Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire's Club

by Ben Bova

  “You’ll be in a spacesuit?” Linda asked.

  He nodded, then realized she probably couldn’t see the gesture in the shadows. “Yep. I’ll be like an astronaut. For a day and a half.”

  “You’re going to spend a night up there?”

  “Yep.”

  For a heartbeat, Linda was silent. Then, “Please be careful, Mr. Thra—”

  “Art,” he said. “You can call me Mr. Thrasher in the office, but I wish you’d call me Art when we’re together.”

  He sensed her smile. “All right . . . Art.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving my neck. For running the office. For coming to dinner with me tonight. For being such a delightful, charming, intelligent, beautiful woman.”

  She laughed shakily. “You’re slipping into your reprobate ways again.”

  “I’m completely sincere, Linda. I think you’re wonderful.”

  “I think you are, too. But I worry about you.”

  “Worry? What for? I’ve given up my reprobate ways, honest.”

  “Not that,” she said. “This hop up to orbit. If anything goes wrong . . .”

  “I’ll be with Bill Polk. He’s the best in the business.”

  “Accidents can happen,” Linda said, quite seriously. “Accidents can be made to happen.”

  Thrasher stared at her. In the flickering lights from the street lamps, Linda’s face seemed grave, intent.

  “Like the Delta IV launch,” he muttered.

  “That wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Larry Franken’s trying to unravel who was behind it.”

  “Whoever it was, they’d have a great opportunity to get rid of you when you fly off to orbit.”

  “Then I’d better find out who it was before I go,” Thrasher said lightly.

  “It’s not a joke,” Linda insisted.

  “No,” he admitted. “I guess it isn’t.”

  The car glided to a stop and Carlo turned toward them. “This the place?”

  Linda nodded. “Yes. Home sweet home.”

  As Carlo opened the driver’s door and stepped out onto the street, Thrasher reached for Linda.

  “I know there’s some mistletoe around here somewhere,” he murmured.

  “You don’t need mistletoe, Art,” she said.

  He kissed her soundly, ignoring Carlo’s opening the door on her side. Linda clung to him for a moment, then moved away.

  “Thanks for a wonderful evening,” she said, a little breathlessly.

  “Thank you, Linda.”

  “I’ll see you in the office tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure.”

  She slid out of the car. On an impulse, Thrasher slid out behind her and walked her to the door of the rambling Dutch colonial house. A single porch light was on, otherwise the house seemed dark, asleep. He slid his arms around her waist and kissed her again.

  Linda giggled. “My mother, father, two uncles and three brothers are inside, you know.”

  “Sounds like a posse.”

  “They’re very protective.”

  Thrasher said, “They’re going to have to get accustomed to me.”

  She looked into his eyes, then slipped out of his arms and said, “Good night, Art.”

  “Good night, Linda.”

  She unlocked the door and went inside. Thrasher stood there for a moment beneath the porch light, then turned and hurried back to the Mercedes, where Carlo still stood by the open rear door, grinning.

  “Not a word about this to anybody,” Thrasher growled at his chauffeur.

  “Sure, boss. I know when to keep my mouth shut.” But Carlo was still grinning from ear to ear.

  As he rode back toward his apartment, Thrasher berated himself: You have a rule about getting it on with your employees. You’re putting her in an impossible situation.

  Yeah, but she didn’t seem to mind it. She seemed to enjoy it, in fact.

  Then he leaned back and shook his head unhappily. Damn! If I want to pursue her I’m going to have to fire her!

  14

  VOICE PRINTS

  Larry Franken lumbered into Thrasher’s office with a rare smile on his face.

  “I think we might have something for you, boss,” he said, settling his bulk in one of the chairs in front of Thrasher’s desk.

  For the past two days Thrasher had been stumbling through the motions of running the company. He was strictly business with Linda, their brief moment the night of the board meeting looming like an iron curtain between them. For her part, Linda was smoothly professional, doing her best to pretend that nothing had changed between her and her employer.

  Frankenstein’s statement—and his unnerving smile—brought Thrasher’s attention to a sharp focus.

  “Something? What?”

  “You got a couple of hours free this afternoon?”

  Thrasher tapped his computer keyboard and glanced at his schedule. “I guess I can juggle things a little. What’s going on?”

  “This kid I mentioned to you,” said Franken. “He’s an electronics genius.”

  “He’s got something from the voice recording?”

  “Could be. We’ll have to go over to his place and see what he’s come up with.”

  “Can’t he come over here?”

  “Not unless he brings a truckload of equipment with him. We go to him.”

  Thrasher nodded reluctantly. Squinting at his schedule again, he said, “Okay. Three o’clock.”

  Frankenstein lifted himself out of the chair. “See you then.”

  As the Mercedes sped along freeway’s nearly empty high-capacity lane, passing the heavy traffic in the other lanes, Franken explained, “The kid’s name is Tómas Chandrasekhar. Indian father, Mexican mother. Distantly related to some big-time astronomer from a couple generations back. Father’s an executive in an import-export firm, mother teaches music.”

  “And he’s an electronics genius?” Thrasher asked.

  Frankenstein nodded heavily. “Got interested in pop music, then started studying acoustics. On his own. Put in a year at MIT, then dropped out and came back to his parents. They bought him a condo unit and he’s been on his own ever since.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Spending his old man’s money, mostly. He does some consulting work here and there, but not enough to pay for his habit.”

  “Habit? He’s a junkie?”

  Franken shook his head. “His habit is gadgets. Expensive digital gadgets. Wait’ll you see his place.”

  Chandrasekhar’s place turned out to be a penthouse apartment in a downtown high-rise. To Thrasher, the apartment looked like the back room of a poorly-managed electronics shop. Digital equipment was strewn everywhere. Thrasher recognized a half-dozen amplifiers, four laptop computers, and a single man-tall supercomputer console. The rest of the stuff was a mystery to him, although he could make out oscilloscopes and several sets of soldering irons.

  Everything was heaped in a seemingly haphazard mess. No furniture. Not a chair or a sofa in sight. The only table held stacks of electronics black boxes. The windows looked out on the Houston skyline, but the view was blocked by heaps of digital gear.

  “He lives here?” Thrasher asked as he and Franken stood just inside the apartment’s front door. Franken had knocked once and opened the unlocked door without waiting for anyone to respond.

  Frankenstein nodded. “I think he’s got a bed in one of the back rooms.”

  “Where is—”

  Tómas Chandrasekhar came through a doorway on the far side of the room, zipping his fly and smiling shyly.

  He looked like a kid. No more than a teenager. Short and slight, with dark skin, bright white teeth, and big liquid eyes. Thick mop of shiny black ringlets curling over his ears. Looks like he hasn’t brushed his hair in a week, Thrasher thought. Grubby, faded T-shirt and stained, rumpled jeans. His feet were bare.

  “I’m very sorry I couldn’t answer when you
knocked. I was on the pot.” His voice was soft, with just a hint of Hindu sing-song.

  “That’s alright, Tommy,” Franken said amiably. “We let ourselves in.”

  “So I see.” Chandrasekhar spread his arms. “Well, welcome to the junkyard.”

  Thrasher heard himself ask, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three. And how old are you?”

  There wasn’t a trace of malice or smartass attitude in the question. The kid seemed genuinely curious. Thrasher decided he liked him.

  “I’m fifty-five,” he answered. “I used to be twenty-three but I gave it up.”

  Chandrasekhar laughed, a hearty bubbling sound of delight.

  “You’re here about the voice prints, am I right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Allow me to show you what I’ve got.” He moved toward a small mountain range of black boxes spread across the floor and squatted cross-legged on the carpet before them. As he clicked switches and the dials lit up, Chandrasekhar motioned for Thrasher and Franken to sit on the floor beside him.

  “I keep meaning to get some furniture in here, but somehow I never get around to it.”

  “That’s okay,” said Thrasher, lowering himself to the floor. “I’m interested in results, not interior décor.”

  “Me too,” said Chandrasekhar.

  Thrasher’s nose twitched. The kid was odorous, but not from grime. Cinnamon? He realized that Chandrasekhar smelled like a kitchen spice rack.

  Frankenstein sank slowly to his knees, as if he were sitting at a Japanese tea ceremony.

  Pressing a button on the keyboard lying before him, Chandrasekhar pointed to a bristling, wavy green line on the oscilloscope in the middle of the junk pile.

  “That’s the voice print from the recording Mr. Franken gave me,” he explained.

  “No sound?” Thrasher asked.

  “We don’t need sound. Just the digital print. Sound affects you emotionally, you know. The print is what’s important. It’s as individual as a fingerprint or a DNA sample.”

  “Really?”

  Ignoring the question, Chandrasekhar lit up a second oscilloscope dial, beside the one showing the voice print.

  “All I had to do was to find a matching voice print. Mr. Franken gave me several days’ recordings of the telephone traffic from your offices.”

  Thrasher turned to Frankenstein. “We bug phone calls?”

  Franken nodded solemnly. “Interoffice messages, out of office, especially overseas calls.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Standard routine. We keep the recordings for a year, then dump ‘em.”

  Thrasher recalled several phone conversations he’d rather not have anyone else listen in on. Vicki Zane, for example. “Even my private calls?”

  “Not your private line.”

  Thrasher felt relieved. But he wondered if Frankenstein was being completely truthful with him.

  Chandrasekhar rapped a knuckle on the first oscilloscope trace. “So all that was necessary was find a match for this print.”

  “Out of thousands of phone messages?” Thrasher asked.

  The kid grinned brightly. “The more the better. That’s what supercomputers are for. It can run an individual phone call in a few nanoseconds and, if it doesn’t find a match, go on to the next. A nanosecond is a very brief period of time, you know. There are as many nanoseconds in one second as there are seconds in thirty-two years.”

  Impatiently, Thrasher asked, “You found a match?”

  Chandrasekhar bit his lip, then replied, “It’s a pretty good match. Not perfect, sadly, but very, very close.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The second oscilloscope lit up with a spiky, waving green line that looked to Thrasher exactly like the first print. He swiveled his head back and forth, comparing them.

  “Here,” Chandrasekhar said, “allow me to lay them one on top of the other.”

  The first oscilloscope now showed both traces, one above the other.

  “Now we scrunch them together,” Chandrasekhar murmured, his fingers working the keyboard.

  The two curves slid together. A few edges of red showed where they did not match exactly.

  “Better than a ninety percent correlation,” said Chandrasekhar. “I believe that would be good enough to hold up in court!”

  “So whose voice is it?” Thrasher asked.

  Chandrasekhar tapped a couple more buttons on his keyboard.

  “Someone named Vincent Egan,” he said. And Egan’s name appeared in green letters on the second oscilloscope.

  15

  CONFIRMATION

  Thrasher sat cross-legged on the carpet, staring at Vince Egan’s name glaring at him from the oscilloscope screen.

  It can’t be Vince, he said to himself. I asked him about it and he told me he was trying to save himself from defaulting on his mortgage. He told me to my face. He got sore that I suspected him.

  To Chandrasekhar, he muttered, “You’re sure about this?”

  “Ninety-two percent correlation,” the kid replied. “Out of all the voice tracks we looked at, his was the only one that so closely matches the phone recording Mr. Franken gave me.”

  “Vince Egan,” Thrasher said woodenly.

  “It’s him,” Franken rumbled.

  “But why? Why would Vince—”

  “We’ll have to ask him about that.”

  “No.” Thrasher shook his head. “I’ll do it. Myself.”

  Franken hauled himself to his feet, like an elephant getting up. “Okay. You do it yourself. You’re the boss.”

  “Yeah,” Thrasher said shakily as he climbed to a standing position. Rank hath its privileges, he thought bitterly. And its responsibilities.

  When you’ve got to get a needle jabbed into you, Thrasher told himself, do it right away. Don’t try to put it off, it just prolongs the agony.

  So as soon as he and Franken returned to the Thrasher Digital offices, Thrasher marched himself down the hall, past Egan’s surprised secretary, and rapped once on Vince’s office door.

  “He’s not in,” the secretary said, from behind her desk.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s flying in from Tucson,” she answered. “Should be here by five-thirty, if the plane’s on time.”

  Thrasher took the flight number from her, went back to his office, and had Linda check the estimated arrival time. Six-fifteen.

  The office’ll be closed by then, he said to himself. Of course, Vince might come here anyway, he’s not a nine-to-five guy. No, he’s so dedicated that he took two hundred and fifty thousand bucks to blow up that rocket and put me behind the eight-ball.

  Why? That bullshit about his mortgage was a bald-faced lie. Why did he do it?

  Thrasher drummed his fingers on his desktop for several moments, then punched the intercom.

  “Linda, tell Carlo to meet me downstairs. I need to go to the airport.”

  Linda’s voice sounded startled. “The airport? Now? You have a meeting—”

  “Cancel it. Or rather, postpone it. Reschedule it. And get Carlo.”

  A brief hesitation, then Linda said, “I could get the helicopter for you. It’s on the roof, I’d just have to round up the pilot.”

  Thrasher nodded. “Okay. Good. I’ll take the chopper.”

  He fidgeted nervously at his desk until Linda told him the helicopter was ready.

  “Fine. Tell Carlo to get over to the airport and wait for me.”

  Flying over the teeming city, looking down at the traffic clogging the freeways, Thrasher could think of nothing except Vince Egan’s treachery. That explosion might’ve killed somebody, he thought. If it had gone off a few minutes earlier . . .

  He realized he was working himself up into a rage. With an effort he leaned back in the helicopter’s seat and tried to force himself to relax. He tried to use the muted roar of the ‘copter’s jet engine and the thrumming of the big rotor as a mantra to soothe his nerves. It didn
’t work.

  Thrasher was ten minutes early for Egan’s flight. He stood at the exit lane of the security area, peering down the corridor for a sight of the people arriving from Tucson. The minutes ticked by slowly.

  Then people started coming through. A couple of youngsters, probably students. Businessmen. A grandmother with two kids in tow.

  “Are you coming in from Tucson?” Thrasher asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, hurrying past.

  Then he saw Egan striding along, computer bag slung over one shoulder. He looked surprised when he saw Thrasher standing there, waiting for him.

  “Art! What’s up?”

  Thrasher grasped Egan’s free arm and said, “We have to talk, Vince. Someplace private.”

  Egan looked puzzled, not suspicious. “Private? In the airport?”

  Without answering, Thrasher led Egan to the toilets. Men and women were filing in and out of their separate entrances.

  “This is your idea of private?”

  Thrasher went to the third entrance, the one for handicapped persons. He pushed the door open. It was unoccupied.

  “In here,” he said.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Egan asked as he stepped into the tiled room. It held a toilet and a sink at a level where a person in a wheelchair could use it easily, with handgrips set into the walls. Egan unslung his computer bag and rested it on the sink as Thrasher slid the bolt locking the door. Hope nobody needs this facility, he thought.

  “Art, what is it? You look like the world’s about to end.”

  “It was you,” Thrasher said, jabbing an accusing finger at him. “You’re the one who set up the accident.”

  Egan’s face went white.

  “That story about defaulting on your mortgage was just so much bullshit. You took two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to blow up that Delta IV.”

  “No, that’s not true!”

  “Don’t try to deny it. I’ve got enough evidence to send you to jail.”

  “I . . .” Egan’s mouth hung open, but no more words came out.

  “Why? Why’d you do it? Why’d you try to screw me?”

  “Because you screwed me!” Egan snapped, his cheeks flaming with anger.