice little empire for yourself down here, and you want to force the settlement to become part of it."Smiling sadly, Douglas replied, "I can see that your mother's been educating you." He spread his big, thick-fingered hands."Call it an empire, a renaissance, an attempt to hold back the complete annihilation of the human race as a species—call it any goddamned thing you want to! But I'm going to bring the threads of civilization back together again, one way or the other.And I want you to work with me.You're my son and.""And someday I'll inherit all this?" Alec shouted at him."The heir-apparent? The crown prince?""Something like that," Douglas muttered."Then you're a fool! Don't you know that crown princes spend their lives planning the king's murder?"Douglas said nothing.He simply sat there on the dusty floor and stared at his son.Then, slowly, he struggled to his feet and walked out of the room.Alec watched him, unmoving.Will Russo shook his head."I shouldn't stick my nose into this damned thing.father and son, after all.But, by golly, that was a lousy thing you just did to him.He's been waiting twenty years to see you.""So he saw me," Alec said, suddenly weary of the whole thing."What was he expecting? Congratulations for running out on us? A hero's medal for turning his back on the whole lunar settlement so he could play emperor down here?""There's a lot to this that you don't understand.""No," Alec said, getting to his feet."I under* stand him perfectly.He can rationalize all he wants to, but the simple fact is that he's a king down here instead of a responsible citizen of the settlement
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