by Ben Bova
After all his bold words, all his blazing fury, the best he could think of was to find an asteroid, put in a claim for it, and then wait for Humphries’s hired killers to come after him. Then he’d have the evidence he needed to make the IAA take official action against Humphries.
If he lived through the ordeal.
Once the shuttle made rendezvous with Starpower and docked at the spacecraft’s main airlock, Fuchs entered his ship and began squirming out of the spacesuit, grateful for the feeling of gravity that the ship’s spin imparted. The bold avenger, he sneered at himself. Going out to offer yourself as a sacrificial victim in an effort to bring Humphries down. A lamb trying to trap a tiger.
As he entered the bridge, still grumbling to himself, the yellow message waiting signal was blinking on the communications screen.
Amanda, he knew. Sure enough, the instant he called up the comm message, her lovely face filled the screen.
But she looked troubled, distraught.
“Lars, it’s George Ambrose. His ship’s gone missing. All communications abruptly shut off several days ago. The IAA isn’t even getting telemetry. They’re afraid he’s dead.”
“George?” Fuchs gaped at his wife’s image. “They’ve killed George?”
“It looks that way,” said Amanda.
Amanda stared at her husband’s face on the wallscreen in their quarters. Grim as death, he looked.
“They killed George,” he repeated.
She wanted to say, No, it must have been an accident. But the words would not leave her lips.
“He had George killed,” Fuchs muttered. “Murdered.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Amanda heard herself say. It sounded more like a plea than a statement, even to her own ears.
“Isn’t there?” he growled.
“Lars, please… don’t do anything… dangerous,” she begged.
He slowly shook his head. “Just being alive is dangerous,” he said.
Dorik Harbin studied the navigation screen as he sat alone on the bridge of Shanidar. The blinking orange cursor that showed his ship’s position was exactly on the thin blue curve representing his programmed approach to the supply vessel.
Harbin had been cruising through the Belt for more than two months, totally alone except for the narcotics and virtual reality chips that provided his only entertainment. A good combination, he thought. The drugs enhanced the electronic illusion, allowed him to fall asleep without dreaming of the faces of the dead, without hearing their screams.
His ship ran in silence; no tracking beacon or telemetry signals betrayed his presence in space. His orders had been to find certain prospectors and miners and eliminate them. This he had done with considerable efficiency. Now, his supplies low, he was making rendezvous with a Humphries supply vessel. He would get new orders, he knew, while Shanidar was being restocked with food and propellant.
I’ll have them flush my water tanks, too, and refill them, Harbin thought idly as he approached the vessel. After a couple of months recycled water begins to taste suspiciously like piss.
He linked with the supply vessel and stayed only long enough for the replenishment to be completed. He never left his own ship, except for one brief visit to the private cabin of the supply vessel’s captain. She handed him a sealed packet that Harbin immediately tucked into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit.
“Must you leave so soon?” the captain asked. She was in her thirties, Harbin judged, not really pretty but attractive in a feline, self-assured way. “We have all sorts of, um… amenities aboard my ship.”
Harbin shook his head. “No thank you.”
“The newest recreational drugs.”
“I must get back to my ship,” he said curtly.
“Not even a meal? Our cook—”
Harbin turned and reached for the cabin’s door latch.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the captain said, smiling knowingly.
Harbin looked at her sharply. “Afraid? Of you?” He barked out a single, dismissive laugh. Then he left her cabin and went immediately back to his own ship.
Only after he had broken away from the supply vessel and was heading deeper into the Belt did he open the packet and remove the chip it contained. As he expected, it contained a list of ships to be attacked, together with their planned courses and complete details of their construction. Another death list, Harbin thought as he studied the images passing across his screen.
Abruptly, the specification charts ended and Grigor’s lean melancholy face appeared on the screen.
“This has been added at the last moment,” Grigor said, his dour image replaced by the blueprints of a ship. “The ship’s name is Starpower. We do not have a course for it yet, but that data will be sent to you via tight-beam laser as soon as it becomes available.”
Harbin’s eyes narrowed. That means I’ll have to get to the preplanned position to receive the laser beam and loiter there until they send the information. He did not like the idea of waiting.
“This is top priority,” Grigor’s voice droned over the image of Starpower’s construction details. “This must be done before you go after any other ships.”
Harbin wished he could talk back to Grigor, ask questions, demand more information.
Grigor’s face appeared on the screen again. “Destroy this one ship and you might not need to deal with any of the others. Eliminate Starpower and you might be able to return to Earth for good.”
WALTZING MATILDA
“I have good news,” Nodon said as George pushed through the hatch into the bridge. “While you were EVA I wired the backup laser into the comm system.”
George squeezed into the right-hand seat. “The backup laser?”
“From our supply stocks. Back in the storage section.”
“And it works?”
Nodon beamed happily. “Yes. The laser can carry our communications signals. We can call for help now.”
Breaking into a guarded smile, George asked, “We’ll hafta point it at Ceres, then.”
“The pointing is the problem,” Nodon said, his happiness diminishing. “At the distance we are from Ceres, the beam disperses only a dozen kilometers or so.”
“So we hafta point it straight onto the optical receivers, then.”
“If we can.”
“And the fookin’ ’roid rotates in about nine hours or so, right?”
“I believe so,” Nodon said. “I can look it up.”
“So that means we’d hafta hit their optical receivers bung on at just the right time when they’re pointin’ toward us.”
“Yes,” said Nodon.
“Like playin’ a fookin’ game o’ darts over a distance of thousands of kilometers.”
“Hundreds of thousands.”
“Fat chance.” Nodon bowed his head. For a moment George thought he might be praying. But then he looked up again and asked, “What of the engine? Can you repair the thruster?”
George grunted. “Oh, sure. Yeah.”
“You can?”
“If I had a repair shop available and a half-dozen welders, pipefitters and other crew.”
“Oh.”
Heaving a weary sigh, George said, “We’ll hafta depend on the laser, pal. The fookin’ engine’s a lost cause.”
CHAPTER 24
Lars Fuchs didn’t spend more than five minutes deciding what he was going to do. He called up the flight history data on Waltzing Matilda. Sure enough, Big George and his crewman had been working a fair-sized carbonaceous asteroid, according to the data they had telemetered back to the IAA. They had started mining it, then all communications from their ship had abruptly cut off. Efforts by the IAA controllers on Ceres to contact them had proved fruitless.
Evidence, Fuchs thought as he studied the flight data on his main comm screen. If I can locate Waltzing Matilda and find evidence that the ship was attacked, deliberately destroyed, then I can get the authorities Earthside to step in and do a thorough investigatio
n of all these missing ships.
Sitting alone on the bridge of Starpower, he tapped the coordinates of the asteroid George had been working into his navigation computer. But his hand hovered over the key that would engage the program.
Do I want the IAA to know where I’m going? He asked himself. The answer was a clear no. Whoever is destroying the prospectors’ and miners’ ships must have exact information about their courses and positions. They can use the telemetry data that each ship sends out automatically to track the ships down.
I must run silently, Fuchs concluded. Not even Amanda will know where I am. The thought of the risk bothered him; the reason for sending out the telemetry signal was so the IAA would know where each ship was. But what good is that? Fuchs asked himself. When a ship gets in trouble, no one comes out to help. The Belt is too enormous. If I run into a problem I’m on my own. All the telemetry data will do is tell the IAA where I was when I died.
It took the better part of a day for Fuchs to take out Starpower’s telemetry transmitter and install it into the little emergency vehicle. Each ship carried at least one escape pod; six people could live in one for a month or more. An example of so-called safety regulations that looked important to the IAA and were in fact useless, ridiculous. An escape pod makes sense for spacecraft working the Earth/Moon region. A rescue ship can reach them in a few days, often in a matter of mere hours. But out here in the Belt, forget about rescue. The distances were too large and the possible rescue ships too few. The prospectors knew they were on their own as soon as they left Ceres.
Fuchs grinned to himself as he thought about all the other uses the emergency vehicles had been put to: extra storage capacity; extra crew quarters; micrograv love nest, when detached from the spinning ship so the pod could be weightless.
But you, he said silently as he installed the telemetry transmitter into Starpower’s escape pod, you will be a decoy. They will think you are me, while I head silently for George’s asteroid.
Once he returned to the bridge and sat in the command chair, he thought of Amanda. Should I tell her what I’m about to do? He wanted to, but feared that his message would be overheard by Humphries’s people. It’s obvious that they have infiltrated the IAA, Fuchs thought. Perhaps the flight controllers on Ceres are secretly taking money from him.
If something happens to the escape pod, Amanda will think I’ve been killed. How can I warn her, let her know what I’m doing?
Then he felt an icy hand grip his heart. What would Amanda do if she thought I was dead? Would she mourn me? Try to avenge me? Or would she run to Humphries? That’s what he wants. That’s why he wants me dead. Will Amanda give in to him if she thinks I’m out of the way?
He hated himself for even thinking such a thought. But he could not escape it. His face twisted into an angry frown, teeth clenched so hard it made his jaws ache, he banged out the keyboard commands that ejected the pod into a long, parabolic trajectory that would send it across the Belt. It took an effort of will, but he did not send a message back to his wife.
I’m alone now, Fuchs thought as he directed Starpower toward the asteroid where Big George had last been heard from.
Diane Verwoerd was reading her favorite Bible passage: the story of the crooked steward who cheated his boss and made himself a nice feather bed for his retirement.
Whenever she had qualms about what she was doing, she called up Luke 16:1-13. It reassured her. Very few people understood the real message of the story, she thought as she read the ancient words on the wallscreen of her apartment.
The steward was eventually fired when his boss found out about his cheating. But the key to the tale was that the steward’s thefts from his master’s accounts were not so huge that the master wanted vengeance. He just fired the guy. And all through the years that the steward had been working for this master, he had put away enough loot so he could live comfortably in retirement. A sort of golden parachute that the boss didn’t know about.
Verwoerd leaned back languidly in her recliner. It adjusted its shape to the curves of her body and massaged her gently, soothingly. It had originally belonged to Martin Humphries, but she had shown him an advertisement for a newer model, which he had immediately bought and then instructed her to get rid of this one. So she removed it from his office and installed it in her own quarters.
With a voice command she ordered the computer to show her personal investment account. The numbers instantly filled the wallscreen. Not bad for a girl from the slums of Amsterdam, she congratulated herself. Over the years you’ve avoided the usual pitfalls of prostitution and drug dependency and even steered clear of becoming some rich fart’s mistress. So far, so good.
She spoke to the computer again, and the list of asteroids that she personally owned the claims for appeared on the screen. Only a half dozen of the little rocks, but they were producing ores nicely and building up profits steeply. Taxes would take a sizeable chunk of the money, but Verwoerd reminded herself that no government can tax money that you don’t have. Pay the taxes and be glad you owe them, she told herself.
Of course, Martin thought that HSS owned the claims to those asteroids. But with so many others in his clutches, a mere half-dozen was down below his radar horizon. Besides, whenever he wanted to check on anything, he always asked his trusted assistant to do it. So he’ll never find out about this little pilfering until after I’ve left his employment.
She cleared the list from the screen, and the verses from Luke came up again.
I’ll be able to retire very comfortably in a couple of years, Verwoerd told herself. It will all work out fine, as long as I don’t get too greedy—and as long as I keep Martin at arm’s length. The moment I give in to him, my days as an HSS employee are numbered.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror across the room and smiled to herself. Maybe I’ll give him a little fling, once I’m ready to retire. Once he fires me, I’ll get severance pay. Or at least a nice little going-away present from Martin. He’s like that.
Turning from her own image back to the words from the Bible, she frowned slightly at the final verse:
No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon.
Perhaps, thought Diane Verwoerd. But I’m not really serving Martin Humphries. I’m working for him. I’m getting rather wealthy off him. But I’m serving only myself, no one else.
Still, she cleared the wallscreen with a single sharp command to the computer. The Bible passage disappeared, replaced by a reproduction of a Mary Cassat painting of a mother and child.
DOSSIER: JOYCE TAKAMINE
You had to have an education to be considered for a job at Selene. The lunar nation was hiring engineers and technicians, not fruit pickers. Joyce’s passport to the Moon was a battered old palmcomp that her father had given her. Through it she could access virtually any class in any university on the net. She studied every night; even when she was so tired from picking that she could barely find the strength to open the palmcomp’s scuffed plastic lid.
The other pickers complained that the flickering light kept them from sleeping, so Joyce moved outside the barracks and kept doggedly at her studies out in the open, under the stars. When she looked up at the Moon and saw Selene’s beacon light, it seemed to her as if that laser’s bright beam was calling to her.
Once a guy she briefly slept with stole her palmcomp; just walked off with it, as if he owned it. In a panicked fury, Joyce tracked him down at the next camp and nearly took his head off with a two-by-four. The owner’s guards let her go, once she told them the whole story. They had no use for thieves; especially stupid ones who let a scrawny oriental girl cold cock them.
In three years, Joyce got her degree in computer systems analysis from California Coast University. She applied for an advertised job at Selene. She didn’t get it. Four hundred and twenty-seven other people, most of them just as desperate and needy as J
oyce, had applied for the same position.
The same day that she was turned down by Selene she got the message that both her parents had died in a freeway pileup during the earthquake that destroyed the shantytowns up in the hills above the drowned ruins of San Francisco.
CHAPTER 25
Nothing.
Fuchs scowled at the display screens that curved around his command chair, then looked out through the bridge’s windows. No sign of Waltzing Matilda. Nothing here but the lumpy irregular shape of an asteroid tumbling slowly in the barren emptiness, dark and pitted and strewn with small boulders and rocks.
This was the last position that the IAA had for Big George’s ship. Matilda’s telemetering had cut off here, at this location. But the ship was nowhere in sight.
Almost without consciously thinking about it, he put Starpower into a tight orbit around the little asteroid. Was George really here? He wondered. If he was he probably didn’t linger very—
Then he saw an area on the ’roid where neat rectangular slabs had been cut out of the rock. George had been here! He had started to mine the asteroid. Turning up the magnification on his telescope to max, Fuchs saw that there was still some equipment standing on the surface. He left in a hurry, Fuchs realized, too much of a hurry to pick up all his gear.
It was a cutting laser, Fuchs saw, still standing silently at the edge of one of the cut-out rectangles. I must retrieve it, he said to himself. It could be evidence.
The easiest way to get it would be to suit up and go EVA. But with no one else in the ship, Fuchs decided against that. Instead, he maneuvered Starpower into an orbit that matched the asteroid’s own spin, the tip of his tongue apprehensively between his teeth, then slowly, carefully, brought the big ship to within a dozen meters of the rocky surface.
Using the manipulator arms on Starpower’s equipment module, Fuchs snatched the laser up off the asteroid and tucked it inside the cargo bay. He was soaked with perspiration by the time the job was done, but proud of his piloting.
