Free The Precipice by Ben Bova

from the wall, revealing a holowindow that showed a realtime view of Jupiter
as seen by the twenty-meter telescope at the Farside Observatory.
    For a long moment Humphries simply sat there, alone in the office he had set up for himself in the house deep below the lunar
surface. Then he took a long slow breath to calm the furies that raged inside him. The old man has no understanding of the
real world. He’s still living in the past He’d rather go down with the ship than admit that I’m right and he’s wrong.
    Unbidden, the memory of his drowning engulfed him again. Nine years old. His father insisting that the trimaran was in no
trouble despite the dark storm winds that heaved the boat so monstrously. The wave that washed him overboard. The frothing
water closing over him. Desperatelyclawing for the surface but sinking, sinking, can’t breathe, everything going dark.
    Martin Humphries died at the age of nine. After they revived him, he learned that it had been one of the crew who’d dived
into the sound to rescue him. Watching the boy sink out of sight, his father had stayed aboard the trimaran and offered a
bonus to any crewman who could rescue his son. Form that moment on, Humphries knew that there was no one in the world he could
trust; he was alone, with only his inner fears and yearnings to drive him. And only his money to protect him.
    Talking with his father always brought those terrible moments back to mind. And the gasping, choking paralysis that clamped
his chest like a merciless vise. He reached into the top desk drawer for his inhalator and took a desperate whiff of the cool,
soothing drug.
    All right, Humphries thought, waiting for his breathing to return to normal, trying to calm himself. He’s going to stay down
there and try to fight the New Morality until they burn him at the stake. Nothing I say will budge him a millimeter. Very
well, then.
    I’ll stay here in Selene where it’s safe and everything’s under control. No storms, no rain; a world built to suit me in every
detail. From here I can pull the strings just as effectively as if I were down in New York or London. Better, really. There’s
no reason for me to go Earthside anymore.
    Except for the divorce hearing, he remembered. I’m supposed to show up in the judge’s chambers for that. But I can do even
that from here, get my lawyers to make the excuse that I can’t return to Earth, I’ve been on the Moon too long, it would be
dangerous to my health. I can get a dozen doctors to testify to that. No sweat.
    Humphries laughed aloud. I won’t have to be in the same room with that bitch! Good! Wonderful!
    He leaned back again and stared up at the ceiling. It was set to a planetarium display, the sky as it appeared above Selene.Briefly he thought about calling up a porno video, but decided instead to put on the latest informational release from the
International Astronautical Authority about the microprobes searching through the asteroids in the Belt.
    The IAA’s motivation for investigating the asteroids was to locate rocks that might one day hit the Earth. They had good tracks
on all the hundreds of asteroids in orbits that brought them close. Now they were sorting through the thousands of rocks out
in the Belt big enough to cause serious damage if they were ejected from the Belt and impacted Earth.
    The good news was that so far they had not found any asteroid in an orbit that threatened the homeworld—although the asteroids
in the Belt were always being jostled by Jupiter and the other planets, perturbing their orbits unpredictably. A constant
watch was a vital necessity.
    The better news was that, as a byproduct of the impacter watch, the IAA was getting detailed data on the composition of the
larger asteroids. Iron, carbon, nickel, phosphorus, nitrogen, gold, silver, platinum, even water was out there in vast abundance.
Ripe for picking. Waiting for me to turn them into money,