"Sorry." He thought for a moment. "What about the U.N.?" "Talked with Glenn and Joe on that a few hours ago," Hank answered. "Our guess is that since the U.N. doesn't have any launch capacity of their own, they'll be a long way from building anything. Their best bet will probably be to use the reactor as a power source for Phobos Station or something like that. The countries agreed to let the U.N. be the arbitrator because that was the only deal everyone could live with, but don't think any of them like it. We also don't know yet who's going to be in charge of the Interplanetary Research Institute, which is the body that will be running that part of the show. A couple of candidates could be useful, but a few of the others would be actively hostile to us for a lot of reasons." Something was nagging at A.J.'s subconscious. Something about the mission to Mars… the original crew ofNike… things said… that argument he'd had with Jackie, back in the restaurant before the disaster… Taken off the crew… Dammit, what was it? "So, you think the space-capable powers will be competing?" "Right now it looks like it. Maybe the other four will form some kind of temporary alliance to catch up with the United States, but in any case they'll be using everything they've got to make parity. Nothing left for us." The idea was right there, almost in his hands. "So…" he said slowly, "we need more launch capacity. We can't build it, right?" "You knowthose numbers, A.J. Yes, we could, if we had time. But… I'm guessing we can keep things running for a year or two on Mars, drawing on the credit we've got and so on, but if we have to build our own launch capacity, that goes way down. And of course then to reestablish ourselves we'll needmore launch capacity-assuming that someone doesn't find some legal wrinkle to use that makes ourleaving the area weaken our claim. Which they might." Launch capacity. Outside launch capacity. Outside launch capacity that wouldn't be focused on building other people's ships.