The Rock Rats gt-11

by Ben Bova

  As the two spacesuited figures climbed down from the shuttle, Fuchs easily recognized Pancho Lane’s long, stringy figure even in her helmet and suit. This was the first time in nearly a year that Pancho had come to Ceres, doubling up on her roles of Astro board member and Helvetia vice president.

  Tapping on the communications keyboard on his left wrist, Fuchs heard her talking with Ripley, the engineer in charge of the construction project.

  “… what you really need is a new set of welding lasers,” she was saying, “instead of those clunkers you’re workin’ with.”

  Rather than trying to walk in the low-gravity shuffle that was necessary on Ceres, Fuchs took the jetpack control box into his gloved hand and barely squeezed it, feather-light. As usual, he overdid the thrust and sailed over the heads of Pancho and the engineer, nearly ramming into the shuttlecraft. His boots kicked up a cloud of dark dust as he touched down on the surface.

  “Lord, Lars, when’re you gonna learn how to fly one of those rigs?” Pancho teased.

  Inside his helmet Fuchs grinned with embarrassment. “I’m out of practice,” he admitted, sliding his feet across the surface toward them, raising still more dust. The ground felt gritty, pebbly, even through his thick-soled boots.

  “You were never in practice, buddy.”

  He changed the subject by asking the engineer, “So, Mr. Rip-Icy, will your crew be able to assemble the latest additions on schedule?”

  “Believe it or not,” Ripley replied archly, “they will.”

  Niles Ripley was an American of Nigerian heritage, an engineer with degrees from Lehigh and Penn, an amateur jazz trumpet player who had acquired the nickname “Ripper” from his headlong improvisations. The sobriquet sometimes caused problems for the mild-mannered engineer, especially in bars with belligerent drunks. The Ripper generally smiled and talked his way out of confrontations. He had no intention of letting some musclebound oaf damage his horn-playing lip.

  “Your schedule will be met,” Ripley went on. Then he added, “Despite its lack of flexibility.”

  Fuchs jabbed back, “Then your crew will earn its bonus, despite their complaints about the schedule.”

  Pancho interrupted their banter. “I’ve been tellin’ ol’ Ripper here that you’d get this job done a lot faster with a better set of welding lasers.”

  “We can’t afford them,” Fuchs said. “We are on very tight budget restraints.”

  “Astro could lease you the lasers. Real easy terms.”

  Fuchs made an audible sigh. “I wish you had thought of that two years ago, when we started this operation.”

  “Two years ago the best lasers we had were big and inefficient. Our lab boys just came up with these new babies: small enough to haul around on a minitractor. Very fuel efficient. They’ve even got a handheld version. Lower power, of course, but good enough for some jobs.”

  “We’re doing well enough with what we have, Pancho.”

  “Well, okay. Don’t say I didn’t make you the offer.” He heard the resigned, slightly disappointed tone in her voice.

  Pointing a gloved hand toward the habitat, which was nearly at the far horizon, Fuchs said, “We’ve done quite well so far, don’t you think?”

  For a long moment she said nothing as the three of them watched the habitat glide down the sky. It looked like an unfinished pinwheel, several spacecraft joined end to end and connected by long buckyball tethers to a similar collection of united spacecraft, the entire assembly slowly rotating as it moved toward the horizon.

  “Tell you the truth, Lars old buddy,” said Pancho, “it kinda reminds me of a used-car lot back in Lubbock.”

  “Used-car lot?” Fuchs sputtered.

  “Or maybe a flyin’ junkyard.”

  “Junkyard?”

  Then he heard Ripley laughing. “Don’t let her kid you, Lars. She was pretty impressed, going through the units we’ve assembled.”

  Pancho said, “Well, yeah, the insides are pretty good. But it surely ain’t a thing of beauty from the outside.”

  “It will be,” Fuchs muttered. “You wait and see.”

  Ripley changed the subject. “Tell me more about these handheld lasers. How powerful are they?”

  “It’ll cut through a sheet of steel three centimeters thick,” Pancho said.

  “How long does it take?” asked Ripley.

  “Couple nanoseconds. It’s pulsed. Doesn’t melt the steel, it shock-blasts it.”

  They chatted on while the habitat sank out of sight and the distant, pale Sun climbed higher in the dark, star-choked sky. Fuchs noticed the zodiacal light, like two long arms outstretched from the Sun’s middle. Reflections from dust motes, he knew: microscopic asteroids floating out there, leftovers from the creation of the planets.

  As they started toward the airlock, Pancho turned to Fuchs. “Might’s well talk a little business.”

  She raised her left arm and tapped the key on her cuff that switched to a secondary suit-radio frequency. Ripley was cut out of their conversation now.

  Fuchs hit the same key on his control unit. “Yes, business by all means.”

  “You asked us to reduce the prices for circuit boards again,” Pancho said. “We’re already close to the bone, Lars.”

  “Humphries is trying to undersell you.”

  “Astro can’t sell at a loss. The directors won’t stand for it.”

  Fuchs felt his lips curl into a sardonic smile. “Humphries is on your board of directors still?”

  “Yup. He’s promised not to lower HSS’s prices any further.”

  “He’s lying. They’re offering circuit boards, chips, even repair services at lower and lower prices. He’s trying to drive me out of the market.”

  “And once he does he’ll run up the prices as high as he pleases,” she said.

  “Naturally. He’ll have a monopoly then.”

  They had reached the airlock hatch. It was big enough for two spacesuited people, but not three, so they sent Ripley through first.

  Pancho watched the engineer close the hatch, then said, “Lars, what Humphries really wants is to take over Astro. He’s been after that since the git-go.”

  “Then he’ll have a monopoly on all space operations, everywhere in the Belt…everywhere in the whole solar system,” Fuchs said, feeling anger rising within him.

  “That’s what he’s after.”

  “We’ve got to prevent that! Whatever it takes, we must stop him.”

  “I can’t sell you goods at below cost, buddy. The board’s made that clear.”

  Fuchs nodded wearily. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

  “Like what?”

  He tried to shrug his shoulders, but inside the spacesuit it was impossible. “I wish I knew,” he admitted.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’m becoming dependant on this woman, Humphries thought, watching Diane Verwoerd as they rode down the moving stairs toward his mansion, in Selene’s bottommost level.

  She was coolly reading out the daily list of action items from her handheld palmcomp, ticking them off one by one, asking him to okay the staff assignments she had already made to handle each item.

  Humphries rarely left his house. Instead, he had made it into a haven of luxury and security. Half the house was living quarters, the other side given over to the scientists and technicians who maintained and studied the gardens that surrounded the mansion. Il had been a brilliant idea, Humphries thought, to talk Selene’s governing board into letting him create a three-hundred-hectare garden down in the deepest grotto in Selene. Officially, the house was the Humphries Trust Research Center that ran the ongoing ecological experiment: Can a balanced ecology be maintained on the Moon with minimal human intervention, given adequate light and water? Humphries didn’t care in the slightest what the answer was, so long as he could live in comfort in the midst of the flourishing garden, deep below the radiation and other dangers of the Moon’s surface.

  He relished the knowledge that he had foo
led them all, even Douglas Stavenger, Selene’s founder and youthful eminence grise. He had even talked them into rescinding their foolish decision toe exile him from Selene after his part in Dan Randolph’s death had become known. But he hadn’t fooled the tall, exotic, silky Diane Verwoerd, he knew. She saw right through him.

  He had invited her to lunch at the new bistro just opened in the Grand Plaza. She had turned down his earlier offers of dinner, but a “working lunch” outside the house was something she could not easily refuse. So he had taken her to lunch. And she had worked right through the salad and soy cutlets, barely taking a sip of the wine he ordered, refusing dessert altogether.

  And now, as they rode on the powered stairs back to his office/home, she held her palmcomp before her and rattled off problems facing the company and her solutions for them.

  She’s become almost indispensable to me, he realized. Maybe that’s her game, to become so important to me businesswise that I’ll stop thinking of her as a hotbody. She must know that I don’t keep a woman around for long once I’ve had her in bed.

  He grinned inwardly. You’re playing a tricky game, Ms. Verwoerd. And, so far, you’ve played it just about perfectly.

  So far.

  Humphries refused to admit defeat, although it was obvious that this luncheon idea had been no victory. He listened to her long recitation with only half his attention, thinking, I’ll get you sooner or later, Diane. I can wait.

  But not much longer, another voice in his head spoke up. No woman is worth waiting for this long.

  Wrong, he answered silently. Amanda is.

  As they neared the bottom of the last flight of moving stairs, she said something that abruptly caught his full attention.

  “And Pancho Lane flew all the way out to Ceres last week. She’s on her way back now.”

  “To Ceres?” Humphries snapped. “What’s she doing out there?”

  “Talking to her business associates, Mr. and Mrs. Fuchs,” Verwoerd replied calmly. “About undercutting our prices, I imagine.”

  “Undercutting me?”

  “What else? If they can drive HSS out of Ceres they’ll have the whole Belt for themselves. You’re not the only one who wants to control the rock rats.”

  “Helvetia Ltd.,” Humphries muttered. “Silly name for a company.”

  “It’s really a front for Astro, you know.”

  He looked around the smooth walls of the escalator well without replying. At this deep level beneath Selene, no one else was riding down. There was no sound except the muted hum of the electric motor powering the stairs.

  “Pancho’s using Fuchs and his company to make it much tougher for you to take control of Astro. The more business she does through Helvetia, the more the Astro board sees her as a real hero. They might even elect Pancho chairman when O’Banian steps down.”

  “Drive me out of the Belt,” Humphries growled.

  “That’s what we’re trying to do to them, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “We’d better do it, then, before they do it to us,” said Diane Verwoerd.

  Humphries nodded again, knowing she was right.

  “What we need, then,” she said slowly, “is a plan of action. A program aimed at crushing Helvetia once and for all.”

  He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since they’d finished lunch. She’s thought this whole thing through, he realized. She’s leading me around by the nose, by god. Humphries saw it in her almond eyes. She has this all figured out. She knows exactly where she wants to lead me.

  “So what do you suggest?” he asked, really curious about where she was heading.

  “I suggest a two-pronged strategy.”

  “A two-pronged strategy?” he asked dryly.

  “It’s an old technique,” Verwoerd said, smiling slyly. “The carrot and the stick.”

  Despite his efforts to remain noncommittal, Humphries smiled. “Tell me about it,” he said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped off.

  Once he got back to his office, Humphries cleared his calendar and leaned back in his chair, thinking, worrying, planning. All thoughts of Diane left his conscious mind; he pictured Amanda out there with Fuchs. Amanda wouldn’t try to hurt me, he told himself. But he would. He knows I love her and he’d do anything to damage me. He’s already taken Amanda away from me. Now he wants to drive me out of the Belt and stop me from taking Astro. The sonofabitch wants to ruin me!

  Diane is right. We’ve got to move, and move fast. Carrot and stick.

  Abruptly, he sat up straight and ordered the phone to summon his chief of security. The man rapped softly at his office door a few moments later.

  “Come in, Grigor,” said Humphries.

  The security chief was a new hire: a lean, silent man with dark hair and darker eyes. He wore an ordinary business suit of pale gray, the nondescript costume of a man who preferred to remain in the background, unnoticed, while he noticed everything. He remained standing despite the two comfortable chairs in front of Humphries’s desk.

  Tilting his own chair back slightly to look up at him, Humphries said, “Grigor, I want the benefit of your thinking on a problem I have.”

  Grigor shifted slightly on his feet. He had just been recruited from an Earth-based corporation that was floundering financially because most of its assets had been destroyed in the greenhouse flooding. He was on probation with Humphries, and he knew it.

  “Those rock rats out in the Belt are getting a bigger and bigger share of their supplies from Helvetia Ltd. instead of from Humphries Space Systems,” Humphries said, watching the man closely, curious about how he would respond.

  Grigor said nothing. His face betrayed no emotion. He listened.

  “I want Humphries Space Systems to have exclusive control of the rock rats’ supplies.”

  Grigor just stood there, unmoving, his eyes revealing nothing.

  “Exclusive control,” Humphries repeated. “Do you understand?”

  Grigor’s chin dipped in the slightest of nods.

  “What do you think must be done?” Humphries asked.

  “To gain exclusive control,” said Grigor, in a throaty, guttural voice that sounded strained, painful, “you must eliminate your competitor.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “There are many ways. One of them is to use violence. I presume that is why you have asked my opinion.”

  Raising one hand, Humphries said sharply, “I don’t mind violence, but this needs to be done with great discretion. I don’t want anyone to suspect that Humphries Space Systems has anything to do with it.”

  Grigor thought in silence for a few heartbeats. “Then the action must be taken against individual prospectors, rather than Helvetia itself. Eliminate their customers and the company will shrivel and die.”

  Humphries nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

  “It will take some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “A few months,” Grigor said. “Perhaps a year.”

  “I want it done faster than that. Sooner than a year.”

  Grigor closed his eyes briefly, then said, “Then we must be prepared to escalate the violence. First the individual prospectors, then personnel and facilities on Ceres itself.”

  “Facilities?”

  “Your competitor is constructing an orbital habitat there, is he not?”

  Humphries fought to suppress a satisfied grin. Grigor’s already been studying the situation, he realized. Good.

  When his employer failed to reply, Grigor continued, “Stopping the habitat project will help to discredit the man who started it. If nothing else, it will show that he is powerless to protect his own people.”

  “It’s got to look accidental,” Humphries insisted. “No hint of responsibility laid at my doorstep.”

  “Not to worry,” said Grigor.

  “I never worry,” Humphries snapped. “I get even.”

  As Grigor left his office, silent as a wraith
, Humphries thought, Carrot and stick. Diane will offer the carrot. Grigor’s people will provide the stick.

  THE LADY OF THE LAKE

  ONE MONTH LATER

  “Ooh, Randy,” gushed Cindy, “you’re so big.”

  “And hard,” added Mindy.

  Randall McPherson lay back in the small mountain of pillows while the naked twins stroked his bare skin. Some guys liked sex in microgravity, but Randy had spun up his ship to almost a full terrestrial g for his encounter with the twins. His partner, Dan Fogerty, complained about the fuel cost of spinning up the ship, but Randy had ignored his bleating. Fogerty was known to all the miners as Fatso Fogerty, he had allowed himself to blubber up so shamelessly, living in microgravity most of the time. McPherson spent hours of his spare time in their ship’s exercise centrifuge, or had the whole ship spun up to keep his muscles in condition. Fogerty was lucky to have a levelheaded man such as McPherson to team with him, in McPherson’s opinion.

  The twins were actually back at Ceres, of course, but the virtual reality system was working pretty well. Hardly a noticeable lag between a request by Randy and a smiling, slinky, caressing response from Cindy and Mindy.

  So Randy was more than a little irked when Fogerty’s voice broke into his three-way fantasy.

  “There’s a bloomin’ ship approaching us!”

  “What?” McPherson snapped, sitting up so abruptly that the VR images of the twins were still wriggling sensuously on the pillows even though he was no longer lying between them.

  “A ship,” Fatso repeated. “They’re askin’ to dock with us.”

  McPherson muttered a string of heartfelt profanities while the twins lay motionless, staring blankly.

  “Sorry, ladies,” he said, pushing himself up off the pillows, feeling half embarrassed, half infuriated. He lifted the VR goggles off and saw the real world: a dreary little compartment on a scruffy clunker of a ship that badly needed a refit and overhaul after fourteen months of batting around the Belt.

  Awkwardly peeling off his VR sensor suit and pulling on his coveralls as he made his way up to the bridge, McPherson bellowed, “Fatso, if this is one of your goddam jokes I’m gonna wring your neck till I hear chimes!”