Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire's Club

by Ben Bova

  He was a big, unsmiling former Marine and ex-police officer with wide shoulders, a thick torso, and arms that looked strong enough to lift a Toyota. Squarish head, shaved down to a boot-camp buzz. Small, squinty eyes set in a heavy, blunt face. His natural scowl was intimidating, and he could look positively scary when he wanted to. Even when he doesn’t want to, Thrasher said to himself.

  “What’s up, boss?” Franken’s voice was low, growly.

  “I’ve been playing detective, but I’m in over my head, Larry.” Thrasher never called the man Frankenstein to his face.

  “The agencies you hired haven’t done the job, have they?”

  “You know about that?”

  Frankenstein made one of his rare grins. On him it looked almost grisly. “Now what kind of a security chief would I be if I didn’t know what the boss was doing?”

  “I didn’t want to get you involved; I thought it might leak—”

  “Nothing leaks out of my office,” Frankenstein said, as firmly as a cop thwacking a perp.

  “I’m sorry, Larry. I should have come to you first, shouldn’t I have?”

  Franken shrugged his massive shoulders. “You’re the boss. You do what you want to. My job is to make sure you don’t get hurt doing it.”

  With an apologetic grin, Thrasher nodded. “I guess I should have expected that you’d be watching me.”

  “Like a guardian angel. If that Israel fellow had tried anything on you last night my people would’ve been all over him.”

  “You had people following me?”

  Frankenstein dipped his chin. “Sure did. On both sides of your motel room.”

  To himself Thrasher said, wish I had known that last night. I would’ve felt a lot better.

  He pulled the crumpled sheet of hotel stationery from his jacket pocket and handed it to Franken.

  “Somebody in the company made these phone calls to Israel.”

  Taking the sheet in a meaty hand, Franken asked, “Somebody from Mars, Incorporated or from Thrasher Digital?”

  “Mars, I should think. But maybe not . . .”

  “I’ll have to run through everybody’s phone records. It’ll take some time.”

  “Do it as quickly as you can.”

  Franken went on, “Of course, your man might not have been dumb enough to use a company phone.”

  “I’ll also be getting a copy of his voice off Israel’s phone answering machine.”

  As if he hadn’t heard that, Franken mused, “We can check office phone records. And home phones. Takes a little arm-twisting and some bribe money for the home phones.”

  “Do what you have to.”

  “If he used a cell phone, though . . .” Franken let the thought dangle.

  “You can’t trace cell phone calls?”

  “It’s more difficult.”

  “But you can do it?”

  With another slow nod, Franken replied, “Unless he used a throwaway. Then we’re screwed.”

  “Do what you have to,” Thrasher repeated. “Just do it as quickly as you can. Whoever it is might try to hit us again.”

  “In Australia?”

  “Or New Mexico, where the astronauts launch from.”

  The twelve-hour time difference in Australia meant that Thrasher didn’t get to talk to Saito Yamagata until well past dinner.

  Sitting in the study of his apartment, with Yamagata’s ascetically lean face on the wall screen, Thrasher told the Japanese executive what little he had learned from Israel.

  Yamagata bobbed his head up and down, his expression stolid. “Pretty much what my people have learned from our technician. Several phone calls, no names. The money was sent by Federal Express. The sender’s name and return address were fakes.”

  “Could you send the dates and times of the phone calls to me, Sai?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s going to happen to your tech?” Thrasher asked.

  Yamagata’s old smile returned. “He has asked for permission to quit Yamagata Corporation. Begged for permission, actually.”

  “And?”

  “He’s on his way back to Japan, to try to find new employment.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Did you think we would execute him?”

  Thrasher sputtered, “Well, no, but just letting him go—is that wise?”

  “What have you done with Mr. Israel?”

  “Nothing,” Thrasher admitted. Silently he added, except to hand him twenty grand.

  “They are best left alone,” Yamagata said. “It’s not them we want. It’s the man who bribed them that we must find.”

  Thrasher muttered, “Amen to that.”

  8

  PORTALES

  August in arid eastern New Mexico was hot. Even standing in the shade of the Mars, Inc. building, Thrasher could feel the summer heat baking the juices out of him. He thought he understood how a slab of meat must feel when it’s roasting in the oven.

  The monsoon season was beginning. There’d be thundershowers almost every afternoon for the next several weeks. Not that much rain, actually: maybe a quarter of an inch per day. But the showers helped to break the day’s heat, and once the Sun went down temperatures became tolerable, even comfortable.

  As he squinted up into the bright New Mexico sky, Thrasher could see that the few clouds building up over the mountains were beginning to drop rain, but the air was so dry that the rain evaporated well before reaching the ground. What do the locals call that? Thrasher asked himself. Then he remembered, virgas.

  Enough sightseeing, Thrasher said to himself. There’s work to do. As he started to head back inside the air conditioned building, he remembered that Thrasher Digital’s annual stockholder’s meeting would take place next month. If Sid’s right and somebody’s trying to buy his way into a majority position among the stockholders, he’ll probably make his move at the meeting.

  The interior of the former warehouse was blessedly cool. Not frigid, like so many buildings back in Texas, but cool enough so that people could work without feeling soggy.

  Who’s trying to take control of Thrasher Digital’s board? Thrasher asked himself for the thousandth time. And for the thousandth time he came up with the same answer: Greg Sampson. That bearded, grinning, loudmouthed sonofabitch has been after my hide ever since I maneuvered him out of grabbing the company all those years ago.

  It’s Sampson, he told himself. Got to be. He wants to take over the company. He wants me out on my butt.

  There were three items on the annual meeting’s agenda that could accomplish that. Thrasher had calculated the votes among the directors and figured that he had a slight edge over Sampson’s bloc. But if he’s corralled enough of the proxy votes he could win. It all depends on the proxies, and from what Sid says, he’s been out grabbing all the shares—and their proxies—that he can lay his hands on.

  Well, he might get his chance to bounce me out next month.

  As he headed down the aisle toward his cubicle of an office, a voice called to him.

  “Hey, Art.”

  Turning, he saw it was Bill Polk, in his usual windbreaker and Levis, striding toward him with a big grin spread across his tanned face.

  “Bill. How’s it going?”

  “Mars One assembly is just about finished. On schedule and a tad under budget.”

  Thrasher nodded. He knew that from the reports he’d been reading.

  “Good work.”

  “We’re stocking the bird with the equipment we’ll carry to Mars,” Polk went on. “Got to wait for the backup VR system, though; there’s some glitch at the university in Tucson.”

  “Glitch?”

  “Dr. Anders. She’s in Australia this week.”

  “Again?”

  Polk looked somewhere between pleased and worried. “She’s getting married, I hear.”

  “Married?” Thrasher felt it like a body blow. “To Dougherty?”

  “That’s what I hear. I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”
/>
  “Damn!”

  “They’ll be flying back here Monday on one of the Astrolaunch birds.”

  They had reached Thrasher’s cubicle. He went to his desk and slid into the swivel chair while Polk settled himself easily on one of the burgundy faux leather chairs.

  “Married,” Thrasher muttered.

  “Dougherty’s due to ride up to Mars One next week for an orientation tour,” said Polk. “He wants to take Anders with him.”

  “What in—”

  “To install the backup VR system,” Polk went on, his expression almost serious. “I think they might have a zero-g honeymoon while they’re up there.”

  Thrasher glowered at the astronaut.

  Oblivious to Thrasher’s dark face, Polk continued, “I mean, we haven’t spun up the wheel yet, the whole bird’s in microgravity. They’ll be up there overnight.”

  “Okay, spare me the details,” Thrasher snapped. “I assume the system they’ll be installing is for the geologist we bumped from the flight.”

  “Dr. Hynes, right.”

  Goddamned Aussie glamorboy, Thrasher fumed inwardly. She fell for him the minute she saw him. And now they’re going to be making it in zero gravity . . . aboard my spacecraft! It’s just not fair, goddamit!

  But Polk wasn’t finished. Still grinning amiably, he said, “Nacho and Judine and I have been talking it over, boss. We think you ought to go up to the bird, too. For a visit.”

  “Me? Go aboard Mars One?”

  “Why not?” said the astronaut. “You’re the man responsible for it’s being there. You ought to go see the finished article.”

  “In orbit? In zero gravity? Me?”

  Quite easily, Polk explained, “We’ll be spinning up the wheel in a few weeks. You’ll have a feeling of normal gravity once you get aboard.”

  “I’ve never been in orbit.”

  “Neither were half a dozen of the technicians who’ve been putting the finishing touches on the bird, when we started. Now we ride them up and back every week.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You ought to do it,” Polk urged. “It’ll be terrific publicity for you.”

  Thrasher stared at the astronaut. Is this another one of their initiation rites? he wondered. Or does he genuinely want me to see the finished spacecraft? Looking into Polk’s smiling eyes, Thrasher realized, Bill’s proud of what we’ve built and he wants me to be proud of it, too.

  “Maybe I should,” he said guardedly.

  “Damned right you should.”

  “When do you spin up the wheel?”

  “In a few weeks, depending on the final checkout. You’ll have to take some orientation sessions, maybe a month or two.”

  “I can’t spare a month or two.”

  With a careless shrug, Polk said, “Well, we can stretch out the lessons. Take ‘em when you can. Learn how to get into a spacesuit, how to handle low g, emergency procedures, that kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds intimidating.”

  “You? Intimidated?” Polk chuckled. “We’ll run the orientation course at your convenience. But, hell, Art, you are the alpha dog in this pack. You ought to see what you’ve produced.”

  Thrasher thought it over for another few heartbeats. I won’t be there when Kristin and glamorpuss are. Let them have their goddamned zero-g honeymoon first. At last he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll start my schooling right after the board meeting.”

  Polk smiled warmly at him. Thrasher said to himself, if I’m still running this operation after the board meeting.

  9

  BOARD BATTLE

  Larry Franken rode with Thrasher from the Houston office to the Marriott Residence Inn, where the annual meeting of Thrasher Digital Corporation was to take place.

  “So what have you found?” Thrasher asked as his security chief climbed into the rear seat of the black Mercedes sedan. Franken was wearing dark sunglasses, which made him look more menacing than ever.

  The Mercedes was far cheaper to run than a limo, but Franken looked uncomfortable, squeezed in, even though Carlo had slid the front seat as far forward as it could go to give Frankenstein more leg room.

  “Zilch,” said Franken, his expression bleak, morose. “Whoever made those calls to Israel and the Jap technician didn’t use an office phone, nor any home phone of one of our employees.”

  “Must’ve used a cell phone.”

  Nodding heavily, Franken said, “We’re checking on that, but it’s not easy.”

  “What about the voice recording from Israel’s answering machine?”

  “Just about useless. The sound’s so distorted we’ll never get a match, even if we knew who to match it with.”

  Thrasher realized that between Mars, Incorporated and Thrasher Digital there were more than twenty-five hundred employees to try matching voice prints. Too damned many, he told himself. Even if we eliminate the women, it’d take too long to get ‘em all, and most of them would refuse to stand for a voice print.

  “Well, keep at it until you’ve exhausted all the possibilities,” he said.

  “I think we’re wasting our time, boss. If this guy was smart enough to know how to sabotage the rocket, he’s too smart to use a phone we could trace.”

  “I guess. But what else do we have to go on?”

  Franken said nothing for several moments. Then, “We’ll check out the cell phones as well as we can. And there’s a kid I know, something of a genius with audio technology. I’ll get him to work on the voice recording. Maybe he’ll be able to pull something out of it.”

  But from the scowling expression on his slab-jawed face, it was clear that Frankenstein didn’t expect much.

  As usual, Thrasher arrived at the Marriott’s top-floor conference room a good hour before the board meeting was scheduled to begin. No one was there except Linda and a pair of uniformed latinas from the caterer laying out the trays of finger foods on the table at the rear of the room. Plus a Hispanic man in a dark suit, setting up the bar.

  Sexism, Thrasher thought. Women handle the food but they assign a guy to run the bar. That’s the least of your worries, he told himself.

  There were three items on the agenda that could get him thrown out of control of Thrasher Digital. Sampson had insisted on all three.

  The first was a motion to spin off Thrasher Digital’s virtual reality business—such as it was—to an entertainment company called Tridinamics that had made a modest bid for it. Thrasher had found that Gregory Sampson had recently invested more than four hundred million in Tridinamics. In essence, he’d be selling Thrasher Digital’s VR business to himself. Then he’ll own all of it, and I’ll be out in the cold.

  The second motion called for an independent audit of Thrasher Digital’s finances, separate from the auditors that the company used in making its annual financial report. Sid Ornsteen was livid over that one. “The bastard’s saying that he doesn’t trust us,” the company’s treasurer raged. “He’s saying that he thinks we’re cooking the books!”

  The third motion was the one that hit Thrasher the hardest. Sampson had moved that Thrasher Digital disassociate itself from Mars, Incorporated. Thrasher knew he’d have to quit Thrasher Digital if that one carried. If he wasn’t booted out by the first two motions first.

  Thrasher greeted the directors as heartily as he could manage as they filed into the conference room, mentally counting their votes. Sampson had built a clique around himself, but Thrasher felt that he had enough loyal board members to beat back Sampson’s initiatives.

  If—and it was a big if—the proxy votes went his way. If the little individual stockholders who didn’t hold enough shares to be on the board of directors voted to turn down Sampson’s three items, he’d be okay.

  That was the real issue. Sid’s worried that Sampson’s bought up enough shares so he can win the majority of the proxy votes. Thrasher had to admit that Sid was probably right.

  By the time this meeting’s over, he feared, the board will have voted to change th
e company’s name to Sampson Digital.

  The meeting was tense, testy from the outset. While almost every board member was there, only a handful of the smaller shareholders showed up, as usual. They hardly filled more than half of the chairs lined up along the conference room’s side walls. They’ll vote their shares in person, Thrasher knew. The others, the shareholders who stayed home, were supposed to mail in their proxy votes. How many of them bothered? How many of them will go along with Sampson’s motions? I’m going to need every vote I can get, Thrasher figured.

  Once the board members were seated at the long conference table, Thrasher welcomed them as warmly as he could manage.

  “We have three pretty contentious issues to discuss and vote on,” he said, “once we’ve finished with the formalities of reading the last meeting’s minutes and the treasurer’s report.”

  From his seat halfway down the table Sampson called out, “I move we dispense with the reading of the last meeting’s minutes.” Grinning through his beard, he added, “We all know what went on last time.”

  “Second the motion,” said gray-haired Uta Gelson, sitting next to him. Thrasher worried about the seating; has Uta gone over to Sampson?

  “Opposed?” he asked mechanically.

  Silence.

  “Okay, so moved,” said Thrasher, turning slightly in his chair to nod at Linda, sitting at the wall behind him. She was recording the meeting.

  “Now for the treasurer’s report,” he said.

  Again Sampson spoke up. “I move we postpone the treasurer’s report until we’ve decided the second motion on the agenda.”

  Thrasher saw Sid Ornsteen’s face flame red.

  “Okay. Let’s skip ahead a little and talk about that item,” Thrasher said, looking directly at Sampson. “Anybody object to that?”

  Absolute silence.

  “Okay, Greg. Why don’t you tell us why you want an independent audit of the company’s books?”