by Ben Bova
“Oh, Lars, he wasn’t. Was he?”
“He most certainly was.”
Amanda’s expression became sly. “What do you think he had on his mind?”
His grin turned wolfish. “I’ll show you.”
Even though they took place in the tropical beauty of La Guaira, on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, the quarterly meetings of Astro Manufacturing Corporation’s board of directors had turned into little less than armed confrontations. Martin Humphries had built a clique around himself and was working hard to take control of the board. Opposing him was Pancho Lane, who had learned in her five years on the board how to bring together a voting bloc of her own.
As chairman of the board, Harriett O’Banian tried her best to steer clear of both groups. Her job, as she saw it, was to make Astro as profitable as possible. Much of what Humphries wanted to do was indeed profitable, even though Pancho opposed virtually anything Humphries or one of his people proposed.
But now Pancho was proposing something that might become an entirely new product line for Astro, and Humphries seemed dead set against it.
“Scoop gases from the atmosphere of Jupiter?” Humphries was scoffing. “Can you think of anything—any idea at all—that carries more risk?”
“Yeah,” Pancho snapped. “Lettin’ somebody else get a corner on the fusion fuels market.”
Red-haired Hattie O’Banian was no stranger to outbursts of temper. But not while she chaired the board. She rapped on the long conference table with her knuckles. “We will have order here,” she said firmly. “Mr. Humphries has the floor.”
Pancho slumped back in her chair and nodded unhappily. She was seated almost exactly across the table from Humphries. O’Banian had to exert some self-control to keep from smiling at her. Pancho had come a long way since her first awkward days on the board. Underneath her west Texas drawl and aw-shucks demeanor, she had a sharp intelligence, quick wit, and the ability to focus on an issue with the intensity of a laser beam. With Hattie’s help, Pancho had learned how to dress the part of a board member: today she wore a trousered business suit of dusky rose, touched off with accents of jewelry. Still, Hattie thought, her lanky, long-legged tomboy image came through. She looked as if she wanted to reach across the table and sock Humphries between the eyes.
For his part, Humphries seemed perfectly at ease in a casual cardigan suit of deep blue and a pale lemon turtleneck shirt. He wears clothes well, Hattie thought, and hides his thoughts even better.
“Martin,” said O’Banian. “Do you have anything else to add?”
“I certainly do,” Humphries said, with a crafty little smile. He turned his gaze to Pancho for a moment, then looked back at O’Banian. “I am opposed to fly-by-night schemes that promise a jackpot at the end of the rainbow but are in reality fraught with technical risks. And human dangers. Sending a ship to Jupiter in a crazy attempt to scoop hydrogen and helium isotopes from that planet’s atmosphere is utter madness, pure and simple.”
Half a dozen board members nodded agreement. O’Banian noticed that a couple of them were not usually on Humphries’ side in these quarrels.
“Ms. Lane? Do you have anything more to say in support of your proposal?”
Pancho sat up ramrod straight and looked squarely at Humphries. “I sure do. I’ve presented the facts, the engineering analysis, the cost estimates and the profit probabilities. The numbers show that scooping fusion fuels is within the capabilities of existing technology. Nothing new needs to be invented.”
“A ship that dives into Jupiter’s atmosphere to collect its gases?” blurted one of the older men down the table. He was paunchy, bald, red-faced.
Pancho forced a smile at him. “A ship that’s being teleoperated from Jupiter orbit. It’s well within existing capabilities.”
“There’s no base in the Jupiter system for a remote operating team; we’d have to set it up it ourselves.”
“That’s true,” Pancho said evenly. “I didn’t say it was existing state-of-the-art hardware. But it is within existing capabilities. We just have to build it and test it.”
“At what cost?” asked the gray-haired woman sitting two chairs down from Pancho.
“You have all the cost figures in my presentation,” Pancho said. Then, turning to O’Banian, she asked, “Can I finish my say without bein’ interrupted, please?”
O’Banian nodded. Raising her voice slightly, she said, “Let’s give Pancho the same courtesy we gave Martin, everyone.”
Pancho said, “Thanks, y’all. Earth needs energy sources that won’t put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Fusion is the answer, and fusion based on helium-three is the most efficient fusion system that’s been built so far. There’s trillions of dollars per year waitin’ for the company that can supply fusion fuels for Earth. And don’t forget that Selene, the Mars bases, Ceres, and lots of other facilities off Earth will buy fusion fuels, too. Not to mention the market for spacecraft propulsion.”
“Selene sells us deuterium-three,” said the red-faced bald man. “They scoop it up out of the ground.”
Pancho countered, “There’s not enough deuterium on the Moon to satisfy the potential market demand.”
“But going all the way out to Jupiter… that will make the price too damned high, won’t it?”
“Not once we get the facilities runnin’. It’ll be a long-haul cargo run, a pipeline operation. We won’t hafta undercut Selene’s price; we’ll just offer a million times more fusion fuels than Selene can dig up.”
The man mumbled to himself, unconvinced.
Pancho looked back to O’Banian, but before the chairwoman could say anything, she went on, “One more thing. If we don’t do this, Humphries Space Systems will.”
Humphries shot up from his chair and pointed an accusing finger at Pancho. “That’s a deliberate insult!”
“That’s the truth and you know it!” Pancho fired back.
The board room erupted with angry voices.
O’Banian banged on the table, hard. “Quiet! All of you.”
“Do I still have the floor?” Pancho asked, once the commotion calmed down. Humphries was glaring at her from across the table.
O’Banian threw an irritated look at Pancho. “As long as you refrain from personal attacks on other board members,” she answered stiffly.
“Okay,” said Pancho. “But it seems to me like we got a problem here. Mr. Humphries here is in a position to block new ideas and then take ’em back to his own corporation and run with ’em.”
“You’re accusing me of unethical behavior!” Humphries barked.
“Damn right,” said Pancho.
“Wait! Quiet!” O’Banian demanded. “I will not have this meeting break down into a personal quarrel.”
The oldest member of the board, a frail-looking gentleman who hardly ever said a word, spoke up. “It seems to me,” he said in a whispery voice, “that we do indeed have a conflict of interest here.”
“That’s nonsense,” Humphries snapped.
“I’m afraid that the point has to be considered,” O’Banian said. She tried to make it as mild and noncommittal as possible, but she was not going to let this point pass without a full discussion. She deliberately kept her eyes away from Pancho, afraid that her gratitude would show.
The discussion wrangled on for nearly two hours. Each board member demanded to have his or her say, whether or not the same sentiment had already been expressed by someone else. O’Banian sat patiently through it all, watching their egos on parade, trying to figure out how she could bring this to a vote. Throw Humphries off the board? Gladly. But there weren’t enough votes for that. The best she could hope for was to pull his fangs.
Humphries was no fool. He too listened to the board members’ repetitious ramblings, clearly impatient, obviously calculating his odds. By the time it was his turn to speak in his own defense, he had come to a decision.
Rising to his feet, he said slowly, calmly, “I’m not going to dignify the accusat
ion that Ms. Lane made by trying to defend myself against it. I think the facts speak for themselves—”
“They sure do,” Pancho muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Humphries kept his temper, barely. “Therefore,” he continued, “I will withdraw my opposition to this Jupiter concept.”
O’Banian realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out with a gush, surprised at how displeased she felt. She had hoped that Humphries would do the gentlemanly thing and resign from the board.
“But let me tell you this,” Humphries added, with an upraised finger. “When the costs mount up and the whole idea collapses around our heads, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
O’Banian took another breath, then said, “Thank you, Martin, on behalf of the entire board.”
But Humphries’s clique on the board still opposed the Jupiter project. The best they would agree to was to allow Pancho to seek a partner that would share at least one quarter of the project’s costs. Failing that, the board would not allow the program to be started.
“A partner?” Pancho groused. O’Banian threw her a sharp warning look. If Pancho complained openly that no one would join Astro in such a partnership, it merely proved Humphries’s point that the idea was impractically far-fetched.
“I think you might open up a dialogue with some of the major utilities corporations,” O’Banian suggested. “After all, they have the most to gain from an assured supply of fusion fuels.”
“Yeah,” Pancho mumbled. “Right.”
As the meeting broke up and the board members made their way out of the conference room, muttering and chattering to one another, Humphries came up to O’Banian.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked, in a low, confidential voice.
“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Martin,” she replied.
“Yes, I can see how sorry you are.” He glanced across the room, to where Pancho was talking to the old red-faced man as they filed out of the room. “Clever work, using Pancho as your stalking horse.”
O’Banian was genuinely shocked. “Me? Using…?”
“It’s all right,” Humphries said, smiling thinly. “I expect sneak attacks now and then. It’s all part of the game.”
“But, Martin, I had no idea—”
“No, of course you didn’t. Well, go ahead with this Jupiter nonsense, if you can find some idiot foolish enough to go along with you. Once it flops I’ll be able to use it to get you off the board. And that damned grease monkey, too.”
WALTZING MATILDA
“What spooks me,” George was saying, “is how the fookin’ bastard knew where our antennas were.”
He and Nodon were taking off their spacesuits, dog-tired after a five-hour EVA. They had patched the laser-punched holes in the propellant tanks, but most of the hydrogen and helium had already leaked away. Their communication antennas, even the backups, were slagged and useless.
“He must have had complete specs on this ship,” Nodon said, as he lifted off the torso of his hard-shell suit and placed it carefully on its rack. “Every detail.”
“Every fookin’ detail,” George agreed. He sat on the tiny bench in front of the suit racks, filling it so completely that Nodon sat on the deck to start removing his boots. George felt too weary even to bend over and pull his boots off.
Piece by piece they finished unsuiting at last, then made their way to the galley. George mused aloud, “Y’know, somebody must’ve given him the specs for this ship.”
“Yes,” Nodon agreed, trailing along behind him. The passageway was too narrow for them to proceed side by side.
“But who? This is a piece of private property, its specs aren’t public knowledge. You can’t look ’em up in a fookin’ net site.”
Nodon scratched his lean, bristly chin, then suggested, “Could he have access to the manufacturer’s records?”
“Or to the maintenance files at Ceres, maybe,” George muttered.
“Yes, that is possible.”
“Either way,” said George, with growing conviction, “it has to be somebody in Humphries Space Systems. Their people do the maintenance on it.”
“Not Astro?”
“Naw. HSS offered me a bargain price if I signed up for the maintenance contract.”
“Then it must be someone in HSS,” Nodon agreed.
“But why? Why did the bastard attack us?”
“To invalidate the claim to the asteroid, certainly.”
George shook his head irritatedly. “There’s millions of rocks in the Belt. And Humphries is the richest shrewdie in the fookin’ solar system. What’s he need a lousy asteroid claim for?”
“Perhaps not him,” Nodon said. “Perhaps someone in his corporation.”
“Yeah.” George nodded. “Maybe.”
With a resigned shrug, Nodon said, “It is all academic, anyway.”
“Whatcha mean, mate?”
Tapping a lean finger against the small wallscreen that displayed the galley’s contents, Nodon pointed out, “We have enough food for only another twenty-two days. Perhaps as much as forty days, if we cut our daily ration to starvation level.”
George grunted at him. “No sense starvin’ ourselves. We’re gonna die anyway.”
CHAPTER 21
Through the week-long trip on the Harper, Amanda sensed a strangeness in her husband, something odd, different, something she couldn’t put her finger on. He seemed—not distant, exactly—certainly not distant: Lars spent almost the entire journey in bed with her, making love with a fierce intensity she had never known before. And yet, even in the midst of their passion there was something withdrawn about him; something that he was hiding from her. She had always been able to read his thoughts before: one look at the set of his jaw and she knew. He had never held anything back from her. But now his face was impassive, his expression guarded. His deepset blue eyes showed her nothing.
It frightened Amanda to realize that Lars was keeping a secret from her. Perhaps more than one.
Once they arrived back at their quarters on Ceres and began unpacking their travel bags, Amanda decided to confront the issue directly.
“Lars, what’s the matter?”
He was stuffing a handful of socks and underwear into his bureau drawer. “The matter?” he asked, without looking up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Something’s on your mind and you’re not sharing it with me.” Straightening up, he came back toward her at the bed. “I’m thinking of everything that we have to do. The insurance, restocking the warehouse, getting Starpower back.”
Amanda sat on the bed, next to her opened bag. “Yes, of course. And what else?”
His eyes shifted away from her. “What else? Isn’t that enough?”
“There’s something more, Lars. Something that’s been bothering you since we left Selene.”
He looked down at her, then turned his attention to his travel bag again, started rummaging through it, muttering about his shaving kit.
Amanda put her hand atop his, stopping him. “Lars, please tell me.”
He straightened up. “There are some things you shouldn’t know, dear.”
“What?” She felt shocked. “What things?”
He almost smiled. “If I told you, then you would know.”
“It’s about Martin, isn’t it? You’ve been this way ever since your meeting with him.”
Fuchs took a deep breath. She could see his chest expand and then deflate again. He pushed his bag aside and sat next to her on the bed.
“All through our trip back here,” he said, his voice heavy, low, “I’ve been trying to think of a way that we can stop him from gaining complete control of the Belt.”
“So that’s it.”
He nodded, but she could see that there was still more. His eyes looked troubled, uncertain.
“He wants that. He wants complete control of everyone and everything out here. He wants absolute power.”
Amanda blurted, “What of it? Lars, we don�
��t have to fight against him. We can’t! You’re only one man. You can’t stop him.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“But not you! Not us! We can cash in the insurance money and go back to Earth and forget about all this.”
With a slow shake of his head, Fuchs said, “Perhaps you can forget about it. I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I can’t.”
“Lars, you’re obsessed with a foolish macho delusion. This isn’t a battle between you and Martin. There’s nothing to fight about! I love you. After all these years, don’t you know that? Don’t you believe it?”
“It’s gone beyond that,” Fuchs said grimly.
“Beyond …?”
“He’s killed people. Friends of ours. Ripley. The men and women aboard the ships that have disappeared. He’s a murderer.”
“But what can you do about it?”
“I can fight.”
“Fight?” Amanda felt truly frightened now. “How? With what?”
He held up his thick-fingered hands and slowly clenched them into fists. “With my bare hands, if I have to.”
“Lars, that’s crazy! Insane!”
He snapped, “Don’t you think I know it? Don’t you think it horrifies me down to the bottom of my soul? I’m a civilized man. I’m not a Neanderthal.”
“Then why… ?”
“Because I must. Because there’s an anger in me, a fury that won’t let go of me. I hate him! I hate his smug certainty. I hate the idea that he can push a button and men are murdered millions of kilometers away while he sits in his elegant mansion and dines on pheasant. And fantasizes about you!”
Amanda’s heart sank. I’m the cause of all this, she realized all over again. I’ve turned this sweet, loving man into a raging monster.
“I’d like to smash his face in,” Fuchs growled. “Kill him just as he’s killed so many others.”
“The way you killed that man in the Pub,” she heard herself say.
He looked as if she had slapped him in the face.
Shocked at her own words, Amanda said, “Oh, Lars, I didn’t mean—”