The Rock Rats gt-11

by Ben Bova

  “I wanted you to become an engineer,” he told Joyce. “I wanted you to rise beyond my station in life.”

  “I will, Dad,” she told him, with the careless assurance of youth. And when she turned her eyes to the sky, she thought about the wild frontier out along the Asteroid Belt.

  CHAPTER 9

  “He’s put in a call to Pancho Lane,” said Diane Verwoerd.

  She and Humphries were strolling through the courtyard outside his mansion. Humphries claimed he enjoyed taking a walk in the “outdoors”—or as near to outdoors as you could get on the Moon. Humphries’s home was in the middle of a huge grotto down at the deepest level of Selene’s network of underground corridors and habitation spaces. The big, high-ceilinged cavern was filled with flowered shrubbery, profusions of reds and yellows and delicate lilacs blooming from one rough-hewn rock wall to the other. Taller trees rose among the profusion of flowers: alders and sturdy maples and lushly flowering white and pink gardenias. No breeze swayed those trees; no birds sang in the greenery; no insects buzzed. It was a huge, elaborate hothouse, maintained by human hands. Hanging from the raw rock ceiling were strips of full-spectrum lamps to imitate sunlight.

  Verwoerd could see the enormous garden beyond the ornate fountain that splashed noisily in the courtyard. The house itself was massive, only two stories high, but wide, almost sprawling. Built of smoothed lunar stone, its roof slanted down to big sweeping windows.

  Compared to the gray underground drabness of the rest of Selene, this garden and home were like a paradise in the midst of a cold, forbidding desert. Verwoerd’s own quarters, several levels up from this grotto, were among the best in Selene, but they seemed cramped and colorless compared to this.

  Humphries claimed he enjoyed walking in the open air. The only other open space in Selene was the Grand Plaza, under the big dome up on the surface, and anyone could take a stroll up there. Here he had his privacy, and all the heady color that human ingenuity and hard work could provide on the Moon. Verwoerd thought he enjoyed the idea that all this was his more than any aesthetic or health benefits he could gain from walking among the roses and peonies.

  But any pleasure he might have enjoyed from this stroll was wiped away by her announcement.

  “He’s called Pancho?” Humphries snapped, immediately nettled. “What for?”

  “She scrambled his message and her reply, so we don’t know the exact words as yet. I have a cryptologist working on it.”

  “Only one message?”

  With a small nod, Verwoerd answered, “His incoming to her, and hers outgoing to him immediately after.”

  “H’mm.”

  “I can guess what the subject was.”

  “So can I,” Humphries said sourly. “He wants to see if she’ll better our offer.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s playing her against me.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “And if she outbids me, then Astro gets full control of his Helvetia Limited.” He pronounced the name sneeringly.

  Verwoerd frowned slightly. “He’s already using Astro as his supplier. What does Pancho have to gain by buying him out?”

  “She keeps us from buying him out. It’s a preventive strike, that’s what it is.”

  “So we increase our bid?”

  “No,” Humphries snapped. “But we increase our pressure.”

  Seyyed Qurrah laughed with delight as he gazed through the thick quartz observation port at his prize, his jewel, his reward for more than two years of scorn and struggle and near starvation. He feasted his eyes as the irregular chunk of rock slid across his view, grayish brown where the sunlight struck it, pitted and covered here and there with boulders the size of houses.

  “Allah is great,” he said aloud, thanking the one God for his mercy and kindness.

  Turning to the sensor displays in his cabin’s control panel, he saw that this lump of stone bore abundant hydrates, water locked chemically to the silicates of the rock. Water! In the desert that was the Moon, water fetched a higher price than gold. It was even more valuable at Ceres, although with only a few hundred people living at the big asteroid, the demand for precious water was not as high as that of Selene’s many thousands.

  Qurrah thought of the contempt and ridicule that they had heaped upon him back home when he’d announced that he intended to leave Earth and seek his fortune in the new bounty of the Asteroid Belt. “Sinbad the Sailor” was the kindest thing he’d been called. “Seyyed the Idiot” was what most of them said. Even when he had reached Ceres and leased a ship with the last bit of credit his dead father had left him, even there the other prospectors and miners called him “Towel Head” and worse. Well, now the shoe was on the other foot. He’d show them!

  Then he pictured how happy Fatima would be when he returned to Algiers, wealthy and happy at last. He would be able to shower her with diamonds and rich gowns of silk with gold threading. Perhaps even acquire a second wife. He was so pleased that he decided to take a full meal from his meager foodstocks, instead of his usual handful of boiled couscous.

  But first he would register his claim with the International Astronautical Authority. That was important. No, before that, he must make his prayer to Allah. That was more important.

  He realized he was nearly babbling out loud. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Qurrah decided, prayer first, then register with the IAA, then celebrate with a whole meal.

  He kept his ship spinning all the time, counterbalancing his habitation unit with the power generator and other equipment at the end of the kilometer-long tether. Not for him the long months in microgee, with his muscles going flabby and his bones decalcifying so that he would have to spend even longer months in lunar orbit rebuilding his body cells. No! Qurrah lived in almost a full earthly gravity.

  So he had no trouble unfurling his prayer rug once he had taken it from its storage cabinet. He was spreading the rug on the one uncluttered area of his compartment when his communications receiver chimed.

  A message? He was startled at the thought. Who would be calling me out here, in this wilderness? Only Fatima and the IAA knows where I am—and the people back at Ceres, of course, but why would they call a lonely prospector?

  Fatima! he thought. Something has happened to her. Something terrible.

  His voice trembled as he answered, “This is the Star of the East. Who is calling, please?”

  A bearded man’s face appeared on his main screen. He looked almost Asian to Qurrah, or perhaps Hispanic.

  “This is Shanidar. You are trespassing on territory that belongs to Humphries Space Systems, Incorporated.”

  “This rock?” Qurrah was instantly incensed. “No sir! There is no registered claim for this asteroid. I was just about to send in my own claim when you hailed me.”

  “You haven’t registered a claim for it?”

  “I am going to, right now!”

  The bearded man shook his head, very slightly, just a small movement from side to side.

  “No you’re not,” he said.

  They were the last words Qurrah ever heard. The laser blast from Shanidar blew a fist-sized hole through the thin hull of his ship. Qurrah’s death scream quickly screeched to silence as the air rushed out and his lungs collapsed in massive hemorrhages of blood.

  THE PUB

  George Ambrose cradled his stone mug of beer in both his big paws. They call it beer, he grumbled inwardly. Haven’t seen a decent beer since I came out here. Fookin’ concoction these rock rats call beer tastes more like platypus piss than anything else. The real stuff was available, but the price was so high for anything imported that George gritted his teeth and sipped the local brew.

  As joints went, the Pub wasn’t so bad. Reminded George of the Pelican Bar, back at Selene, except for the twins in their spray-paint bikinis. They worked behind the bar, under the protective eye of the owner/barkeep. More’n two hundred and sixty million kilometers away, the old Pelican was. Nearly a week’s flight, even in th
e best of the fusion ships.

  He looked over the crowd. The Pub was a natural cave in Ceres’s porous, rocky crust. The floor had been smoothed down but nobody’d ever bothered to finish the walls or ceiling. Be a shame to leave this behind when we move to the habitat, George thought. He’d grown fond of the joint.

  Everything in the Pub was either scavenged or made from asteroidal materials. George was sitting on an old packing crate, reinforced by nickel-iron rods and topped with a stiff plastic cushion cadged from some ship’s stores. The table on which he was leaning his beefy arms was carved rock, as was his mug. Some of the crowd were drinking from frosted aluminum steins, but George preferred the stone. The pride and joy of the The Pub was its bar, made of real wood ferried in here by the daft old doddv who owned the joint. Maybe he isn’t so daft, George mused. He’s makin’ more money than I am, that’s for sure. More money than any of these rock rats.

  Men and women were jammed four deep at the bar and sitting at all the tables spotted across the place like stalagmites rising from the stone floor, four or five men to every sheila. A dozen or more stood along the back wall, drinks in their hands. A pair of women and another bloke were sitting at the same table as George, but he hardly knew them and they were chatting up each other, leaving him alone with his beer.

  A strange crowd, he thought. Prospectors and miners ought to be rough, hard-handed men, outback types like in the old videos. These blokes were college boys, computer nerds, family men and women with enough education and smarts to operate spacecraft and highly automated mining machinery. Not one of ’em ever used a pick or shovel, George knew. Hell’s bells, I never did meself. Lately, though, a different sort had been drifting in: snotty-looking yobbos who kept pretty much to themselves. They didn’t seem to have any real jobs, although they claimed they worked for HSS. They just hung around, as if they were waiting for something.

  Off in the far corner of the cave a couple of blokes were unpacking musical instruments and connecting their amplifiers. Niles Ripley walked in, loose-jointed and smiling at his friends—just about everybody—with his trumpet case in one hand. George pushed himself to his feet and shambled to the bar for a refill of his platypus brew. Several people said hello to him, and he made a bit of chat until Cindy slid the filled mug back to him. Or was it Mindy? George could never tell the twins apart. Then he went back to his table. Nobody had swiped his seat. That’s the kind of place the Pub was.

  As the music began, low and sweet, George found himself thinking about his life. Never dreamed I’d be out here in the Belt, digging ores out of fookin’ asteroids. Hard work, but better than prospecting, poking around the Belt for months on end, looking for a really rich asteroid that the corporations haven’t already claimed, hoping to make the big strike so you can go home and live in luxury. Life takes weird turns.

  The Ripper, who had been playing along with the other musicians, finally stood up and tore into a solo that rocked the cave. His trumpet echoed off the stone walls, bringing everyone to their feet, swaying and clapping in time to his soaring notes. When he finished they roared with delight and insisted on more.

  The evening flew by. George forgot about the ship that he owed money on, forgot about getting up early tomorrow morning to finish the repair job on Matilda’s main manipulator arm so he could get the hell out of Ceres and finish the mining job he’d signed up for before the contract deadline ran out and he had to pay a penalty to Astro Corporation. He just sat there with the rest of the crowd, grooving on the music, rushing to the bar along with everyone else when the band took a break, drinking all night long yet getting high on the music, not the beer.

  It was well past midnight when the band broke up, after several encores, and started to pack their instruments and equipment. People began to file out of the Pub, tired and happy. The twins had disappeared, as usual. Nobody laid a hand on them, except in virtual reality. George plowed through the crowd and made his way to the Ripper.

  “Lemme buy you a beer, mate?”

  Ripley clicked his trumpet case shut, then looked up.

  Smiling, he said, “Maybe a cola, if you can afford it.”

  “Sure thing, Rip. No worries.”

  A few determined regulars still stood at bar, apparently with no intention of leaving. George saw four of the new guys there, too, grouped together, bent over their drinks and talking to one another in low, serious tones. They all wore coveralls with the HSS logo over their name tags.

  “Another beer for me and a cola for the Ripper, here,” George called to the barkeep.

  “A cola?” sneered one of the yobbos. The others laughed.

  Ripley smiled down the bar at them. “Can’t have any alcohol after midnight. I’m working on the habitat in the morning.”

  “Sure,” came the reply.

  George scowled at them. They were so new to Ceres they didn’t realize that an imported cola cost half the earth. He turned back toward Ripley. “Helluva show you put on tonight.”

  “They seemed to like it.”

  “Ever think of playin’ professionally? You’re too good to be sittin’ out on this rock.”

  Ripley shook his head. “Naw. I play the trumpet for fun. If I got serious about it, it’d become work.”

  “You hurt my ears with that damned noise,” said another of the yobbos.

  “Yeah,” said one of his mates. “Why the hell d’you hafta play so damned loud?”

  Before George could say anything, Ripley replied, “Gee, I’m sorry about that. Maybe next time I’ll use a mute.”

  The complainer walked down the bar toward Ripley. “Next time my ass. What’re you going to do about the frickin’ headache you’ve given me?”

  He was a tall, rangy sort, athletically built; short blond hair, with a funny little tail in the back, like an old-time matador. He was young, George saw, but old enough to have better manners.

  The Ripper’s smile started to look a little forced. Very gently, he replied, “I guess I could treat you to a couple of aspirins.”

  “Fuck you and your aspirins.” The guy threw his drink into the Ripper’s face.

  Ripley looked shocked, totally at a loss. He blinked in confusion as beer dripped from his nose, his ears.

  George stepped between them. “That wasn’t very smart,” he said.

  “I’m not talking to you, Red. It’s this wiseass noisemaker I’m talking to.”

  “He’s my friend,” said George. “I think you owe him an apology.”

  “And I think you ought to pull your shaggy ass out of this before you get hurt,” said the yobbo, as his three companions came up to stand with him.

  George smiled pleasantly. This was getting interesting, he thought. To the beer-thrower, he said, “Mr. Ripley, here, isn’t the sort to get involved in a barroom brawl. He might hurt his lip, y’see, and then everyone here would be upset with the people who made that happen.”

  The guy looked around. The Pub was almost empty now. The few remaining regulars had backed away from the bar, drinks in their hands. A handful of others who had been leaving now stood at the doorway, watching. The barkeep had faded back to the other end of the bar, the expression on his face somewhere between nervous and curious.

  “I don’t give a fuck who gets upset with who. And that includes you, big ass.”

  George grabbed the guy by the front of his shirt and lifted him, one hand, off the floor to deposit him with a thump on the bar. He looked very surprised. His three friends stood stock-still.

  Ripley touched George’s other arm. “Come on, pal. Let’s not have a fight.”

  George looked from the yobbo sitting on the bar to his three standing partners, then broke into a shaggy grin.

  “Yeah,” he said to the Ripper. “No sense breakin’ the furniture. Or any heads.”

  He turned and started for the door. As he knew they would, all four of them leaped at him. And none of them knew beans about fighting in low gravity.

  George swung around and caught the first
one with a backhand swat that sent him sprawling. The next two tried to pin his arms but George threw them off. The original troublemaker came at him with a high-pitched yowl and a karate kick aimed at his face. George caught his foot in mid-kick and swung him around like a kid’s toy, lifted him totally off his feet, and then tossed him flying in a howling slow-motion spin over the bar. He crashed into the decorative glassware on the shelves along the back wall.

  “Goddammit, George, that costs money!” the barkeep yelled.

  But George was busy with the three recovered yobbos. They rushed him all at once, but it was like trying to bring down a statue. George staggered back a step, grunting, then smashed one to the floor with a single sledgehammer blow between his shoulder-blades. He peeled the other two off and held them up off the floor by the scruffs of their necks, shook them the way a terrier shakes a rat, then banged their heads together with a sound like a melon hitting the pavement after a long drop.

  He looked around. Two men were unconscious at his feet, a third moaning facedown on the floor. The barkeep was bending over the yobbo on the floor behind the bar amid the shattered glassware, shouting, “Well, somebody’s got to pay for this damage!”

  “Are you all right, George?” Ripley asked.

  George saw that the Ripper had a packing-crate-chair in his hands. He laughed. “What’re you gonna do with that, post ’em back to Earth?”

  Ripley broke into a relieved laugh, and the two men left the Pub. Half a minute later the Ripper ran back in and retrieved his trumpet. The bartender was on the phone, calling Kris Cardenas, the only qualified medical help on Ceres. He held a credit chip from one of the yobbos in his hand.

  CHAPTER 10

  Even after five years on Astro Corporation’s board of directors, Pancho Lane still thought of herself as a neophyte. You got a lot to learn, girl, she told herself almost daily.

  Yet she had formed a few working habits, a small set of rules for herself. She spent as little time in Astro’s corporate offices as possible. Whether at La Guaira on Earth or in Selene, Pancho chose to be among the engineers and astronauts rather than closeting herself with the suits. She had come up through the ranks, a former astronaut herself, and she had no intention of reading reports and studying graphs when she could be out among the workers, getting her hands dirty; she preferred the smell of machine oil and honest sweat to the quiet tensions and power jockeying of the corporate offices.