Wilson nodded enthusiastically. “I would, very much,” he said. “Thanks.” It wasn’t the first time they’d discovered they had similar tastes. They both liked all of the ancient action-adventure classics, Errol Flynn, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck, Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment.
“That’s settled, then,” she told him. “I’ll finish up right away here and then get dressed. Then we’ll go to lunch with your sister and her coach as we planned—I’ve really been looking forward to that—and then we’ll go see the Armstrong Municipal Zoo. They have a real elephant!”
“Oh, yeah,” Wilson said, “I forgot we were going to the zoo.”
“That’s a lot of ‘thens’, isn’t it? I hope you don’t mind that we have such a full schedule of ‘relaxing’ ahead today. We can only do this,” she nodded toward the rumpled bed, “so much until it starts hurting.”
He laughed, and she laughed with him. “No, I don’t mind at all, if afterward … ”
“Afterward is fine with me, whether it hurts or not. But after lunch, can we visit my dad at the spaceport? I haven’t seen him in, oh, weeks—I wonder why. He was a rock hunter once himself, you know, before he went and injured himself. If he likes you, well, I know he knows some special hunting tricks and maybe a secret lode or two.”
“Is that so?” He got up, losing the sheet as it trailed away, locked her in his arms, and kissed her, as long and deeply as he could. The feel of her flesh against his, her fresh, clean scent was heaven.
“Oh, my!” she gasped when they finally had to have some air. “It’s certainly wonderful to have an extra-long weekend now and again, isn’t it?”
Wilson laughed again. “If it can be had with someone like you,” he told her. He was more than a little nervous about meeting Fallon’s father, but that was something else he was determined not to let her know.
“Oh, good. That was just the compliment I was fishing for. Keep it up, sir, and I may eventually tell you my middle name, after all. My computer’s—”
“We interrupt this program for an announcement from the asteroid Ceres.” The screen went blank, then the image of a woman he knew appeared.
“I’m Honey Graham, of the Interplanetary Interactive Information Service, reporting to you from Ceres, largest of the Belt asteroids, where, just in the past couple of hours, there’s been a terrible disaster.”
Wilson felt a chill and the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
Words crawled across the bottom of the screen: 42 MINUTE LIGHTLAG DELAY …
***
Adam stood almost alone, breathing bottled air in the middle of an impossibly barren landscape, grateful for his lightweight envirosuit, made of modern, “smart” materials. He’d worn a few of the older kind, and it had been like trying to move around an old-time phone booth or refrigerator.
He had landed his gamera about a hundred yards from where he stood now, almost in the middle of an old, shallow crater perhaps fifty miles across. The rim-mountains that surrounded it were well over the horizon and couldn’t be seen from here, but the jagged peak of the crater’s central promontory was visible just over his left shoulder.
The sky, as always, was pitch black, the surrounding territory a mottled grayish-brown. Just as asteroids were always “potato-shaped”—and any unfamiliar meat always “tastes like chicken”, carbonaceous chondrites were traditionally described as being about the color and texture of a slightly overdone chocolate chip cookie. Ceres was no different.
By Earth standards, ambient light was somewhat scarce—rather like a heavily overcast day on Earth—although the human eye and brain adapt marvelously to such conditions. Photographic contrast, however, washed out all but the most luminous stars overhead. Shining directly at Adam’s faceplate, a single brilliant yellow star could be seen.
It was the Sun.
“Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Dr. Adam Ngu,” he told the pair of 3DTV lenses being pointed his way by Burt, Honey Graham’s camera operator and, apparently, Ceres’ newest colonist. Adam couldn’t say “good evening” or “good morning” or even “good day”, because this announcement was meant for beamcast to the entire Solar System, where it was all of those times, and more, at once. “I’m the Director and Chief Engineer for the Curringer Corporation’s Ceres Terraformation Project.”
He paused for a moment, organizing his thoughts. His message was simple.
“As you may be aware by now, at roughly 15:45 GMT, our newly- completed atmospheric canopy—a product of two years of prodigious thought and labor on the part of more than a quarter of a million individuals—was deliberately set afire by saboteurs, and about a third of it is likely to be turned to fine gray ash before we can stop it.”
Adam began walking, slowly, and as Burt, suffering in a borrowed envirosuit that wasn’t quite as nice as Adam’s, swung his hand-held camera around to follow him, it began picking up extraneous images: little piles of charred debris on the ground, clusters of twisted, scattered junk for which nature could not be responsible, and scorch marks.
Adam stopped when he came to a piece of wreckage as tall as he was.
“We’re at the exact point where the fire first started. This is all that’s left of a Mercedes-Cessna 736-ED, a rather small but very powerful spacecraft, easily capable of traveling all the way from Earth, say, here to Ceres. It had registration markings, but they were scraped off before it got here. Apparently it was destroyed when it flew over this area at the exact moment of a cataclysmic explosion. There are, as far as we can determine, the remains of four bodies inside.”
Adam walked several yards away from the ruined ship and pointed to another, smaller object, lying on the ground. Burt tilted his camera downward.
“This is a glove,” Adam said, “from an envirosuit. There’s a hand still inside. The bulk of the body is missing. A cursory examination of the site indicates that someone was set down on the surface with whatever incendiary device was used to start this fire, and was about to be picked up again, when the device went off prematurely. The resulting blast killed the person on the surface and destroyed the spacecraft.”
Adam walked directly toward the camera. “Between this gloved hand and the ship’s wreckage, I believe that we can discover who committed this insanely destructive crime. The fact is, I think I already know who they are—and so do all of you, ladies and gentlemen—and if we’re right, then the customary scenario will be changing as of this moment.”
Acting as his own director, Burt brought his camera in another yard.
“Unlike a government somewhere, we will not attempt to capitalize on what might be perceived as an opportunity by declaring war on some other government, or making vague, impossible promises as an excuse to control our citizens more closely. This was an individual criminal act, no matter if it was committed at the behest of some government. We all have individual choices to make, each of us, individually. Each of those individuals responsible—and they know who they are—will be hunted down and made to pay for what they’ve been a part of. From now on it is they who will worry about odd noises coming in the night. It is they who will be glancing fearfully back over their shoulders.”
At a prearranged signal, Burt lifted his camera toward the sky, singling out one bright dot, and increasing magnification until it resolved itself as one of the hundred gigantic spacecraft orbiting Ceres.
“I speak directly now to those individuals. You began with petty crimes of destruction on Earth. Then you tried to blow up a factory spaceship crewed by twenty-five hundred people. Then you tried to blow up my construction dome, which would have killed hundreds more. You have spies everywhere, but now your spies are being spied on by my spies.”
Using special electronics, Burt’s camera continued sending an image of the factory ship Herschell, while he swung it back to eye level. He pushed a button and Adam’s helmeted face filled the visual field again. Adam walked back a few paces, stooped, and the camera followed.
“I can’t speak for the com
pany that employs me—at least not until I confer with them—but speaking for the Ngu family, I tell you now: it is time for you to run and hide. Even if you do, I will find each and every one of you. It will be as if the organizations you work for never existed, because each and every member, each and every officer, each and every agent will be rendered as extinct as the Dodo bird.”
Suddenly the camera backed up to show Adam holding a sinister object.
“I’d cast down this gauntlet,” he said. “But as I said, there’s a hand still inside. We need the fingerprints and DNA. I will find out whose hand this was. I will find out who he or she worked for. Then I’ll come after you. So forget picketing developers and sabotaging construction sites. Use all your brains and energy to try to stay alive.”
He lowered his voice. “I promise you’ll need them.”
***
The traditionally-shaped Zamboni—beneath its skin nobody from a previous century would have recognized any part of the complex tangle of infrared lasers, high-pressure microplumbing, and field-generation electronics they found here—had just waddled clumsily off the ice toward its “barn”, leaving behind it a clean new surface on which to skate.
They were playing “rock music” on the public address system this morning. Not twentieth and twenty-first century rock’n’roll, but something else completely. Faint, complex, rhythmic signals had been heard—and recorded—among the asteroids for years. Nobody knew where they came from, although attempts had been made to find their source.
Lately someone had taken the signals, added some other instruments and a vocalist, to make “rock music”. It was strange, but somehow enjoyable.
As usual, Llyra was the first one through the gate. She was a bit stiff from this morning’s work already—taking a break was sometimes a bit less than useful in that regard—and skating slowly toward the corner opposite the lobby gate, luxuriating in the fresh ice, deeply intent on adding another turn to her Salchow, concentrating on it and nothing else. Eight measly turns was all she’d accomplished so far. She was grimly determined to make it nine today—ten tomorrow—reach up and touch the overhead net, and make a clean landing, all in the same jump. She was startled by the hiss of blades only a few inches behind her.
“Hey, Asteroid Bitch, you just cut me off!” Llyra’s concentration was suddenly shattered, and it was Janna Kolditz, the daughter of the Ambassador of all sixty-five United States of America (minus about thirty-six or thirty-seven, if Llyra recalled correctly), who had shattered it. “Or are you gonna tell me that’s the way that everybody skates out there on Bunghole Sixty-nine or whatever it is you call it?”
Llyra knew that what Janna claimed wasn’t true. She had long since developed that “sixth sense” that serious skaters must acquire sooner or later—like eyes in the back of one’s head—that kept them from colliding most of the time, even when they were skating backwards and their minds were occupied with details of the jump about to come. “I did not cut you off, Janna, and you know it perfectly well.”
In fact, from the scratches the girl had made on the otherwise flawless ice, it appeared to Llyra that she had been deliberately followed.
Llyra and Jasmeen had both been sitting on a bench in the Heinlein lobby, putting their skates back on after breakfast, when her father’s speech had been broadcast from Ceres. Adam had accidentally chosen a slow news day (or maybe the saboteurs had chosen a slow news day to suit their own purposes), and several other news channels had picked up Honey Graham’s feed to ISSS. There would be a great deal of trouble about it later on, and even a lawsuit or two. Meanwhile, nearly every individual in the Solar System had heard and seen what Adam had to say.
“You know that I don’t know anything of the kind, Liar Ayn Ngu!” the East American girl retorted. She seemed to be without her bosom pals this morning, Kelly Tran and Danita Lopez—Jasmeen referred privately to the three of them as “the Harpies”—maybe they’d finally grown sick and tired of Janna’s company. “I’ve got half a mind to report you to the management and get you kicked out of here for good!”
Llyra turned to face her antagonist squarely and look her in the eye. “You’re certainly welcome to try. The trouble is, those cameras—” she pointed to the ceiling, “—won’t back your story up. They installed them to make short work of liability lawsuits against the rink, but they’ll serve nicely to show you up for the prevaricator you are.”
Janna blinked dumbly, like a cow. Another product, Llyra thought, of a compulsory, tax-supported socialist education system, apparently the girl didn’t know what a prevaricator was. The uncomfortable truth, however, was that Llyra wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about all the surveillance cameras at the rink—or anywhere else for that matter. On Pallas and Mars—probably on Ceres, too, once things got better established—it was necessary to obtain an individual’s explicit, written permission before his or her photo could be taken, even as a part of a crowd. Things were rather different here in the Moon, although not as bad as in East America.
Janna said nothing, but skated away angrily, her ample backside making disgruntled little jerks from side to side with each stroke of her skates. Llyra often wondered why she wasted her time—not to mention her parent’s money—coming here. She suspected that it was her father’s—Adam’s—3DTV address that had set the girl off this morning.
To gullible East Americans of Janna Kolditz and her father’s kind, interplanetary colonists were all evil ingrates, while the so-called environmentalist activists Null Delta Em employed were dashing and heroic outlaws, in the style of Robin Hood, Ned Kelly, Jesse James, or Ernie Hancock. Anyone threatening to expose radical environmentalists for what they were—cold-blooded saboteurs and murderers—would get no thanks from Janna.
Ah, well, Llyra thought. There wasn’t anything she could do about the Jannas that skated through her life except ignore them when she could. She still had a couple of hours left to skate this “morning” and a competitive routine to work on for the upcoming Virginia Cup in two months. She began to head for the corner again. Because she needed all the room she could get, most of her jumps were done on the rink’s diagonal—
—when Jasmeen skated up, surprising her again.
“Are you planning to report me for cutting you off, too?” she asked.
“What?”
Llyra told Jasmeen of her encounter with Janna Kolditz.
“Is unimportant, my little,” Jasmeen told Llyra. “Very stupid, but unimportant. We have invitation to lunch. Your brother calls, to your phone. I answer in locker room. I am thinking he wants us to meet new girlfriend.”
“It must be serious, then.” Llyra laughed. The universe was never going to let her make this jump this morning, was it? She found she was looking forward to lunch, though. She was famished. But then, she was always famished. “And I am thinking that this one—Fallon was her name, wasn’t it?—can’t help being better than the last one, right?”
Jasmeen had a peculiar expression on her face, Llyra thought. “I do not offer opinion, my little. Is not my place. I am only conveying information.”
***
For some reason he felt mildly ashamed of now, Wilson had half expected Fallon’s father (a man, she’d told him, who had started out in life as an asteroid hunter, only to be seriously injured and forced to give it up) to be a janitor or some kind of maintenance man at the spaceport.
She’d driven them there in a little two-seater intended only for indoor use, and parked in front of the main entrance. From there, they’d taken a slidewalk through the crowded, noisy main concourse to the administrative section of the spaceport, and an elevator to the top floor, almost at the surface. The quiet, carpeted corridors had thick windows and skylights that looked out directly onto the Moon and sky.
Fallon stopped at a door with a plastic plaque that said, “Director”.
“Now he’s likely to be a little gruff with you at the beginning,” she told Wilson. “Since you’re dating his only daughter and all
, I mean.”
“I hope he doesn’t know about the ‘and all’ part,” Wilson said.
She grinned. “He’ll suspect, after he sees us together, but I’m a big girl, and my life is my life.” She reached up, put her arms around Wilson’s neck, and kissed him lightly. “He’ll like it that you’re a hunter.”
Suddenly, the door swung open, and a severely-dressed woman in her early thirties, with a small computer and a thick sheaf of papers in her hand managed to avoid crashing into them. To her credit, Fallon took her time letting go of Wilson and standing back from him a little.
“I’m sorry, Michelle,” she said. “We were just coming to see Daddy. This is my friend Wilson Ngu. Wilson, my father’s assistant, Michelle.”
Wilson stuck a hand out. Michelle took it. “Pleased to meet you, Wilson,” she said in a French accent. “I have seen you on 3DTV, have I not?”
Wilson sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid so.”
“You,” said Michelle, “are the—”
“He’s the one who nailed those would-be killers on Ceres last year,” said a male voice from within the office. “You’re Adam Ngu’s boy!”
“I must go, now,” Michelle told them. “It was good to see you again, Fallon, and a pleasure to meet you, Wilson. Just go right in, if you will.” With that, she hurried off down the corridor on some errand.
They entered the enormous office, closing the door behind them. One entire wall was windows, draped, but looking out onto a sunny, mountainous Moonscape. Standing behind a desk only slightly smaller than Wilson’s spaceship was a short, plump man with a cigar in his hand. His hair was short, and mostly white, but Wilson could see clearly, from his freckled and florid complexion, that it had been red.
“Falleen m’darlin’!”
The man seized his daughter around the shoulders and squeezed her until Wilson thought her eyes would bulge. She squeezed him just as hard and he was the first to squeak. Then he kissed her forehead, nose, and lips. Letting her go at last, but keeping her close, he stuck a plump, callused hand out. “I’m Terence Flaherty O’Driscoll, my boy, this lovely girl’s father! And who might you be when you’re at home?”
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